Grab your litter scoopers, folks — there might just be valuable scientific data in your cat’s poop.
That was certainly the case for Lil Bub, one of the original internet cat celebrities. These days, Bub is using her fame to further a huge host of causes, including learning more about the bacteria floating around inside animal’s digestive systems.
Phase Genomics, a Seattle-based biotechnology startup, teamed up with Bub and organizations AnimalBiome and KittyBiome to study cats’ microbiome, the name for all the bacteria that lives inside an animal’s gut.
The collaboration led to the discovery of 22 new kinds of bacteria, 13 from Lil Bub and nine from Danny, the cat of microbiome scientist Jennifer Gardy.
