A new archaeological discovery is seen in Luxor, Egypt.
Credit: © Zahi Hawass Center for Egyptology

In early April 2021, Egyptian archaeologists announced their discovery of a previously unknown ancient city that had been buried largely intact for thousands of years. The city, given the name Aten or The Rise of Aten, was built around 3,500 years ago near Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, a narrow gorge that was used as a cemetery by the pharaohs (kings) of ancient Egypt.

Egyptologists (scholars who study ancient Egypt) compared the importance of the discovery of Aten to the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun (sometimes called King Tut) in 1922. Others compare this site to Pompeii, an ancient city in Italy that disappeared after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Like Pompeii, Aten promises to give scholars a rare and relatively complete view of the daily life of ancient Egyptian commoners. Most other important discoveries in Egyptology involve tombs of pharaohs and other wealthy Egyptians.

The remarkable site of Aten preserves the ruins of many homes built of mud brick walls about 9 feet (3 meters) high. Archaeologists also found the remains of tools and other utensils used in the daily life of ancient Egyptians along with jewelry, scarab charms, pottery, and tools for making bread, yarn, cloth, and glass. The number of homes and workshops at the site shows that the city had a large population. The archaeologists have discovered a number of burials that preserve the skeletons of some of the city residents. Unlike wealthy people in ancient Egypt, the burials of these commoners were not preserved as mummies.

Pottery found at the site bore an inscription that allowed scholars to determine it was manufactured during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten. He ruled ancient Egypt from about 1353 to 1336 B.C. His wife, Queen Nefertiti, was famous for her great beauty and her dedication to her husband’s teachings. Akhenaten was originally known as Amenhotep IV. He was the son of Amenhotep III, one of the most powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom period (1539-1075 B.C.). During the New Kingdom, Egypt became the largest and strongest empire in the ancient world.

As pharaoh, Amenhotep IV was a religious reformer. He chose Aten as the only god of Egypt and dismissed the many gods and goddesses of the ancient Egyptian pantheon. Aten had been a little-known sun god worshiped mainly in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. Amenhotep was so devoted to the worship of Aten that he changed his own name to Akhenaten, meaning servant of Aten. Akhenaten’s religious reforms, known as the Amarna Revolution, led to an outpouring of art and sculpture that glorified the Aten. But the changes angered many Egyptians who wished to continue worshipping the old gods.

After the death of Akhenaten, his successor Tutankhaten removed -aten from his name and became Tutankhamun. He restored the old state religion, allowing the worship of the many old gods as well as Aten. Later pharaohs destroyed or removed all monuments built by or in honor of Tutankhamun and others who had accepted Aten as Egypt’s chief god. The city of Aten was abandoned and eventually became buried in the desert sand for more than 3,000 years until its rediscovery this year.

Indian-born American astronaut Kalpana Chawla
Credit: NASA

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. All month long, Behind the Headlines will feature AAPI pioneers in a variety of areas.

In 1997, the American astronaut Kalpana Chawla (1962-2003) became the first Indian-born woman to travel into space. Chawla served on two missions aboard the United States space shuttle Columbia as a mission specialist and robotic arm operator.

Chawla was born on March 17, 1962, in Karnal, northern India. Karnal was part of the state of Punjab at that time. Today, it is part of the state of Haryana. She graduated from the Punjab Engineering College in 1982. That same year, she immigrated to the United States. In 1984, she earned a master’s degree from the University of Texas in Austin. She married Jean-Pierre Harrison, an aviation teacher and author, in 1983. She received her doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1988. She then went to work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In 1994, she was selected for training as an astronaut candidate.

In 1997, Chawla flew her first mission on the shuttle Columbia. She was the second person of Indian descent to travel in space, following the Indian-born cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma, who traveled on a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in 1984. Chawla’s duties involved conducting experiments in microgravity, sometimes called zero gravity or weightlessness, and launching a satellite using the shuttle’s robotic arm. Her second mission was on the same shuttle in 2003. However, on Feb. 1, 2003, as the Columbia was returning to Earth after the 16-day mission, the spacecraft broke apart high over Texas. Chawla and six other crew members were killed.

Chawla received many honors for her work in space. They include the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. In addition, an asteroid that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter is named the 51826 Kalpanachawla in her honor.

An Elysia marginata, a species of sea slug, is seen after shedding its body in an act of self-decapitation.
Credit: © Sayaka Mitoh

What’s slimy, shell-less, and can remove its own head?

A sea slug!

New research from Japan suggests that sea slugs of two closely related species—Elysia marginata and Elysia atroviridis—amputate (cut off) their own heads to grow new bodies. This act of self-amputation is an example of autotomy.

The decapitation is not for beauty reasons. A sea slug doesn’t think, “How about I switch things up? I want an oval-shaped body, rather than a tubelike one.” Instead, the researchers suspect that a sea slug nixes its noggin when its body becomes infected with a parasite. A parasite is a living thing that feeds off another living thing, called a host.

Not all sea slugs in the experiment cut off their heads. (But, to make up the difference, some slugs cut off their heads twice!) The headless bodies stayed alive for as long as months before decomposing (rotting). But even more surprisingly, the heads remained alive, eating and growing new tissue until they developed entirely new, parasite-free bodies.

For most of the sea slugs, the entire process of growing new tissue took less than a month. The head wounds healed in one day. Such organs as the heart took about one week to regenerate.

Although it is a major feat to grow an entirely new body in three weeks, sea slugs don’t need to grow too much. Most sea slugs are small, measuring less than 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) long. However, many kinds grow much larger. One group of sea slugs, called sea hares, has several large species, including one that can reach more than 2 feet (60 centimeters) in length. And although we’re just guessing, it would probably take more than a month to grow 2 feet of sea hare.

Sea slugs are not the first members of the animal kingdom to commit autotomy in self-defense. If a gecko is attacked, it can distract an enemy by waving its tail. When the enemy attacks the tail, the tail breaks off but keeps wriggling. While the enemy holds the tail, the gecko runs away. It soon grows a new tail. Starfish also practice autotomy. If grabbed, many starfish can drop off arms in order to defend themselves. They can then regenerate new arms to replace the old ones. If a starfish is cut into two or more pieces, each piece may become a new animal, as long as it contains a portion of the animal’s central disk.

The sea slug-studying scientists believe that understanding the growth process of sea slugs—as well as other animals—could lead to advances that enable people to regrow and replace damaged tissue, a field called regenerative medicine.

Credit: WORLD BOOK photo

April 23 is World Book Day, a celebration of the special role that books play in our lives. To celebrate, we at World Book (get it?) invited author William D. Adams to talk about his experience creating a special set of books, Out of This World 2.

I’m Will Adams, a content creator at World Book. I’ve had the privilege of working on many books during my career at World Book, most recently by writing the second series of Out of This World.

When I was a kid, I loved going to the local library and browsing the science and science fiction sections. But as I got older, I got frustrated by the technological leaps required in science fiction. Why couldn’t we live in space and travel among the stars already?

Out of This World is World Book’s collaboration with a branch of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) called the NASA Innovative and Advanced Concepts program (NIAC). NASA is world-famous, but you may never have heard of NIAC before. NIAC is working to bring some of that technology from science fiction into existence.

NIAC is a bit like a startup incubator for space exploration projects. Scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, or anyone else from across the United States may submit a proposal to NIAC about an idea that could revolutionize the way we reach, explore, or live in space. The idea has to be revolutionary and largely unstudied: no small plans are allowed. A committee reviews the proposals and awards small grants to the most deserving projects.

The NIAC inventors use the money to test their ideas and to work out details of their designs. The hope is that the best ideas become part of NASA missions or get picked up by the private space industry.

One of the most prominent ideas to “graduate” NIAC is the starshade. A starshade is a spacecraft with a giant, unfolding shade, a bit like a giant umbrella. The shade can block out a distant star’s light, enabling a space telescope to directly image any exoplanets (distant planets) orbiting around it. It’s the same principle as using your hand to block the sun’s light when trying to see something in the bright sky. Engineers hope to launch a starshade in the next 5 to 10 years.

I had so much fun interviewing the scientists and engineers for this series. They’re all incredibly smart people, of course, but also down to earth and from a wide variety of backgrounds. And—no surprise here—many of them were inspired by books growing up, both fiction and nonfiction.

Out of This World reads like a blueprint for the future. It shows how we can study other planets, how we can get to those planets faster, how we can live in space or on other planets, and even what to wear when we get there!

Amazingly, Out of This World 1 & 2 only scratch the surface of the innovative concepts that NIAC has funded. And, NIAC’s blueprint for the future grows every year. Just a couple of weeks ago, on April 8, they released their 2021 Phase II and III grants. These awards are for projects that are proven to work but need more research and development before they can be incorporated into mission designs.

One 2021 Phase II grant is to further study plans for a huge radio telescope. Remember the Arecibo telescope that collapsed last year? Think of this as an extra-large replacement—but located on the far side of the moon! NASA engineer Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay proposes sending a robotic probe to construct a giant radio dish in a lunar crater. Shielded from the noisy radio-wave emissions of human technology on Earth, such a telescope could study the early history of the universe. I can’t wait to write about it in series 3!

I hope you celebrate World Book Day by picking up a book and getting inspired, just as many of the NIAC inventors did. Maybe you’ll be inspired to think about things a different way, to write your own story, or even to explore the stars.

A candlelit vigil on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 19, 2021, honored the hundreds of thousands of Americans killed by COVID-19.
Credit: © Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

One year ago, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus disease COVID-19 a pandemic—that is, a disease that spreads over an extremely wide geographic area. In one year, the deadly respiratory disease has infected nearly 115 million people and killed more than 2.5 million people worldwide.

The first COVID-19 cases occurred in Wuhan, China, near a seafood and live animal market. This fact suggested to scientists that the disease may be zoonotic (spread from animals to people). Researchers proposed that, like the related diseases MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), COVID-19 may have its origin in bats. Further analysis of the virus SARS-CoV-2 showed that it had clearly originated in bats. SARS-CoV-2 stands for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. How the virus crossed over into human beings has not been determined. After the virus entered humans, human-to-human transmission became the chief way in which the disease spread.

As the pandemic progressed, some authorities closed schools and such nonessential businesses as restaurants, movie theaters, and hair salons. Some officials issued stay-at-home orders. The orders forbade people from leaving their homes except for such necessary activities as working at an essential job, buying food, or seeing a doctor.

To pass time over the long year and help stay cheerful while stuck at home, many people turned to baking treats, reading books, and making arts and crafts. For instance, some people recreated famous paintings. Such museums as the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, provided people with prompts. Then, using household products and costumes buried at the bottom of toy chests, people recreated famous works of art. Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” for example, became “Wagon Crossing the Street.” Re-enacting masterpieces was a great way to past the time, while you waited for your treats to bake.

Sandra Lindsay, left, a Black nurse, is injected with the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer on Dec. 14, 2020, in the Queens borough (section) of New York City. The rollout of the vaccine, the first to be given emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, begins the biggest vaccination effort in U.S. history.
Credit: © Mark Lennihan, Getty Images

In December 2020, hope began to arrive in the form of vaccines. Vaccines are special medicines that can help make a person immune to a particular disease. The long-awaited “V-Day,” short for Vaccine Day, arrived in the United States on Monday, Dec. 14, 2020. Sandra Lindsay—a nurse at a hospital in the Queens borough (section) of New York City—was hailed as the first person in the United States to receive an authorized COVID-19 vaccination.

Not everyone who wants a vaccine has been able to get one right away. The first doses were given to healthcare workers. Then, frontline workers (workers likely to encounter the disease) followed, along with people vulnerable to the virus, including the elderly and those with such risk factors as obesity or diabetes.

Since December, nearly 10 percent of the U.S. population has received the vaccine. Tens of thousands more get vaccinated each day, raising hopes that the end of the pandemic is near.

Two views of Dalatias licha, or the kitefin shark, during daylight, top, and its luminescent pattern, bottom.
Credit: © Jerome Mallefet, National Fund for Scientific Research/Catholic University of Louvain

What’s more awesome than a shark the size of a human adult? A shark the size of a human adult that also glows in the dark!

Scientists exploring the waters off the coast of New Zealand have discovered the largest glow-in-the-dark shark, the kitefin shark. The kitefin shark is not only the largest light-up shark. It is also the largest of all glowing vertebrates (creatures with a backbone) on land or sea.

The ability of a living thing to give off light is called bioluminescence. It is the result of chemical processes in living tissues. A special enzyme converts chemical energy stored in the cells into light. This process does not produce any significant heat. Most luminescent animals are found in the ocean. For example, many squids are luminescent. Fireflies are a familiar land example. Certain bacteria and fungi also are luminescent.

The kitefin is not the first shark to give off light. The lantern shark is a small shark known for producing its own light from specialized organs called photophores. These organs cover the bottom surface of the body. The light serves as a kind of camouflage (disguise), allowing the lantern shark to blend in with light filtering through the water and hide from predators (hunting animals). The light also attracts smaller animals that the lantern shark preys upon. Photophores also line the dorsal (back) spines, producing light to ward off predators.

Sharks differ from most bioluminescent animals and plants, however, because their light-producing behavior is not regulated by the nervous system. Instead, the hormone melatonin regulates their light. Did you know that you also have melatonin? But in humans, melatonin does not regulate any built-in nightlight. Instead, melatonin promotes sleepiness. Darkness stimulates the body to produce melatonin. Light blocks the production of melatonin. The hormone helps regulate the circadian rhythm, the body’s natural cycle of waking and sleeping. So, the melatonin in your body helps you drift off into a calm sleep and dream about gigantic, glow-in-the-dark sharks . . . okay, that may sound more like a nightmare.

Black-footed ferret in the wild
© Kerry Hargrove, Shutterstock

Have you ever wanted to clone yourself? Maybe you thought, “While I play video games, my clone can do all my chores!” Well, if you are a black-footed ferret, it’s your lucky day. (But, we’re pretty sure black-footed ferrets don’t play video games.)

In December 2020, the weasel world welcomed a cloned black-footed ferret named Elizabeth Ann. She became the first of any endangered native North American species to be cloned. In a few years, Elizabeth Ann might have siblings. The successful cloning is promising, because it offers hope that cloned animals could help save species from extinction. Extinction occurs when every member of a species of a living thing has died.

In the past, black-footed ferrets lived throughout much of the Great Plains. They depended on hunting prairie dogs for food and lived in the prairie dogs’ underground burrows. Since the late 1800′s, however, ranchers have eliminated prairie dogs from much of the Great Plains because they consider the animals to be pests. The black-footed ferret has become rare as a result of the decline in prairie dogs. Disease and the loss of rangeland to agriculture have also reduced the ferret’s numbers. Scientists once thought black-footed ferrets were extinct.

In 1981, ranchers in Wyoming discovered a population of more than 125 black-footed ferrets. Over the next several years, many of these animals died of a disease called distemper. To keep them from dying out completely, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department captured the remaining animals. Scientists have successfully bred the ferrets in captivity. In 1991, they began releasing captive-bred ferrets into western grasslands that were home to prairie dog populations. The ferrets began reproducing again in the wild.

The black-footed ferret is not the first animal to be cloned. Scientists used a technique called nuclear transfer to clone such amphibians as frogs and salamanders as early as the 1950′s. In 1996, a group led by the British scientist Ian Wilmut used the procedure to clone a sheep. The sheep was the first mammal cloned from a donor cell from an adult mammal. They named the clone “Dolly.” Since the cloning of Dolly, scientists from many countries have used a similar technique to produce clones of mice, cattle, cats, and other mammals.

Common wombat
Credit: © Martin Pelanek, Shutterstock

The common wombat, a humble, thick-bodied digging mammal of Australia, is not the kind of animal that often attracts the attention of scientists. Common wombats, also known as bare-nosed wombats, live in the coastal forests of Australia and feed mostly on grass, small bushes, and roots. They have thick brown fur and a stocky build. But, common wombats are number one in a category all their own among mammals, and it has to do with their number two!

Animal scientists have long observed that wombats produce cube-shaped feces (solid bodily wastes), something that has never been observed in any other mammal. Exactly how wombats make these cubic poos has been a mystery. That is, until a team of scientists in Australia examined the remains of several wombats that had been killed in road accidents. Through careful examination of the wombat’s digestive system, the researchers were able to crack the case of the squared nuggets.

The scientists found that the distinctive wombat deuces are made as the digestive system processes undigested waste just before it leaves the body. In the large intestine and colon, water is absorbed from the undigested waste as it passes. Muscular contractions that help to move the manure through the colon also squeeze the scat into a uniform lump. The scientists found that wombats have regions of varying thickness and stiffness in the lower portion of the colon. Contractions along this final passage squeeze the dry mass into a series of squishy cubes—of equal size with soft corners—ready for deposit.

Of course, it’s one thing to know how the wombat’s distinctive cube-shaped poop is produced. But the big question is why do wombats make such square-shaped make? Scientists think communication may be the answer. Wombats usually spend the hot days in underground burrows, only coming out at night to feed. The animals have a highly developed sense of smell. To communicate with one another, they usually leave their scat in select locations, appropriately enough called latrines. An adult wombat can dump about 100 smelly cube-shaped “calling cards” each day! Other wombats passing these piles can figure out who shares their neighborhood with a sniff or two of the cuboid poo.

Square scat won’t roll—even on uneven surfaces!
Credit: © Pixelheld, Shutterstock

But why a cube? Scientists have several ideas. One thought is that square-shaped poop is less likely to roll away from where it’s deposited. This may be helpful for marking territorial boundaries in a crowded wombat community, especially on uneven ground. Another idea is that with six flat sides, a cube-shaped deuce has more surface area available to waft odors into the air. This configuration may be more effective at sending signals airborne, compared with a more rounded load.

NASA’s Mars 2020 rover Perseverance
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars is one of the most difficult destinations to arrive safely at in the solar system, but you might not know it if you have been paying attention to the news lately. Earthlings are a perfect three-for-three on Mars missions this February. Two countries saw their first missions ever arrive at the Red Planet last week. Then yesterday, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) landed the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance on the surface of Mars. This flotilla of missions to the Red Planet was facilitated by a favorable alignment in the middle of 2020 that brought the planet close to Earth.

On February 9, a spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) arrived in orbit around Mars. The orbiter, called Hope or Amal, will map Martian weather on a planet-wide scale. Such mapping has never been attempted before. UAE became just the fifth country to reach the planet. All systems look good at the moment, but Hope is due to enter the orbit from which it will conduct its mapping in May. At that point, engineers will know for sure if the probe will be able to accomplish its mission.

Hot on Hope’s heels was an ambitious mission sent by the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The mission, called Tianwen-1, went into orbit around Mars the next day. The mission consists of an orbiter, a lander, and a rover. The lander and rover will attempt a landing in a few months. If CNSA successfully deploys Tianwen-1, China will become the third country to land a spacecraft on Mars and just the second to land a rover on Mars.

The last—but certainly not least—to arrive was Perseverance. The rocket carrying the beefy rover blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on July, 30, 2020. Perseverance is the largest rover ever sent to Mars. It’s the size of a small automobile and weighs over 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) on Earth.

Unlike China and the UAE, the United States is a Mars veteran. NASA has landed several successful missions there, including the still-operational sibling craft of Perseverance, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity.

The design of Perseverance is based on that of Curiosity, which has been exploring Mars since 2012. Engineers used many extra components that were originally created as backups for Curiosity in case of manufacturing defects in the originals. But Perseverance is more than just a pile of spare parts. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientists and engineers modified—and beefed up—the design to fit Perseverance’s mission. Perseverance is about 5 inches (13 centimeters) longer and 278 pounds (126 kilograms) heavier than Curiosity.

No matter how many successful missions are under a space agency’s belt, getting a spacecraft to Mars is a heart-pounding ordeal. Landing on the Red Planet is especially challenging. Mars is a large planet, so its gravity pulls spacecraft towards it at high speed. It lacks a thick atmosphere like that of Earth, however, that spacecraft could use to slow down. Furthermore, retrorockets placed on the rover would scour the ground near the landing site and contaminate it with rocket exhaust.

JPL has developed a complex of system to land a large rover on the Martian surface, which was first used with MSL. A parachute slowed the craft after it entered the Martian atmosphere. A set of rockets then fired to hover the craft above the surface. Then, Perseverance was lowered to the ground on a tether. Mission planners call this complicated ride through the atmosphere, filled with opportunities for mission-ending disaster, “the seven minutes of terror.”

Perseverance touched down in Jezero Crater. Billions of years ago, the crater held a lake that was fed by a river system. Perseverance will explore this ancient river delta and search for signs of past life there.

Perseverance carries many sophisticated scientific instruments that will enable it study the geology and climate of the region. The rover is equipped with a special drill and sample vials. After studying the rock samples it has drilled, it will place them in sealed vials and cache (stow) them on the surface. Scientists hope to recover the cached vials and send them to Earth in an ambitious sample return mission in a decade or so.

Other special features included an upgraded autonomous driving package, which will enable Perseverance to pick its way through obstacles on its own to reach a target, and a small helicopter drone called Ingenuity that will look to demonstrate the first powered flight on a solar system body other than Earth. Expect to hear about more exciting discoveries—and see more stunning pictures of Mars—in the months and years ahead.

“I’m, um… just getting ready for my camping trip!”
Credit: © Anna Hoychuk, Shutterstock

Think of your favorite food. Imagine the cheesy or chocolaty or crispy delight. You might want to eat that food forever and ever. You might want to roll around in that food and change your name to that food. (Okay, maybe that’s a little too far.) But cats feel that strongly about a particular treat. They might not want to roll around in pizza or chocolate cake. But, they may want to roll around in their favorite herb: catnip. Catnip is a strong-smelling plant that many cats love to sniff. When exposed to catnip, a cat might rub its head and body on the herb, roll around in it, chew it, meow, and generally act crazier than usual. In addition, new research from Japan suggests that all that rolling around in catnip actually has health benefits for cats. Chemical compounds in catnip may help our feline friends ward off mosquitoes, pesky insects whose bites can transmit heartworm infections in cats.

The way in which scientists came to this conclusion may surprise you. No, researchers did not invite a dozen or so cats to a camping weekend. They did not give the cats supplies for feline-friendly s’mores—made with catnip and tuna sandwiched between kibble crackers. Researchers did not then examine whether mosquitos munched on cats while they told ghost stories around a campfire. No, none of this happened.

Instead, researchers gave some cats scraps of paper soaked with iridoid, a chemical in catnip that affects pleasure areas in the cat’s brain. The cats then rolled around in these slips of paper, reveling in the scientific process. Some cats did not receive these slips of paper. The researchers then placed the cats—both iridoid-perfumed and not—within reach of many mosquitoes. The mosquitoes bit the faces of the cats who had not received the iridoid-soaked paper. However, the mosquitoes did not bite the faces of the cats who had received the iridoid-soaked paper.

We know what you’re thinking: “Wait, if I rub some catnip on my body, will mosquitoes stay away from me?” And, unfortunately, the researchers don’t recommend that humans use catnip as a natural repellent (although it may help you attract the neighborhood kitties). In fact, researchers don’t even recommend that cats should use catnip as a natural repellent, until there is more evidence.

But, you can use catnip in other ways. Catnip has been cultivated for centuries and used for medicinal purposes. A tonic made from the plant is said to be a good remedy for colds. Catnip is also used as an herbal tea and provides a seasoning for cooking. So, if you can get your hands on some traditional human foods seasoned with catnip, enjoy! You will not have to share with mosquitoes. But, as for your cat, that might be a different story . . .