Pets in space

[Bill Phil]

Bring Fish

-If they die you don't really care that much and they are pretty disposable, They might make a nice snack actually.

-They breed faster than mammals so you can get a lot of them fast

-With a good tank setup they probually won't have any trouble in a zero-g environment as they already sort of lived in something like it and they probually have a better understanding of living in a 3d environment than most other creatures.

-They can function as part of a simple ecosystem by turning plant goo we won't eat into fish goo that plants eat

Basically what I'm getting at here is that fish are food and friends. My childhood has lied to me

Problem: Water must be kept in a quite a decent pressure in low-g environments (technically the gravity is there, just not being felt). So, yeah. Unless you want the fish to be in a floating water bubble.

I'm not quite on point, though...

[Iskierka]

Cats seem like they could adapt - they're confused, but if you let them have claws and surfaces to grip, they could probably figure it out.

Birds, on the other hand, seem to struggle ... Edited March 6, 2015 by Iskierka

[MircoMars]

okay, the topic took off. thanks guys

all animals need gravity for various reasons. we (living things) all are born in gravity and our bodies are adapted to that. humans experience the same disorientation as the cats and birds in these videos do. the men in the plane surely did many parable-flights before and are able to anticipate and cope with the effects of low and high gravity. I suppose the animals are exposed to these conditions for one flight and that's it. main difference between cats and birds in the example above is that the cats aren't able to grab anything whereas the birds can "grab some air" and thus control their movement. they just don't really know what to do with this control (yet?). also these are animals in which the sensation of free falling trigger a natural reaction, for cats it's "rotate 'til feet point to ground", for birds it's "flap or fall".

but I'm not asking about short time exposure, but of the lasting effects on a population in micro-g. and I think evolution of domestic animals is a mix of selective breeding and natural selection (perhaps better indirect selective breeding?). men can only see and control some changes, other happen in the background. fish for example would grow a small swim-bladder and evolve some other sensory and motoric tools to cope with their new environment. the decision which ones are allowed to breed would be based on how good they move and how well fed they are. in most cases the price would go to the fittest and not to the ones which are about to develop a promising gyro-organ or something.

cut short by real life, but I will continue.

meanwhile: pick your favorite orbital animal and try to predict how it looks after some generations. have fun!

[VincentS]

Gecko would be great

(No fur or feather, and free "artificial gravity" effect on any wall.)

Edited March 6, 2015 by VincentS

[PakledHostage]

the weather conditions outside the front door suck

That is a surprisingly accurate description of what a cat would find outside the airlock of a space station.

Cute.

all animals need gravity for various reasons. we (living things) all are born in gravity and our bodies are adapted to that. humans experience the same disorientation as the cats and birds in these videos do.

I think an important point to remember is that before an animal can evolve to become better adapted to living in microgravity in the long term, it must be able to adapt to those conditions in the short term. A mammal will never get to the point of evolving a more suitable vestibular system if it can't survive long enough to breed (and if its reproductive system doesn't work) in microgravity.

I can't speak to how well a cat's (or a human's for that matter) reproductive system works in microgravity, but I am fairly certain that a cat could learn to adapt to weightlessness. Even spiders have been found to be capable of overcoming their primary instincts when building webs in microgravity. Anyone who's ever been to sea in a small boat knows that it isn't an easy environment to function in or adjust to. It plays havoc with our vestibular systems and you can only move around by swinging from handhold to handhold, yet cats manage it better than just about any other animal that we keep as pets. That adaptability makes them good candidates.

Edited March 6, 2015 by PakledHostage

[Ethanadams]

What if you got an elephant into space

[Agumander]

What if you got an elephant into space

With their massive inertia, elephants would probably change station attitude every time they pushed against a surface.

[PakledHostage]

What if you got an elephant into space

You'd have one less elephant on the Earth?

Edited March 6, 2015 by PakledHostage
Now with less snark!

[RainDreamer]

Makes me think...for massive creatures that are so big that they might possibly have tiny insects orbit around them in space, how will their internal organs works without the assists of gravity? Imagine a blue whale in space.

[Nuke]

now a cat would be a fun pet to have in a lunar biodome. they would probibly be able to cross a fairly large dome in a single bound. if the dome has birds in it, it wont for very long because the cat would be able to fly too.

[lajoswinkler]

The answer would be none because nothing on Earth is adapted for micro-g (though one could give an argument for aquatic species). The ability to adapt would vary from individual to individual and species to species.

Probably the best adapted would be monkeys, especially those with a prehensile tail.

Not even them because they do not exist in microgravity on Earth. They're just buoyant. They're held by water, we're held by ground. Same thing.

[Invader Myk]

Makes me think...for massive creatures that are so big that they might possibly have tiny insects orbit around them in space, how will their internal organs works without the assists of gravity? Imagine a blue whale in space.

Not likely to happen while in any planet's SOI. As massive as the ISS is, its hill-sphere is still too small to extend beyond its hull.

[edit]Which makes me sad because I really wanted to see this:

[/edit]

Cats' flip instict isn't based on being in free-fall, it's based on being in free-fall AND having body up and gravity up unaligned. Micro and 0 G environments don't have a gravity up. That cats in space video showed this, the white one flipped once but it was released soon after the parabolic dive so the gravity up might have still existed and it was held in opposition to gravity up before the parabolic dive. The orange cat didn't flip, it just sort of twitched trying to get to a surface as did the white cat after its one flip. (go ahead and rewatch the video, I'll wait for you)

Flopping around uselessly being cute will probably be the biggest factor for space pets. I'm basing this on the trend towards popular breeds dogs and cats being less capable of doing anything for themselves. Worthless purse chihuahuas. After that the inability to poop and shed everywhere will be a big factor. Meaning birds are unlikely, molting feathers and almost no defecation orifice sphincter control.

My money is on the ball python.

Edited March 7, 2015 by Invader Myk
word filters

[KSK]

Responsible, loving and smart owners will not endanger their pets by taking them to such hazardous environment Unfortunately, such owners are rare I'm afraid higher animals won't fare well in microgravity. A squirrel, maybe even a flying squirrel would be better suited for it, but...what to do with droppings? As someone mentioned earlier aquatic species essentially already live in microgravity, so - goldfish for everyone

This. Bring plants for the psychological benefits of having living things to care for. If you need a pet too, bring a Tamagotchi or a Nintendog.

[EzinX]

You could easily pressurize a fishtank. Just use a big piston to press on the water a bit, and you can get it to the same average pressure everywhere.

Wonder if this would confuse fish. The pressure wouldn't be any less at the top of the tank as at the bottom.

And stuff like catfish, would they even be able to find their food if there's no "bottom" to head for?

With all that said, I suspect fish would have the least trouble adapting - or, in other words, most forms of pet fish would probably do just fine.

[MircoMars]

here on earth we have these combined fish and vegetables farms: the fish somehow live off the plants waste (+extra feeding) and the plants live on the fish waste. such a system should be possible in space, too. I guess we could help our fish stayin sane by making the water flow in one direction, so they have at least a forward. Since this current tank has to be accessible for maintenance and fishing, it could also be used as extra fitness facility for the cosmonauts. wow, this would be huge and all those pumps and filters and stuff, let alone the weight of the water. I guess a fish tank is only somewhat practical for orbital stations or other structures you don't need to accelerate that much...

[Awaras]

Everyone keeps talking about animals surviving in zero g, but we probably won't be bringing pets into space before long term habitation involving a population larger than a few people becomes a thing.

Any long-term space habitation scheme I have seen involves some form of artificial gravity (rotating rings, etc.) because of the harmful effect of microgravity on human health...

Edited March 9, 2015 by Awaras

[MircoMars]

Everyone keeps talking about animals surviving in zero g, but we probably won't be bringing pets into space before long term habitation involving a population larger than a few people becomes a thing.

Any long-term space habitation scheme I have seen involves some form of artificial gravity (rotating rings, etc.) because of the harmful effect of microgravity on human health...

for me then "when" is irrelevant. we don't have artificial gravity in space, yet. the problems of having a partly rotating structure in space seem to be harder than imagined, otherwise we would have a grav-module on the ISS for health benefits of the people up there, won't we?

I'd like to know how animals would be like after some generations in space. this is not only for "the comfort of having domestic animals", but for science. how important is gravity for the development of a creature? how will the organism adapt over generations? what are the implications for possible human reproduction in space?

[Awaras]

for me then "when" is irrelevant. we don't have artificial gravity in space, yet. the problems of having a partly rotating structure in space seem to be harder than imagined, otherwise we would have a grav-module on the ISS for health benefits of the people up there, won't we?

There was a centrifuge module planned for the ISS but they abandoned it because of "cost overruns and scheduling problems in Shuttle assembly flights"

[Kryten]

That wouldn't have been much benefit to the astronauts, unless they were very short.

[Nuke]

an effective centrifuge is going to be a major space construction effort. you might be able to do a small inflatable structure that can fit on a rocket, but its still going to be limited in its gravity to nausea ratio.

[Mazon Del]

Not to derail, but if there was any part of the ISS I would have preferred for them to have made, it would have been the orbital drydock module. Technically it wasn't going to be connected to the ISS to keep the vibrations from the construction work from interfering with the experiments on the ISS, but it was supposed to always be around 100 yards away. NASA had hoped to build the Earth-Mars transit craft there. Unfortunately budget cuts...

As far as animals in space, I could kind of see that one fur-less cat being good. All the advantages of cats, and no fur shedding. Plus, cats are actually surprisingly capable of being trained to go to the bathroom in odd ways. There actually is a system where you can train your cat to use a toilet as its litter box. Admittedly an Earth toilet, but the point stands. It's probably mostly an engineering problem to find a way to make this convenient for the cat.

[Engineer of Stuff]

Oh. This is just a dog vs. cat argument thread.

- - - Updated - - -

There should be a poll for which (cat or dog) would do better in space.

- - - Updated - - -

There was a centrifuge module planned for the ISS but they abandoned it because of "cost overruns and scheduling problems in Shuttle assembly flights"

Why Obama, did you cancel this?

[Awaras]

Why Obama, did you cancel this?

2005. A bit before his time...

[PakledHostage]

2005. A bit before his time...

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good anti Obama rant...

[Nuke]

government is so slow that the actions of one president can take several presidential terms to have any effect, and if the thing is bad then usually the guy currently in office gets the blame. now dont get the thread locked.