PhD: Phase of Development

What makes us human?

Down the rabbit hole

I’m currently on the second leg of my journey to the UK and thought I’d share how this journey has given me some insight into my PhD journey as a whole.

If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll know that I’m looking at animal empathy in response to pain for my PhD (or maybe you don’t, I seem to be pretty stochastic in this blog!). I’ve also put forward the question of “what is the purpose of pain behaviour?”. I thought perhaps it might act as a signal or warning within a group of social animals.

Being eager to answer my questions as quickly as possible, I undertook an experiment early in my first year of my PhD looking at empathy and pain in domestic sheep. I took pairs of lambs, docked one of them (with the other being an observer) and then video-recorded the behaviour of both lambs. I also took some video footage before the docking, so I would have something of a baseline for behaviour. 

I then set out to score the behaviour of the observer to see if it changed in response to seeing its pen-mate in pain. Going into it, I thought the observer might mimic some of the behaviours of the docked lamb (as has been shown here) so I looked for common pain-related behaviours (amount of time spent lying, standing, number of kicks, headbutts etc.) as well as making note of where the lamb was looking and for how long (what was it actually paying attention to?). Scoring behaviour in this way produced some rather interesting results (which I won’t share just at the minute as I’ve still got to do some more statistical analysis on the data), however, I wanted more.

Because empathy (and pain for that matter) is an emotion, I wanted to use measures that related more to the emotional component of empathy rather than the sensory. There is evidence that the posture of sheep ears can relate to the positive or negative emotional state of the animal. This was the next step in behavioural scoring.

Looking at the ears got me thinking about the face. It’s clear that humans pull a “pain face”, and this has been taken advantage of when assessing pain in infants. There’s also new evidence emerging that other animals express pain through facial expression. On top of this, sheep are able to recognise faces. I thought, ‘great! I’ll just look at the observer lamb to see if it’s pulling a pain face and if it is then obviously it can empathise with the lamb being docked’. Woah, back up! What exactly is a ‘sheep/lamb pain face’? How do I know that this face relates to experiencing pain and not stress, distress or any other emotion? I soon realised that I needed to go right back to the beginning and look at lambs’ faces to find features that changed when it was undergoing a painful procedure. That’s where I’m at now. As part of my visit to the UK, I’m visiting a lab in Newcastle that is examining facial expression in regards to pain in a variety of animals: mice, rats, rabbits and sheep. Working here will give me some insight into how I can code facial expressions for lambs and be fairly certain that these expressions relate to pain. I can then (eventually!) apply it to my empathy work.

I guess the point of this post (you’re thinking ‘finally! It took you this long to get to the point?!’) is that the PhD path is definitely not a straight one. You’ll discover that things you thought would have been looked at already, actually haven’t been. That’s what makes the whole experience exciting though. You’re given amazing opportunities to be at the forefront of research and get the chance to work with passionate people. Without sounding like a major g33k, it gives me a real adrenaline rush. I’ll tell you, delving deep into a topic you are interested in keeps you awake better than coffee! 

Advances in technology benefiting customers?

On my recent travels to the UK, I was fortunate enough to fly on one of the new A380 planes. These planes have a variety of features, including drinking fountains, a huge selection of movies and even a bar (for those fortunate enough to travel first class). What stood out the most to me, however, was that the lighting appeared to change over the course of the flight. Starting with the usual yellow-ish glow, this soon transformed into a pale pink, then purple and eventually a deep blue, dotted with ‘stars’. 

After doing a bit of research I found out that, as well as the aesthetic quality, this form of lighting was meant to help reduce jetlag. Anyone who has traveled internationally will tell you, you can’t have a great trip overseas without having to endure the burdens of fatigue, decreased alertness and sometimes stomach problems associated with jetlag. 

Jetlag is caused by a mis-match between your internal body clock and the external clock at your new destination. Your body clock does much more than just tell you when you should be awake and when you should be asleep. It also regulates melatonin and cortisol levels as well as core body temperature. The strange (but actually adaptive) thing about your body clock, is that it’s not 24 hours long as you may expect, it’s actually closer to 25 hours. This means that we need environmental cues, particularly light, to sync it to ‘real time’.

By cleverly timing when you’re exposed to light, you can shift your clock either forwards or backwards. Bright morning light can advance your clock (making your body think it’s later than it actually is), whereas bright evening light can delay your clock (making it think it’s earlier than it actually is).

You can probably see by now the intention of the “mood lighting” on the A380. By mimicking the lighting conditions of the arrival destination, airlines aim to reduce jetlag by syncing your body clock to the destination clock. Now this is all well and good, but it actually takes quite bright light to shift your clock (circa 2500 lux or 5 times the intensity of normal room lighting). Also, to have any real effect, light has to be administered like a drug at particular times (see above). If you really want to kick jetlag in the butt, administering melatonin in the morning (to delay clocks) or in the evening (to advance them) can help.

So, it seems the pretty lighting is much like the bar onboard: a good idea but something that I can never really take advantage of.

Purple polar bears?

Is this real?

Easter Science tid-bit

 

So while colouring eggs today, I wondered: why are some eggs brown and some white?

The answer is actually way simpler than I thought. White eggs come from hens with white feathers and brown eggs come from hens with ‘other’ coloured feathers. Examples of coloured breeds include: Barred Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island Red, Australorp and New Hampshire. A common white breed is the White Leghorn.

A question people commonly ask however, is: are brown eggs healthier or ‘better’ than white ones? This is usually measured by albumen quality (the amount of white stuff in the egg). Generally, brown eggs have a higher albumen quality and thinner shell than white eggs. This doesn’t mean to say that brown eggs are better quality because they are brown. Rather, it has to do with the genetic origins of the hen. 

From a egg-eater’s perspective, I’d rather have a higher yolk:white ratio so maybe white eggs are for me? Also, white eggs are easier to paint…