2017-08-04 09:19 A cat in a jumper
Y (Kuma's owner)
This winter isn't so cold and I don't have much chance to use the wood-burning stove, however one of my cats, Moko-Nyan, is getting old and seems to not tolerate cold weather. I think Moko-Nyan is about 14 years and 6 months old.
He had a beautiful coat when he was young and looked like a pure blood Maine Coon cat. Now, his coat looks thin and looks so cold and I decided to buy a jumper for him. I don't like to dress a cat but I thought that if he was able to be warm wearing a jumper, it must be good.
Long ago, I bought a harness for one of my cats. He got cancer and he loved to walk around the house. He needed to take medication and I didn't want him to go outside alone. Therefore, I bought a harness and put it on him and walked him every day. One day, I put the harness on Moko-Nyan and knew that he didn't care for it at all. So, I thought that he wouldn't care for a jumper as well.
I was not going to dress him in a jumper if he didn't like it, and the result was my expectation was correct. He doesn't care for the jumper at all. I don't know if the jumper has an effect or has no effect. I hope that at least it makes him a little warmer.
The season that he doesn't need a jumper is coming soon.
2017-08-02 00:52 What kind of creature am I?
Y (Kuma's owner)
One day, one of my Twitter friends wrote about DNA testing. It is a test that can examine genetic diseases, carrier status, traits and so on. It also can find genetic links.
I have been having an interest in biology and palaeontology. I like reading books such as how birds became birds from dinosaurs, and my interests were always about animals. I had never had an interest in myself biologically.
However, this time my interests went to myself. I wonder what kind of creature I am?
I'm getting interested in DNA testing. Maybe I should try. I think it's a good opportunity to know if there are diseases that I'm going to be suffering from in the future. If I could know the disease beforehand that is likely to appear, it would help to prevent it.
Every student in Japan learns about ancient people who lived on Japanese Islands. Honestly, I wasn't interested in these kinds of subjects and I don't remember what I have learnt well. Therefore, I searched for information of ancient Japanese who are called Jomon people on the internet.
The Jomon period started about 14,000 years ago, it depends on research, some researchers say it started about 16,500 years ago, anyway it was long long ago. The people who lived in that period are called Jomon people and I think they are my ancestors.
I had been believing that Jomon people came from the current Chinese territory but one Japanese researcher found using the latest technology, Jomon people carried a specific genetic marker that people who live in the current Chinese territory don't carry much. It's Haplogroup D. The current Japanese have Haplogroup D. The interesting thing is people who live in the Andaman Islands and Tibet have the same Haplogroup D. So, Andaman people, Tibetan and Japanese are biologically close. How interesting!
The reason that people who live in only these three areas keep Haplogroup D is not clear. Some researchers think that the people who carried Haplogroup D were driven out of the land by other people where they lived and the place they reached was the mountain area and islands where the other people could not reach or which were not good places to live in.
There is a more interesting story I found. Professor Jon Erlandson of Oregon University studies ancient marine people of the circum‐Pacific earthquake belt. He thinks that Jomon people came from Japanese Islands to the American continent by boats. There are similarities of DNA between native American and Jomon people. If that hypothesis is correct, native Americans' old ancestors and Japanese' old ancestors are the same.
I haven't had an interest in archaeology but I'm changing my mind as it seems to be an interesting study. The latest technology of genetics may reveal facts that we couldn't find out.
Fact is stranger than fiction.