The Science Pawdcast

Episode 12 Season 7: Autism Rates, Dire Wolves, and Puppy Training

• Jason and Kris Zackowski • Season 7 • Episode 12

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This week we look to deunk myths about rising autism rates and explain the genetic and environmental factors at play, while exploring the resurrection of dire wolves through genetic engineering and how puppy cognition predicts adult dog behavior.

• CDC data shows autism diagnoses increased from 1 in 150 children in 2000 to 1 in 31 in 2022
• Approximately 80% of autism cases stem from inherited genetic variations with 200+ genes linked to early brain development
• Better screening, diagnosis, and awareness accounts for much of the increase in autism rates
• Scientists have genetically engineered puppies with dire wolf traits using DNA from ancient remains
• The three pups—Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi—received 20 gene edits targeting coat color, body size, and facial features
• Study of 1,400+ puppies shows early cognitive traits persist into adulthood
• Puppies good at following pointing gestures became more trainable adults, while those with better impulse control grew into calmer dogs
• Understanding puppy cognition allows for customized training approaches that support lifelong well-being

Some Links and Studies:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/autism-adhd-risk-not-linked-prenatal-exposure-antidepressants


S. Gilman et al. Rare de novo variants associated with autism implicate a large functional network of genes involved in formation and function of synapses. Neuron, Vol. 70, June 9, 2011. DOI:10.1016/j.neuron.2011.05.021

D. Levy et al. Rare De Novo and Transmitted Copy-Number Variation in Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Neuron, Vol. 70, June 9, 2011. DOI 10.1016/j.neuron.2011.05.015

Y. Sakai et al. Protein interactome reveals converging molecular pathways among autism disorders. Science Translational Medicine, Vol. 3, June 8, 2011. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3002166

Sanders et al. Multiple Recurrent De Novo CNVs, Including Duplications of the 7q11.23 Williams Syndrome Region, Are Strongly Associated with Autism. Neuron, Vol. 70, June 9, 2011. DOI:10.1016/j.neuron.2011.05.015

C. Schaaf et al. Oligogenic heterozygosity in individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder. Human Molecular Genetics. doi: 10.1093/hmg/ddr243. Available online: [Go to]

C.P. Schaaf and H.Y. Zoghbi. Solving the autism puzzle a few pieces at a time. Neuron, Vol. 70, June 9, 2011. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2011.05.025

I. Voineagu et al. Transcriptomic analysis of autistic brain reveals convergent molecular pathology. Nature. doi: doi:10.1038/nature10110

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Speaker 1:

Hello science enthusiasts. I'm Jason Zukoski. And I'm Chris Zukoski, we're the pet parents of Bunsen, beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.

Speaker 2:

The science animals on social media.

Speaker 1:

If you love science.

Speaker 2:

And you love pets.

Speaker 1:

You've come to the right spot, so put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail.

Speaker 1:

This is the Science Podcast. Hi everybody, welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. Just some quick pet news before we get on with the rest of the show. Bunsen got cleared for light activity so he's been on a couple walks with Bernoulli and Beaker, definitely down to the last couple patches of snow. There's a few of them in the creek that take, you know, another month to melt. They're just in a shady area and quite deep, if I'm going to be honest with you. So it's really cool to see Bunsen play in the snow and he gets to come with Bernoulli and Beaker on these walks Because it's been months, it's been a long time where Bunsen's been on light activity and then before that, house arrest. So we'll see how it goes. We're going to take things easy and see how he does. So far, so good, all right.

Speaker 1:

On the show this week we got a couple of good science news items. One is pretty topical, actually they're both really topical, they're both been in the news. One definitely a touchy subject. That's about autism and the rising autism rates. What's that from? Why is that happening? We're going to look at a science based approach to answer that. And the other science news item is another genetic engineering story that was everywhere. It was a company, the same one that did the woolly mammoth mouse, did a dire wolf. So Game of Thrones fans, this one's for you. And in pet science there was a new study that looked at over a thousand puppies and found out there's a lot of things in common between how a puppy acted versus the adult and how you could tailor training with that.

Speaker 1:

Okay, on with the show. There's no time like Science Time. This week in science news let's break down the timely discussion about autism, which definitely can be touchy subject, and it was kicked off by in the United States, who was very concerned with the rise of autism and was going at it in a less than scientific manner. So what Chris and I are going to do is we're just going to talk about what the experts who study autism are saying, and of course, it's backed up by various studies. We'll have some links to them in our show notes, but it is definitely a touchy subject, because I'm sure you've taught kids who have autism, chris.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for sure. And actually in the first year of my teaching career, I taught a student with severe autism and I actually learned a lot about how to support a student who was neurodivergent, but also neurodivergent in quite a different way, because I had not previously been exposed to a student or a person with autism, and it was really an amazing experience. I work closely with his educational assistant and he had a successful year in grade eight.

Speaker 1:

And the same thing that goes for me. I've had students who've had more serious or more severe forms of autism to students who you wouldn't even really know had autism but were diagnosed as having autism. And things have changed lately because autism is now a spectrum as opposed to a bunch of different things like Asperger's. Do you remember when Asperger's was a thing? But now Asperger's is rolled into the autism umbrella.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Asperger's is no longer a diagnosis.

Speaker 1:

Autism is considered a spectrum of neurological differences, so taking whatever you want to consider average, and then it is differences from that average with your brain and how you perceive things. You can be nonverbal and, yes, intellectually disabled to very mildly affected with things like sensory sensitivities. And it's clear to note that, according to all of the experts who do work with autism, there is no single true version of autism. I want to say my first experience of somebody with autism was from the movie Rain man.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yes, yes, I saw that movie too.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's just what I thought people with autism were like. They were very particular about things. They were geniuses at math. Very naive of me as a young person, but of course, I grew up in a small community not knowing anybody around me with autism.

Speaker 2:

And at that time were people called savants.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, they were called savants and generally they weren't in public school. You just didn't see them. They went to a different school, they went to a different facility, so I didn't see them. It's not a disorder that can be cured and individuals with autism are more and more seeing it as part of their identity and some individuals and some families are seriously affected because, on the much more disabling side, folks with autism can absolutely be extremely violent, nonverbal and have to be institutionalized or require help the rest of their life.

Speaker 2:

Recently in the news, the CDC published a morbidity and mortality weekly report and in that report it showed an increase of children age eight who were diagnosed with autism as of 2022, the statistic is one in 31 US children and that's an increase from one in 36 in 2020 and one in 150 in 2000.

Speaker 1:

So, in going against a lot of the misinformation out in the news in the last couple weeks, autism has very strong genetic components. About 80% of the autistic cases are linked to inherited genetic variations, so meaning that you got some of the genetic variations from your parents and that has led to your autism diagnosis. 10 to 15% of that is very unknown and is extremely complicated. We're going to get to that later. More than 200 genes have been linked to autism, especially those in early brain development, and again, genetics alone don't explain everything. There is a whole host of good data that show environmental interactions play a role, but it's not one thing, it is many things and there are risk factors that increase the chances of an autism diagnosis, and they're varied and they're vast.

Speaker 2:

It's so complicated you can't just point your finger at this is what causes it. It's such a super complex condition and identifying the root cause is super complex as well. They looked at some early brain development risk factors, such as infections during pregnancy, so getting rubella or taking certain medications, valproic acid. They looked if maternal obesity was a factor. Air pollution, even asthma and smoking could trigger it, even asthma and smoking could trigger it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Now these, Chris. These are all factors that affect early brain development. They are not necessarily all linked to autism, but it is an early brain development where those genes perhaps are turned on and off for autism.

Speaker 2:

And they were looking at premature births as well. Babies are surviving it earlier and earlier as they were born prematurely, and they're also looking at that factor as well.

Speaker 1:

Again some misinformation that's out there that doesn't seem to go away is that vaccines cause autism. That has been debunked over and over again, as well as some other things that I haven't heard of before, like emotionally distant parenting, ultrasounds and antidepressants. Those have been debunked as causes or links to autism, with all of those different risk factors. What does the expert say, chris? Why are these rates rising from when you and I, just before we started teaching, until last year?

Speaker 2:

I alluded to it a little bit earlier, but it's improved awareness of autism and better detection and diagnosis, as well as screening programs that are in the medical field, in the education field, and so having that broader diagnostic criteria does play a part. And, like I mentioned, there are the higher survival rates of preterm babies and, interestingly, rates could be rising because of older parental age, especially with fathers.

Speaker 1:

Interesting Is Down syndrome women right. The older the woman, the rate of Down syndrome goes up.

Speaker 2:

So they're believing it ties into mutations in chromosomes and they're also finding co-diagnosis with other conditions. So, looking at that broader diagnostic criteria, you might be diagnosed with autism as well as another condition.

Speaker 1:

In the past, you just had one thing. Now, maybe, due to the different ways it's diagnosed, you have multiple things. Can autism be prevented? Can you do things to prevent autism? And the answer is not. Really. It's so complicated, with a huge percentage of it related to genetics and another smaller percent related to things we don't know.

Speaker 2:

A vast array of things that increase risk to have an autism diagnosis, and if you pick one thing, then you're missing the big picture, because, as you mentioned, chris, what's what the main thing we should focus on is education, and early intervention, early intervention, improved services and supports for people with autism and calling it a disorder or saying we need to prevent autism is harmful and offensive and actually hurtful to the autistic community, because they are members of our human family and we should support them, not ostracize them I think my last two cents, chris, is it's just because you live in a place where, um, the rates of autism are low doesn't necessarily mean that people in your area aren't getting autism.

Speaker 1:

A good example of this is in the united states. They tested 16 different locations and there was way more per thousand people being diagnosed with autism in California than, say, texas. But the big reason why was there was way better screening and early intervention in California as opposed to Texas.

Speaker 1:

So when you test for things and you screen for things, you're going to find them. If you don't want anybody to have autism, never, ever screen or never test for it. But if you don't do that, then you're missing out on the ability to have early intervention for the kids that need it.

Speaker 2:

And support. And they did find generally that boys are still diagnosed more often than girls, but girls their rate is increasing too.

Speaker 1:

Because they weren't looked at. That's another thing I've talked about this years ago on the podcast, like why do girls not get diagnosed with autism? And it's because they weren't tested or screened for it. All right, so hopefully, hopefully, this is good information for everybody. We are a science-based podcast and sometimes there's some really nasty misinformation out there that we like to try to correct in our own little way. If you're interested, I'll have some links in our show notes so you can learn more yourself. That's our first science news item today. Let's move on to the second one, the second science news item. I think I could sum up with my love for a certain House in Game of Thrones. Now, you did not like Game of Thrones.

Speaker 2:

Jason. It was full of treachery and backstabbing and I cannot handle that at all.

Speaker 1:

I know I love the books for as much as you could love books with heartbreak and treachery, and I love the TV show up until the last season. Amazing work taking the books and turning them into TV. And if you don't know, in the Game of Thrones there's these different houses, separated by geographical region, and they have a sigil which is like a crest, a family crest, with a family saying. And I identified immediately with one house in Game of Thrones, probably because I'm a Canadian living way up north, which they always reference. And what house do you think that was Chris?

Speaker 2:

That was the house with Ned.

Speaker 1:

House Stark.

Speaker 2:

House Stark yeah, that was House Stark. And boy, that spoiler alert. It didn't go well for Ned and I was like what, why did that happen? And then it just went downhill from there.

Speaker 1:

Anyways, the sigil of the Stark family is the Direwolf, and in the TV show, in the book, all of the Stark children get a Direwolf. Direwolves are, of course. We don't have them living, at least until lately. They're an extinct giant wolf that roamed North America and Eurasia tens of thousands of years ago, but they're gone now. But as of April 7th, three genetically engineered pups named Romulus, remus and Khaleesi have come back into the world with dire wolf genetics.

Speaker 2:

Now the company behind the world's first de-extinction actually had something sensational in the news not too long ago with the little woolly mice, the woolly mammoth mice.

Speaker 2:

So, the little furry, amazing Fabio hair mice. Yeah, so these pups, khaleesi, romulus and Remus, were designed to have physical traits that were similar to dire wolves, so snowy white fur and a muscular build and large skulls and a distinct ear shape. And of course, the media jumped in and dubbed them, or named them scientifically, seismic that's a very clickbaity title and some scientists pushed back, saying you know what that claim is exaggerated or misleading, back saying you know what that claim is exaggerated or misleading.

Speaker 1:

Now, maybe why it's misleading is the company Colossal did not reconstruct in a complete dire wolf genome. They use the gray wolf genome which is alive today as a template and they modified it based on ancient DNA that they acquired from two dire wolf specimens. That's a old tooth found in Ohio, a 13,000 year old tooth and a 72,000 year old inner ear bone found in Idaho. All right, Now that ancient DNA is pretty degraded and messed up. If you think of a piece of paper, this DNA looks like confetti. So they targeted 20 gene edits, that's it, and they used a gene modified for coat color and other edits affected the gray wolf's body size, face and ear shape.

Speaker 2:

It was super cool because they used a supercomputer to compare and do the reconstruction of the confettified DNA.

Speaker 1:

I feel like this is exactly what happened in the plot of Jurassic Park is they had bad DNA from dinosaur, dna from mosquitoes and amber, and then their supercomputer filled in the blanks with DNA from reptiles. Today, I feel like there's a cautionary tale that we've all lived through watching those movies and reading those books.

Speaker 2:

Jeff Goldblum.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, shirtless Jeff Goldblum. Yes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, just because we can doesn't mean that we should. They took the nuclei from their edited cells and they inserted that nuclei into dog egg cells that they had taken the nuclei out of. So they had denucleated dog egg cells that they put in the edited cells, the nucleus from the edited cells, and then they implanted those embryos into surrogate hounds and the pups then grew inside the mother and they were delivered via C-section. Now the twins, the males, romulus and Remus, were born in October and Khaleesi, the single female, was born four months later.

Speaker 1:

All right, so let's put our skepticism hats on, as we always like to do. Some scientists and critics of this have argued that these pups are just not true direwolves. They're modified gray wolves and of course the company has accounted for that, saying their goal was never to clone them but to recreate key traits.

Speaker 2:

Now the science of this is interesting because it seems to be that dire wolves may be more closely related to modern wolves than previously thought we need to wait until the preprint study comes out that is suggesting that dire wolves may be more closely related to modern wolves, because it hasn't been peer reviewed yet. But past research that you're talking about said that dire wolves diverged from other canids 6 million years ago. So it looks like maybe there might be some discrepancy in the research here Now, previously that the past research looked at those original samples but when colossal took them, they reanalyze those two original samples to create a higher quality dire wolf genome map. So it's very interesting and we will have to wait until that study is the one that's in preprint is peer reviewed and published, if it ever is yeah, because I'm sure some critics, some science critics, would like a crack at peer reviewing it.

Speaker 1:

I think the conclusion is very similar to what we talked about with the woolly mouse. There's pros, people who support this, because this technology can be applied to other animals that may be going endangered, to increase their genetic diversity and recover the species. And critics are like no, this is just wild genetic tampering, making zoo-like novelties for people to gawk at. We'll leave that up for everybody listening to decide. But I don't know. I'm pretty happy with the canids we have in our house. I don't think we need dire wolves. We've got our own couch wolves in our house.

Speaker 2:

They are keeping the pups under wraps Because even with the woolly mice mammoth, the woolly mammoth mouse, there were people who got too close for comfort. So they do have the pups housed on an 800 hectare preserve in we're not sure where, but they have 10 full-time caretakers and there's no current plans for public access, no current plans for breeding the animals or no current plans for a Jurassic Park style attraction.

Speaker 1:

As soon as I start seeing tickets for sale to the ultra wealthy come see dire wolves and woolly mammoths that's when I'm going to be really concerned. So there you go. If you love Game of Thrones and you loved House Stark and those dire wolves, this science news item is for you. That's science news for this week. This week in pet science, we get to talk about puppies. Chris, you got to see some puppies at like. What was it? Bluegrass, something or other? What was it? You got to see some puppies.

Speaker 2:

I went to Bluegrass Odd Farms and they had a petting zoo which had animals that were not puppies, but then they also had a rescue organization there and I have never seen so many little puppies in my life and a variety of puppies, and they were so cute and I took little Raffy and we went and we had a great day hanging out there.

Speaker 1:

Adam was very happy he got to hold the puppy. He said they were super cute, and they are. It's a good thing I didn't go. We might have four dogs, but this study is all about puppy cognition and how puppy cognition predicts adult behavior. We've talked before about how a puppy thinks when it's little is a good indication of how you can train the dog and how well behaved the dog becomes as an adult. There's a bunch of traits that puppies have, like impulsivity, response to gestures and reaction to different tasks that may or may not be solvable. This study will look at Smart Dog, which is a method of training dogs with canine cognition testing, and the puppy testing size was enormous.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they looked at over 1,400 puppies between three to seven months old and they tasked the puppies with being able to follow pointing gestures to find treats and we do that with our dogs, like the point there, our dogs really know the point. And then attempting unsolvable puzzles was the other one, and another task included retrieving treats from a clear cylinder with a back opening and the purpose was to measure the impulse control of the puppy, their social cognition and their problem-solving skills.

Speaker 1:

Dogs that attempt those impossible-to-solve puzzles and keep at it. They're ones that really stick with training. I've talked about that years ago on the Science Podcast.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, and so they did some follow-up testing, which I think is important. They looked at 99 dogs that were retested as adults from, and those adults were aged from one to eight years, and many of the traits remain stable from puppyhood into adulthood. So the traits that were particularly consistent when they were first measured at six to seven months old stayed consistent when the dogs were adults.

Speaker 1:

That's fun. So some key correlations from the study through surveys found that puppies that were good at following pointing gestures grew up to be much more trainable and obedient, and puppies with better impulse control were a lot calmer as adults. Finally, puppies that show fear or dependency towards testers were a lot more adverse to strangers as adults. What was Bernoulli as a puppy? He could follow a point. He was really easy to train for the most part as a puppy he's pretty smart.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but I'm just trying to think back to him as a puppy when we were doing the training, and partly we didn't do all the training necessarily ourselves, we did reinforcement of the training, but we did have him trained at Waggles.

Speaker 1:

Yes, they did training there and we did training at home, which was great, at Waggles.

Speaker 2:

Yes, they did training there and we did training at home, which was great. Yeah, it allowed him to fast track up to his level three.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, bunsen was just a dream to train that guy. Bunsen is our rock star, he loves school. We always said that, oh boy, it's school, he just loves school. So there you go. Okay, let's move into implications, anyway. So, aside from Bernoulli and Bunsen and Beaker, what are some of the training implications in the study?

Speaker 2:

Well, they found that early cognitive traits can help guide making customized training plans for dogs. So if you have a puppy that is averse to strangers, by building self-confidence through positive experiences and training, success has an impact. As well as encouraging initiative while reinforcing good behavior and understanding the puppy cognition, because it seems to stay, it helps tailor training program training methods to individual dogs and if you have supportive early training, that could reduce social anxiety in less confident dogs.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's where we I don't know if we failed Beaker, but we just didn't do a good job with Beaker during COVID was the early training Cause it was on, it was off, it was on, it was off. So she became fearful of other dogs not all dogs, but she was fearful of other dogs. And then just lately, in the last four months, we've gotten a lot of support from Waggles and Beaker has really come out of her shell. So it's not too late to teach a dog new tricks is what we're finding with Beaker.

Speaker 2:

That is absolutely true In the study, though they did have some limitations and a plan for future research. So there was breed bias, because they looked mostly at Border Collies, labrador Retrievers and German Shepherds and, as we know, those are like highly trainable dogs, highly intelligent dogs that love to work. So there could be some breed bias. So they want to look at maybe is the same implications true for rescue dogs, and they also found that the sample that they looked at was a high proportion of dogs from breeders as opposed to rescues, and so the recommendation is to expand and include rescue dogs and less traditionally trainable breeds. Like some dogs, they are like oh, you have a treat, I do not care. Like a husky. They're like you have nice words for me, nope. And then also, if possible, getting a larger sample size for future studies.

Speaker 1:

I think the more we learn about how to train dogs from a science-based approach is really important, rather than throwing spaghetti at the wall and not knowing why some things stick. This also supports lifelong well-being for dogs, because we're training them for their life, not for certain tasks.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and like I love dogs that get to live their best life.

Speaker 1:

And we're really seeing that with Beaker right she is. I think she's living her best life now. I think before this she had a very good life, but now she's living her best life because she's getting along with dogs.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, only because it's interesting. If you watch her, she is not confident. But then she puffs up because she wants to be confident and it's just sending mixed signals to other dogs and they're like I don't really get you, what are you doing? Or what is going on? And then throw in COVID and resource protecting and then also the fact that she is relentless at trying to chase things if they're blowing in the wind like a leaf. She's got some. She's got some things to work on, but you know what we all do.

Speaker 1:

Like I said, the last four months have been really cool to see her blossom and have dog friends and get along with everybody at daycare all day long, which is great. Okay, everybody, that's Pet Science for this week. That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to us, and a special thanks again to the top tiers of our Paw Pack, the Patreon community that we have to support us. If you want to join, check out the link in the show notes. Take it away, chris.

Speaker 2:

Amelia Fetig.

Speaker 1:

Rhi Oda. Carol out the link in the show notes. Take it away, Chris, For science, empathy and cuteness.