Recently, New York Times science writer James Gorman’s boss asked him why he wrote so much more often about dogs than he did cats. He surmised that it was because there are a lot more studies done about canines than about felines, and set to asking several experts why this was the case. While Dr. Elaine Ostrander of the National Institutes of Health pointed to breed diversity and other scientific reasons in her explanation, Dr. Elinor Karlsson of the University of Massachusetts replied, “The research has lagged behind in cats. I think they’re taken less seriously than dogs, probably to do with societal biases. I have a vet in my group who thinks that many of the cancers in cats may actually be better models for human cancer, but there has been almost no research into them.”
Or it might be cause dogs are just awesome :)
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