July 25, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode we explore scientific findings about optimal daily step counts, genetic predispositions for having children of the same sex, and how dogs perceive and interact with television.
• Research shows 7,000 steps per day is the health "sweet spot," not the commonly cited 10,000
• At 7,000 steps, studies found 25% reduced cardiovascular disease risk, 37% lower cancer risk, and 38% decreased dementia-related deaths
• Even modest increases from baseline (2,000 steps) show significant health benefits
• Genetic study reveals some families may be predisposed to having children of primarily one sex
• Older mothers showed strongest patterns of same-sex children, possibly due to biological mechanisms
• Two gene variants identified that correlate with having all male or all female children
• Modern LED TVs allow dogs to see continuous motion unlike older TVs
• Dogs primarily see blue and yellow colors and 45% react to other dogs on screen
• A dog's personality, not breed or age, determines their interest in television
• Anxious dogs may find TV overstimulating rather than enriching
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello science enthusiasts.
I'm Jason Zukoski.
And I'm Chris Zukoski, we'rethe pet parents of Bunsen,
beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The science animals on social media.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
If you love science.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And you love pets.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You've come to the right spot, so put on your
safety glasses and hold on toyour tail.
This is the Science Podcast.
Hello everybody and welcomeback to the Science Podcast.
We hope you're happy andhealthy out there.
This is episode 22 of seasonseven and, chris, we took a week
off.
We're back from the mountains.
(00:45):
Are you feeling okay?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm feeling great.
I'm feeling like we had areally good time going to the
mountains and hanging out withthe dogs and it was really
special being able to go back upand hike with Bunsen, because
he is had that life-savingsurgery last summer and
recovering from his slipped discin his neck, so I'm very proud
(01:09):
of him.
He worked super hard and healways has a positive attitude
and he always wants to go.
So, he's a good BerneseMountain Dog, that is for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, he's a hard worker.
I was asking because both youand I we both fell in the
mountains.
You fell over a root and I fellinto a creek.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yes, that happened.
I was going to try and be likeyou where you do these epic
shots of the dogs running inbehind the camera, and I was
doing it.
Maybe I should not have done it.
I was doing it.
Maybe I should not have done it.
Maybe I should have looked tosee if there were roots hanging
out of the ground, or maybechose not to do it.
On rock, that is scree.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
And I fell into the creek because Bunsen, or sorry,
I fell into the creek becauseBernoulli went down to be in the
creek and Beaker went around myback and the two leashes took
my legs out from under me and Iwent down this little embankment
.
So both you and I have somecuts and bruises from our falls
yours did not look that bad, tobe honest with you.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
You just went.
I went hard, but you went, oh,I don't want to go in the creek,
oh, I don't want to go in thewater, oh, and you like melted
into the water and it was funnyactually, but I did not laugh,
you have to be proud of me thatI did not laugh at you.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yes, thank you all right, let's get to the show on
the science podcast.
This week we're looking at somenew findings about.
Is taking a certain numbersteps a a day beneficial?
Is there really a hard number?
Is there a sweet spot?
In our other science newsarticle, we're going to be
looking at how they found theirsingle sex clustering meaning
(02:53):
that folks are maybe geneticallypredisposed to having a boy or
girl based on their DNA thatthey pass along.
And our pet science item youactually found this one, chris.
It's about dogs and theirwatching of TV habits.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I thought it was interesting because Beaker loves
to watch the red crabs on theDavid Attenborough show and I
thought, hey, I want to readmore about this.
And then I shared it with youand you thought it was cool.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
It's cute.
Yeah, all right, let's get onwith the show.
There's no time like sciencetime.
This weekend's science news,let's talk about a little bit of
fitness science getting yoursteps in.
How many steps did you think wetook?
And we didn't do very big hikes, we did like shorter hikes in
(03:44):
respect to Bunsen, but I thinkwe took a lot of steps on our
trip.
How?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
many steps we took, but it was uneven terrain, which
makes it a little bit morechallenging.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
And sometimes we had to quicken our pace because the
dogs were going quickly.
All right, let's get to thestudy Now.
In the past there has been arecommendation of 10,000 steps
per day.
Have you heard that before?
Chris get 10,000 steps a day,thousand steps per day.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Have you heard that before?
Chris Get 10,000 steps a day?
I have, and, like when I wastalking about my Apple Watch,
like I never keep track, but Ihave heard that 10,000 is a nice
number to aspire to.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
But that's not based in evidence, that's just a
number that's thrown out there.
So the study, which wasconducted at the Universidad
Europa de Madrid so it soundslike it's a Spanish study they
took a look at 57 differentstudies on steps.
They analyzed the relationshipbetween daily step count and
(04:56):
various health outcomes, andhere's where we get into the fun
bits.
So there's a baseline of 2000steps per day.
I feel that if you get betweenzero and 2000, you're not really
moving a heck of a lot.
But if you just go to your job,and your job has a normal
movement around, and then youcome home, you might hit around
(05:17):
2000, just steps.
That's why it's called thebaseline.
So what did the meta-analysisturn up?
So what's the sweet spot, chris?
Speaker 2 (05:24):
You know what?
It's actually 7,000 steps perday, which if you're aiming at
10,000, you're like woohoo, Ihave to do 3,000 less.
Maybe you're really happy.
And if you were doing, say,4,000 steps a day, you're like
woohoo, I don't have to increaseit by that much to hit the
sweet spot.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Yeah, At that point they found that there was a
large decreased risk forcardiovascular disease compared
to baseline.
So they found a 25% decreasedrisk.
Cancer was at 37% and dementiarelated deaths were at 38%.
So these are all compared tothe baseline of 2000.
But even if you doubled frombaseline to 4000, you still
(06:09):
decreased your risk of deathfrom a whole bunch of different
causes.
So just moving a little bit hada huge impact on the risk of
death from cardiovasculardisease, cancer and, as I said,
dementia.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
But the best seems to be around 7 000 interestingly,
your risk reduction doescontinue, but the curve will
flatten and it continues at aslower rate so it's like the
whole idea of diminished returns.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
You have a huge benefit and then you have
smaller benefits, but thatincrease in benefit is very,
very slow.
Now there are some limitationsto the study.
It did not account for age,lifestyle factors or any
pre-existing conditions.
They are hoping to do morelong-term studies as that will
help them refine guidelines.
But there's some really cooltakeaway messages from the study
(07:02):
.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
You know what.
You don't actually need toreach 10,000 steps to improve
your health and walking morethan you currently do, even if
it's a modest amount more, itcan greatly reduce your risk of
major diseases and death.
And if you aim for 7,000 stepsper day, that's a solid,
evidence-backed target forbetter health.
That's a solid, evidence-backedtarget for better health.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
How long does it take to do 7,000 steps?
I was wondering that so Iactually googled it.
But if you went from zero to7,000 and you walked at kind of
a normal pace, it would take theaverage person about an hour
and 15 minutes to hit 7,000steps.
Now, obviously, if you gofaster you might take more steps
(07:46):
, but this is an average amount.
In that time that's a lot ofwalking, but then that doesn't
account for you're just walkingin a day.
If you think about how manytimes you're on your feet moving
around and I know we're bothteachers and I feel some days I
don't do a lot of walking.
I do a lot of standing, talkingand like moving around my
(08:08):
classroom, but it's not like I'mmoving around the building or
taking long strolls.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Now I guess a strategy to increase your
walking is to set an alert onyour phone to say, hey, it's
time to get up and do a walkaround the school.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
What's interesting, as we kind of wrap this up, is
these studies that talk aboutwalking.
They tie into one of thereasons why folks who have dogs
are struggling on averagehealthier than folks that don't,
and that's that you take yourdog for a walk.
So even if you're taking yourdog for a short walk of like 20
(08:46):
minutes or so, you might hit1,000 steps, 2,000 steps on a
very short walk, and that wouldbump you up to the 4,000 level,
right, 4,000 steps in a day,which would increase your
chances of avoiding thoseterrible outcomes.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I call it the heel and toe express.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Folks that live in walkable cities.
They hit these targets veryeasily.
All right, that's this articlefor this week.
Let's move on to article numbertwo, which talks about how
folks may be predisposed tohaving children of just one
gender, one sex.
I know, because we're teachers.
(09:27):
I know families where you hitfour or five boys or four or
five girls in a row.
Have you had those familiesthat you've taught?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
That's my family, Jason.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Two girls right.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
No, and Craig had girls and, like grandma, had a
boy and a girl.
Duncan was the first boy sincemy uncle Craig.
It was girl after girl aftergirl.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And in my family it was boy after boy, like on the
Sikowsky side, until my sisterhad little Leah, because that's
Duncan, adam, pierce, brynn,xavier, weston, james, that's
eight boys in a row and thenLeah.
So maybe my family'spredisposed to having just one
(10:12):
type of sex, because it shouldbe 50, 50.
Like when you do the Punnettsquare of sperm and egg, the
sperm can either be X or Y andthe egg is always XX and it's
the same as flipping a coin.
However, we're going to getinto some of the study.
We're going to get into thestudy that shows folks may be
predisposed to skewing thoseodds.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, when you're talking about like the 50-50,
that's over a large population.
So as you get more participantsin the population, then the
statistic averages out to the50-50.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, anybody can flip a coin and you'll get three
heads in a row Like that'spossible.
But if you flip the coin as I'msure some people learned in
math class you flip the coin athousand times.
It would be a pretty much a50-50 thing.
You'd have 500 heads and 500tails, unless you got one of
those trick coins which peoplemay or may not have had in high
(11:11):
school to try to cheat peopleout of coin tosses.
But let's get to the study.
It was led by Jorge Chavarro,who is a reproductive
epidemiologist at HarvardHarvard Chan School of Public
Health.
The team used the Nurses'Health Study, which has data on
over 58,000 pregnancies andbirths from 1956 to 2015.
(11:35):
Okay, what did they find in allof these pregnancies, with all
these bye-byes?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
they found, about one-third of families in the
data had children all of thesame sex, and so more families
than they expected had three tofive children of a single sex,
which exceeds what random chancewould predict, and so the
researchers proposed that theindividual families might have a
(12:05):
unique probability of producingchildren of a certain sex.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
One pattern they found was families with older
mothers at first childbirthshowed the strongest clustering
of same-sex children.
So the older the mom is, thegreater the chance that mom had
of having all boys or all girls.
But there are some possiblebiological mechanisms which
maybe we get into someuncomfortable territory here.
(12:32):
So if you're listening to thepodcast with small children,
it's just biology but it's howwe roll.
It's just biology but it's howwe roll.
The more acidic vaginalenvironments with age may favor
X-carrying sperm.
So that means the older you are, the X-sperm have a greater
chance of survival.
They're larger and they maysurvive better in those acidic
(12:53):
conditions.
A very short menstrual phasewith age may change the cervical
mucus, potentially favoring Ysperm.
So I guess it comes down towhere the sperm are going.
If they get all acidified up orthey get all stickied, they
can't make it.
(13:13):
But it's a race to the finish,chris.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
It is a race to the finish.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
They did.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
They did find some genetic findings, though.
They found two gene variantsthat were associated with having
children of only one sex, andone of the variants was linked
with all male children andanother variant was linked with
all female children, and thegenes they're actually not known
to be related to reproductionthemselves, and the gene's
(13:41):
function is actually currentlyunknown.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
There's other things too, for example, that may be
outside of genetics.
Some families might continuehaving kids until they get a
child of the opposite sex.
I'm sure you've heard thisstory before.
Right, they have five girls andthey just keep having kids
until they hit the boy, or theother way around.
Or families might just straightup stop.
(14:07):
They might be wanting to havethree kids, but once they have a
boy and the girl they're likedone, they may also skew the
observed sex ratios.
We do have to talk also thatsome scientists are skeptical.
Example, geneticists at theuniversity of queensland said
that that they would like biggerreplication in other
(14:28):
populations, just not the unitedstates, because in a swedish
population data since 1931, thatswedish data showed no family
level sex preference.
It was, of course, just theamerican data in this study.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
So we're looking at the study providing insight and
looking at more than justbiological factors to explain
those patterns.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
And I guess, as we wrap up this one, it's an
interesting conversation.
The bottom line is that well,population level sex ratios are
pretty even.
I think in North America justover 50% girls at birth and just
under 50% males at birth, boysat birth.
There's reasons for that.
(15:16):
Individual variation andbiological predispositions may
still exist.
A fun kind of thing to thinkabout and talk about and study
in bigger, bolder studies in thefuture.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
So does that mean the next dog we get as a girl?
Chris, to even it out.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Well, I don't know, jason, because when we went to
look at the Bernese mountain dogthat in effect turned out to be
Bernoulli, big red male, yousaid to me there are two
criteria that have to happenwith this dog.
One is that we are going topick out a male and two, he
(15:52):
needs a B science name.
I don't know because, like whenwe were looking at the
characteristics of the dog breedBernice Mountain Dogs, you had
found that the girls tended tobe a little bit more aloof and
you wanted a really cuddly,happy dog.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
And what do we have?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
We got a pretty cuddly, happy guy.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
We do.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, but he could have been a cuddly, happy girl
too.
Anyways, this is dogs, notpeople.
All right, that's science newsfor this week.
This week in pet science hey,now we can talk about dogs.
We're going to talk about dogsand their TV viewing habits.
Now, in the intro, chris, youmentioned that Beaker likes to
(16:43):
watch certain types of TV.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
She likes Life Channel, Like not Life Channel
but Nature Channel, so thingsthat have bright, vibrant colors
and are moving on the screen.
She's quite interested in that.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeah, I watched a while ago this movie called
Oddball.
I don't know if you everwatched it.
I think you were actuallyworking at your school.
It's about the little penguinsin Australia and they train dogs
to protect them, and Beaker wasobsessed with the little
penguins on TV, like she watchedthat whole movie with me from
(17:21):
the couch.
It was really cute.
She watched that whole moviewith me from the couch it was
really cute.
But Bunsen and Bernoulli, Ithink the TV is not a thing they
care about.
I rarely have ever seen themeven thinking the TV is a thing.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
No, bunsen sat on the couch with me when I'm trying
to watch a show with you and Ican't see the show because his
body is so large.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, but he's not watching the TV.
He's just stopping you fromwatching the TV.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I guess that's right.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Anyways, this study looked at how dogs watch and
respond to television, and it'sfrom July 17th in Scientific
Reports.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Now, historically, dogs couldn't see the TV clearly
due to the way TVs were created, how they were manufactured.
There was a lower ticker Nope,there was a lower flicker fusion
rate of older TVs and we mayhave had one like a cathode ray
TV tube.
And because dogs have a fasterflicker fusion rate than humans,
(18:24):
they need TVs that can fastflick.
How do you say it?
The older TVs appeared to themas having flashing still images,
and so the newer LED screensdisplay video at a high enough
resolution and refresh rate fordogs to see smooth, continuous,
(18:46):
smooth, continuous motion.
And dogs also have dichromaticvision.
They see in two colors, blueand yellow hues, unlike humans
who see in three.
So there might be somethingabout that nature tv, where the
colors appeal to Beaker for sure.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, one of the most popular cartoons for kids is
Bluey, and I know our nephewRafi.
He was all over the moon forBluey.
You're familiar with this right, chris Bluey.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I am.
I picked up a Bluey thing fromCostco early on because he saw
it in Costco and wanted it forChristmas and I think it was
September.
But, Costco, if you don't buyit then you don't get it.
So we were holding onto thatBluey thing for a very long time
.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And it's a fun trivia thing.
And, if you don't know, it's acartoon about a blue healer
named Bluey and his family andthey have trials and
tribulations.
It's a very sweet show, butit's primarily colored in blues,
yellows and browns, which arecolors that dogs can see.
So if you're watching it, it'sactually quite a muted cartoon
without crazy vibrant colors.
They did that so if familieshave dogs, they can watch with
(20:00):
their kids, which is sweet.
That's pretty cute.
Okay, let's look at the study.
How did they test this?
Researchers sent out surveysvia Facebook and email and they
received 453 responses from dogowners and that reported on
their dog's behaviors in frontof the TV.
So probably difficult to get.
(20:22):
Probably difficult to gethundreds of people to bring in
their dogs to see if they watchTV or not.
So surveys are the mosteconomic and quickest way to go.
The survey questions includedlike what kind of visuals and
sounds the dogs reacted to,whether they barked, wagged,
growled or chased.
So were they reacting to the TV?
And, if they were, how werethey reacting?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Well, 45% of dogs reacted to image or sounds of
other dogs and they also showedinterest in animals on the
screen moving objects and offscreen sounds like doorbells or
opening doors.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Oh man, like doorbells and knocks, send our
dogs running and barking.
That's happened before.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah, for sure, if it goes ding dong.
Our doorbell doesn't even soundlike ding dong and our doorbell
never goes off.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
No one ever uses our doorbell, it's not a thing,
unless it's the day thateverybody uses it, where like 10
people come and use thedoorbell.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
And it's like what?
But I don't think likeBernoulli for sure has never
heard our doorbell, and if Iknow.
So, how do they do?
How do they know?
How do they know that's like analerting sound, because then
they go and bark at the door.
It's mind-boggling to me howit's like an off screen sound
(21:42):
doesn't sound like anything inour house, but it's something to
investigate.
I think that's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, it is cool.
The study found that breed, ageand sex did not significantly
alter how dogs responded to TV.
It was their personality soexcitable dogs, so dogs with
lots of energy were more likelyto follow the moving objects on
the screen, especially thoseanimals like dogs.
Some dogs in the survey, likeJack's the Catula Leopard Dog it
(22:09):
was owned by the studyco-author tried to look behind
the TV to find out where theanimals went who ran off the
screen.
Anxious dogs often respondednegatively to stimulus like
doorbells.
So the TV was overstimulatingrather than enriching, and I've
heard that before.
Some dogs are scared of thetelevision.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
It's not all TV is beneficial for dogs, and
sometimes owners just assumethat TV is always enriching.
So when you go home, or sorry,but when you leave for work,
some people leave the TV on,thinking that it'll be
entertainment for their dog orenrichment for their dog.
That's not always true.
Especially anxious dogs findthat it could be too much
(22:54):
stimulation for them.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
They also found that dogs may be mimicking their
owner's emotions when they'rewatching television.
Television, For example, if youare a sport watching person and
you start to go bananas becauseyour team is winning or your
team is losing, or somebody dida good play or somebody did a
bad play.
If you get excited, the dog mayalso mirror that type of energy
.
Now, owner behavior was notaccounted for in the survey, but
(23:21):
this is just as an aside otherresearchers have pointed out
from other studies about dogsand TV.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
We can go down to takeaways.
So some takeaways is thatactually not all dogs enjoy TV
the same way and theexcitability and anxiousness
levels play a major role inwhether a dog will find TV
stimulating, confusing orupsetting.
And by knowing your dog andknowing your dog's unique traits
(23:55):
and preferences, that's a keyfactor when you want to decide
if TV is something that willenrich or overwhelm them.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I have been watching this TV show called Andor.
It's like a Star Wars thing.
That TV show does make youexcited and anxious at the same
time.
It is a very gripping TV show.
None of the dogs are watchingthis with me.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
No, just you.
And they were singing a songfor over 20 minutes.
It was a protest song?
Speaker 1 (24:28):
yeah it was, it was really moving.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I don't want to give anything away, but yeah, it was
a protest song and there was areason why they were singing
yeah, but that was enough liketo draw me in thinking, wow,
this is pretty powerful thatthey're singing for that long
and then doing cutting to otherscenes, and but still it was
like, wow, that's prettyimpactful, but our dogs were TKO
(24:53):
.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
They didn't care that people were singing.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
They did not care.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
All right, that's pet science for this week.
That's it for this week show.
Thanks for coming back weekafter week to listen to the
science podcast.
And a shout out to all the topdogs that's the top tier of our
Patreon community, the pop pack.
You can sign up in our shownotes.
All right, chris, let's hearthose names that are part of the
top dogs.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Amelia Fetting, rhi Oda, carol Hainel, jennifer
Challen, linnea Janik, karenChronister, vicky Otero, christy
Walker, sarah Bram, wendy,diane Mason and Luke Helen Chin,
elizabeth Bourgeois, marianneMcNally, catherine Jordan,
shelley Smith, laura Steffensen,tracy Leinbach, anne Uchida,
(25:40):
heather Burback, kelly andcuteness.
Hello science enthusiasts.
I'm Jason Zukoski.
And I'm Chris Zukoski, we'rethe pet parents of Bunsen,
beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The science animals on social media.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
If you love science.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And you love pets.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You've come to the right spot, so put on your
safety glasses and hold on toyour tail.
This is the Science Podcast.
Hello everybody and welcomeback to the Science Podcast.
We hope you're happy andhealthy out there.
This is episode 22 of seasonseven and, chris, we took a week
off.
We're back from the mountains.
(00:45):
Are you feeling okay?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm feeling great.
I'm feeling like we had areally good time going to the
mountains and hanging out withthe dogs and it was really
special being able to go back upand hike with Bunsen, because
he is had that life-savingsurgery last summer and
recovering from his slipped discin his neck, so I'm very proud
(01:09):
of him.
He worked super hard and healways has a positive attitude
and he always wants to go.
So, he's a good BerneseMountain Dog, that is for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, he's a hard worker.
I was asking because both youand I we both fell in the
mountains.
You fell over a root and I fellinto a creek.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yes, that happened.
I was going to try and be likeyou where you do these epic
shots of the dogs running inbehind the camera, and I was
doing it.
Maybe I should not have done it.
I was doing it.
Maybe I should not have done it.
Maybe I should have looked tosee if there were roots hanging
out of the ground, or maybechose not to do it.
On rock, that is scree.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
And I fell into the creek because Bunsen, or sorry,
I fell into the creek becauseBernoulli went down to be in the
creek and Beaker went around myback and the two leashes took
my legs out from under me and Iwent down this little embankment
.
So both you and I have somecuts and bruises from our falls
yours did not look that bad, tobe honest with you.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
You just went.
I went hard, but you went, oh,I don't want to go in the creek,
oh, I don't want to go in thewater, oh, and you like melted
into the water and it was funnyactually, but I did not laugh,
you have to be proud of me thatI did not laugh at you.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yes, thank you all right, let's get to the show on
the science podcast.
This week we're looking at somenew findings about.
Is taking a certain numbersteps a a day beneficial?
Is there really a hard number?
Is there a sweet spot?
In our other science newsarticle, we're going to be
looking at how they found theirsingle sex clustering meaning
(02:53):
that folks are maybe geneticallypredisposed to having a boy or
girl based on their DNA thatthey pass along.
And our pet science item youactually found this one, chris.
It's about dogs and theirwatching of TV habits.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I thought it was interesting because Beaker loves
to watch the red crabs on theDavid Attenborough show and I
thought, hey, I want to readmore about this.
And then I shared it with youand you thought it was cool.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
It's cute.
Yeah, all right, let's get onwith the show.
There's no time like sciencetime.
This weekend's science news,let's talk about a little bit of
fitness science getting yoursteps in.
How many steps did you think wetook?
And we didn't do very big hikes, we did like shorter hikes in
(03:44):
respect to Bunsen, but I thinkwe took a lot of steps on our
trip.
How?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
many steps we took, but it was uneven terrain, which
makes it a little bit morechallenging.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
And sometimes we had to quicken our pace because the
dogs were going quickly.
All right, let's get to thestudy Now.
In the past there has been arecommendation of 10,000 steps
per day.
Have you heard that before?
Chris get 10,000 steps a day,thousand steps per day.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Have you heard that before?
Chris Get 10,000 steps a day?
I have, and, like when I wastalking about my Apple Watch,
like I never keep track, but Ihave heard that 10,000 is a nice
number to aspire to.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
But that's not based in evidence, that's just a
number that's thrown out there.
So the study, which wasconducted at the Universidad
Europa de Madrid so it soundslike it's a Spanish study they
took a look at 57 differentstudies on steps.
They analyzed the relationshipbetween daily step count and
(04:56):
various health outcomes, andhere's where we get into the fun
bits.
So there's a baseline of 2000steps per day.
I feel that if you get betweenzero and 2000, you're not really
moving a heck of a lot.
But if you just go to your job,and your job has a normal
movement around, and then youcome home, you might hit around
(05:17):
2000, just steps.
That's why it's called thebaseline.
So what did the meta-analysisturn up?
So what's the sweet spot, chris?
Speaker 2 (05:24):
You know what?
It's actually 7,000 steps perday, which if you're aiming at
10,000, you're like woohoo, Ihave to do 3,000 less.
Maybe you're really happy.
And if you were doing, say,4,000 steps a day, you're like
woohoo, I don't have to increaseit by that much to hit the
sweet spot.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Yeah, At that point they found that there was a
large decreased risk forcardiovascular disease compared
to baseline.
So they found a 25% decreasedrisk.
Cancer was at 37% and dementiarelated deaths were at 38%.
So these are all compared tothe baseline of 2000.
But even if you doubled frombaseline to 4000, you still
(06:09):
decreased your risk of deathfrom a whole bunch of different
causes.
So just moving a little bit hada huge impact on the risk of
death from cardiovasculardisease, cancer and, as I said,
dementia.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
But the best seems to be around 7 000 interestingly,
your risk reduction doescontinue, but the curve will
flatten and it continues at aslower rate so it's like the
whole idea of diminished returns.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
You have a huge benefit and then you have
smaller benefits, but thatincrease in benefit is very,
very slow.
Now there are some limitationsto the study.
It did not account for age,lifestyle factors or any
pre-existing conditions.
They are hoping to do morelong-term studies as that will
help them refine guidelines.
But there's some really cooltakeaway messages from the study
(07:02):
.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
You know what.
You don't actually need toreach 10,000 steps to improve
your health and walking morethan you currently do, even if
it's a modest amount more, itcan greatly reduce your risk of
major diseases and death.
And if you aim for 7,000 stepsper day, that's a solid,
evidence-backed target forbetter health.
That's a solid, evidence-backedtarget for better health.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
How long does it take to do 7,000 steps?
I was wondering that so Iactually googled it.
But if you went from zero to7,000 and you walked at kind of
a normal pace, it would take theaverage person about an hour
and 15 minutes to hit 7,000steps.
Now, obviously, if you gofaster you might take more steps
(07:46):
, but this is an average amount.
In that time that's a lot ofwalking, but then that doesn't
account for you're just walkingin a day.
If you think about how manytimes you're on your feet moving
around and I know we're bothteachers and I feel some days I
don't do a lot of walking.
I do a lot of standing, talkingand like moving around my
(08:08):
classroom, but it's not like I'mmoving around the building or
taking long strolls.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Now I guess a strategy to increase your
walking is to set an alert onyour phone to say, hey, it's
time to get up and do a walkaround the school.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
What's interesting, as we kind of wrap this up, is
these studies that talk aboutwalking.
They tie into one of thereasons why folks who have dogs
are struggling on averagehealthier than folks that don't,
and that's that you take yourdog for a walk.
So even if you're taking yourdog for a short walk of like 20
(08:46):
minutes or so, you might hit1,000 steps, 2,000 steps on a
very short walk, and that wouldbump you up to the 4,000 level,
right, 4,000 steps in a day,which would increase your
chances of avoiding thoseterrible outcomes.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I call it the heel and toe express.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Folks that live in walkable cities.
They hit these targets veryeasily.
All right, that's this articlefor this week.
Let's move on to article numbertwo, which talks about how
folks may be predisposed tohaving children of just one
gender, one sex.
I know, because we're teachers.
(09:27):
I know families where you hitfour or five boys or four or
five girls in a row.
Have you had those familiesthat you've taught?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
That's my family, Jason.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Two girls right.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
No, and Craig had girls and, like grandma, had a
boy and a girl.
Duncan was the first boy sincemy uncle Craig.
It was girl after girl aftergirl.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And in my family it was boy after boy, like on the
Sikowsky side, until my sisterhad little Leah, because that's
Duncan, adam, pierce, brynn,xavier, weston, james, that's
eight boys in a row and thenLeah.
So maybe my family'spredisposed to having just one
(10:12):
type of sex, because it shouldbe 50, 50.
Like when you do the Punnettsquare of sperm and egg, the
sperm can either be X or Y andthe egg is always XX and it's
the same as flipping a coin.
However, we're going to getinto some of the study.
We're going to get into thestudy that shows folks may be
predisposed to skewing thoseodds.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, when you're talking about like the 50-50,
that's over a large population.
So as you get more participantsin the population, then the
statistic averages out to the50-50.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, anybody can flip a coin and you'll get three
heads in a row Like that'spossible.
But if you flip the coin as I'msure some people learned in
math class you flip the coin athousand times.
It would be a pretty much a50-50 thing.
You'd have 500 heads and 500tails, unless you got one of
those trick coins which peoplemay or may not have had in high
(11:11):
school to try to cheat peopleout of coin tosses.
But let's get to the study.
It was led by Jorge Chavarro,who is a reproductive
epidemiologist at HarvardHarvard Chan School of Public
Health.
The team used the Nurses'Health Study, which has data on
over 58,000 pregnancies andbirths from 1956 to 2015.
(11:35):
Okay, what did they find in allof these pregnancies, with all
these bye-byes?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
they found, about one-third of families in the
data had children all of thesame sex, and so more families
than they expected had three tofive children of a single sex,
which exceeds what random chancewould predict, and so the
researchers proposed that theindividual families might have a
(12:05):
unique probability of producingchildren of a certain sex.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
One pattern they found was families with older
mothers at first childbirthshowed the strongest clustering
of same-sex children.
So the older the mom is, thegreater the chance that mom had
of having all boys or all girls.
But there are some possiblebiological mechanisms which
maybe we get into someuncomfortable territory here.
(12:32):
So if you're listening to thepodcast with small children,
it's just biology but it's howwe roll.
It's just biology but it's howwe roll.
The more acidic vaginalenvironments with age may favor
X-carrying sperm.
So that means the older you are, the X-sperm have a greater
chance of survival.
They're larger and they maysurvive better in those acidic
(12:53):
conditions.
A very short menstrual phasewith age may change the cervical
mucus, potentially favoring Ysperm.
So I guess it comes down towhere the sperm are going.
If they get all acidified up orthey get all stickied, they
can't make it.
(13:13):
But it's a race to the finish,chris.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
It is a race to the finish.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
They did.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
They did find some genetic findings, though.
They found two gene variantsthat were associated with having
children of only one sex, andone of the variants was linked
with all male children andanother variant was linked with
all female children, and thegenes they're actually not known
to be related to reproductionthemselves, and the gene's
(13:41):
function is actually currentlyunknown.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
There's other things too, for example, that may be
outside of genetics.
Some families might continuehaving kids until they get a
child of the opposite sex.
I'm sure you've heard thisstory before.
Right, they have five girls andthey just keep having kids
until they hit the boy, or theother way around.
Or families might just straightup stop.
(14:07):
They might be wanting to havethree kids, but once they have a
boy and the girl they're likedone, they may also skew the
observed sex ratios.
We do have to talk also thatsome scientists are skeptical.
Example, geneticists at theuniversity of queensland said
that that they would like biggerreplication in other
(14:28):
populations, just not the unitedstates, because in a swedish
population data since 1931, thatswedish data showed no family
level sex preference.
It was, of course, just theamerican data in this study.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
So we're looking at the study providing insight and
looking at more than justbiological factors to explain
those patterns.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
And I guess, as we wrap up this one, it's an
interesting conversation.
The bottom line is that well,population level sex ratios are
pretty even.
I think in North America justover 50% girls at birth and just
under 50% males at birth, boysat birth.
There's reasons for that.
(15:16):
Individual variation andbiological predispositions may
still exist.
A fun kind of thing to thinkabout and talk about and study
in bigger, bolder studies in thefuture.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
So does that mean the next dog we get as a girl?
Chris, to even it out.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Well, I don't know, jason, because when we went to
look at the Bernese mountain dogthat in effect turned out to be
Bernoulli, big red male, yousaid to me there are two
criteria that have to happenwith this dog.
One is that we are going topick out a male and two, he
(15:52):
needs a B science name.
I don't know because, like whenwe were looking at the
characteristics of the dog breedBernice Mountain Dogs, you had
found that the girls tended tobe a little bit more aloof and
you wanted a really cuddly,happy dog.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
And what do we have?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
We got a pretty cuddly, happy guy.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
We do.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, but he could have been a cuddly, happy girl
too.
Anyways, this is dogs, notpeople.
All right, that's science newsfor this week.
This week in pet science hey,now we can talk about dogs.
We're going to talk about dogsand their TV viewing habits.
Now, in the intro, chris, youmentioned that Beaker likes to
(16:43):
watch certain types of TV.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
She likes Life Channel, Like not Life Channel
but Nature Channel, so thingsthat have bright, vibrant colors
and are moving on the screen.
She's quite interested in that.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeah, I watched a while ago this movie called
Oddball.
I don't know if you everwatched it.
I think you were actuallyworking at your school.
It's about the little penguinsin Australia and they train dogs
to protect them, and Beaker wasobsessed with the little
penguins on TV, like she watchedthat whole movie with me from
(17:21):
the couch.
It was really cute.
She watched that whole moviewith me from the couch it was
really cute.
But Bunsen and Bernoulli, Ithink the TV is not a thing they
care about.
I rarely have ever seen themeven thinking the TV is a thing.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
No, bunsen sat on the couch with me when I'm trying
to watch a show with you and Ican't see the show because his
body is so large.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, but he's not watching the TV.
He's just stopping you fromwatching the TV.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I guess that's right.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Anyways, this study looked at how dogs watch and
respond to television, and it'sfrom July 17th in Scientific
Reports.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Now, historically, dogs couldn't see the TV clearly
due to the way TVs were created, how they were manufactured.
There was a lower ticker Nope,there was a lower flicker fusion
rate of older TVs and we mayhave had one like a cathode ray
TV tube.
And because dogs have a fasterflicker fusion rate than humans,
(18:24):
they need TVs that can fastflick.
How do you say it?
The older TVs appeared to themas having flashing still images,
and so the newer LED screensdisplay video at a high enough
resolution and refresh rate fordogs to see smooth, continuous,
(18:46):
smooth, continuous motion.
And dogs also have dichromaticvision.
They see in two colors, blueand yellow hues, unlike humans
who see in three.
So there might be somethingabout that nature tv, where the
colors appeal to Beaker for sure.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, one of the most popular cartoons for kids is
Bluey, and I know our nephewRafi.
He was all over the moon forBluey.
You're familiar with this right, chris Bluey.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I am.
I picked up a Bluey thing fromCostco early on because he saw
it in Costco and wanted it forChristmas and I think it was
September.
But, Costco, if you don't buyit then you don't get it.
So we were holding onto thatBluey thing for a very long time
.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And it's a fun trivia thing.
And, if you don't know, it's acartoon about a blue healer
named Bluey and his family andthey have trials and
tribulations.
It's a very sweet show, butit's primarily colored in blues,
yellows and browns, which arecolors that dogs can see.
So if you're watching it, it'sactually quite a muted cartoon
without crazy vibrant colors.
They did that so if familieshave dogs, they can watch with
(20:00):
their kids, which is sweet.
That's pretty cute.
Okay, let's look at the study.
How did they test this?
Researchers sent out surveysvia Facebook and email and they
received 453 responses from dogowners and that reported on
their dog's behaviors in frontof the TV.
So probably difficult to get.
(20:22):
Probably difficult to gethundreds of people to bring in
their dogs to see if they watchTV or not.
So surveys are the mosteconomic and quickest way to go.
The survey questions includedlike what kind of visuals and
sounds the dogs reacted to,whether they barked, wagged,
growled or chased.
So were they reacting to the TV?
And, if they were, how werethey reacting?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Well, 45% of dogs reacted to image or sounds of
other dogs and they also showedinterest in animals on the
screen moving objects and offscreen sounds like doorbells or
opening doors.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Oh man, like doorbells and knocks, send our
dogs running and barking.
That's happened before.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah, for sure, if it goes ding dong.
Our doorbell doesn't even soundlike ding dong and our doorbell
never goes off.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
No one ever uses our doorbell, it's not a thing,
unless it's the day thateverybody uses it, where like 10
people come and use thedoorbell.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
And it's like what?
But I don't think likeBernoulli for sure has never
heard our doorbell, and if Iknow.
So, how do they do?
How do they know?
How do they know that's like analerting sound, because then
they go and bark at the door.
It's mind-boggling to me howit's like an off screen sound
(21:42):
doesn't sound like anything inour house, but it's something to
investigate.
I think that's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, it is cool.
The study found that breed, ageand sex did not significantly
alter how dogs responded to TV.
It was their personality soexcitable dogs, so dogs with
lots of energy were more likelyto follow the moving objects on
the screen, especially thoseanimals like dogs.
Some dogs in the survey, likeJack's the Catula Leopard Dog it
(22:09):
was owned by the studyco-author tried to look behind
the TV to find out where theanimals went who ran off the
screen.
Anxious dogs often respondednegatively to stimulus like
doorbells.
So the TV was overstimulatingrather than enriching, and I've
heard that before.
Some dogs are scared of thetelevision.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
It's not all TV is beneficial for dogs, and
sometimes owners just assumethat TV is always enriching.
So when you go home, or sorry,but when you leave for work,
some people leave the TV on,thinking that it'll be
entertainment for their dog orenrichment for their dog.
That's not always true.
Especially anxious dogs findthat it could be too much
(22:54):
stimulation for them.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
They also found that dogs may be mimicking their
owner's emotions when they'rewatching television.
Television, For example, if youare a sport watching person and
you start to go bananas becauseyour team is winning or your
team is losing, or somebody dida good play or somebody did a
bad play.
If you get excited, the dog mayalso mirror that type of energy
.
Now, owner behavior was notaccounted for in the survey, but
(23:21):
this is just as an aside otherresearchers have pointed out
from other studies about dogsand TV.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
We can go down to takeaways.
So some takeaways is thatactually not all dogs enjoy TV
the same way and theexcitability and anxiousness
levels play a major role inwhether a dog will find TV
stimulating, confusing orupsetting.
And by knowing your dog andknowing your dog's unique traits
(23:55):
and preferences, that's a keyfactor when you want to decide
if TV is something that willenrich or overwhelm them.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I have been watching this TV show called Andor.
It's like a Star Wars thing.
That TV show does make youexcited and anxious at the same
time.
It is a very gripping TV show.
None of the dogs are watchingthis with me.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
No, just you.
And they were singing a songfor over 20 minutes.
It was a protest song?
Speaker 1 (24:28):
yeah it was, it was really moving.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I don't want to give anything away, but yeah, it was
a protest song and there was areason why they were singing
yeah, but that was enough liketo draw me in thinking, wow,
this is pretty powerful thatthey're singing for that long
and then doing cutting to otherscenes, and but still it was
like, wow, that's prettyimpactful, but our dogs were TKO
(24:53):
.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
They didn't care that people were singing.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
They did not care.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
All right, that's pet science for this week.
That's it for this week show.
Thanks for coming back weekafter week to listen to the
science podcast.
And a shout out to all the topdogs that's the top tier of our
Patreon community, the pop pack.
You can sign up in our shownotes.
All right, chris, let's hearthose names that are part of the
top dogs.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Amelia Fetting, rhi Oda, carol Hainel, jennifer
Challen, linnea Janik, karenChronister, vicky Otero, christy
Walker, sarah Bram, wendy,diane Mason and Luke Helen Chin,
elizabeth Bourgeois, marianneMcNally, catherine Jordan,
shelley Smith, laura Steffensen,tracy Leinbach, anne Uchida,
(25:40):
heather Burback, kelly andcuteness.
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