Feeding Dogs and Cats Vegan or Vegetarian Diets

Note: This content is generated with AI. I asked ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok to research on this topic and used ChatGPT to merge their reports into one. Introduction The question of whether dogs and cats can subsist on vegetarian or vegan diets and remain healthy is complex and species-dependent. Growing ethical and environmental concerns have prompted some pet owners to consider plant-based diets for companion animals (Dodd et al., 2019). Dogs and cats, however, have fundamentally different nutritional biologies. Dogs are facultative carnivores (often functioning as omnivores) with notable adaptations for digesting plant-derived nutrients, whereas cats are obligate carnivores with strict requirements for nutrients found primarily in animal tissues (Che et al., 2021; WSAVA Global Nutrition Committee, 2020). This report examines the scientific evidence on the feasibility and health implications of vegan or vegetarian diets in dogs and cats, drawing on peer-reviewed studies, clinical trials, and veterinary nutritional guidelines. Nutrient requirements, physiological adaptations, health outcome studies, and official veterinary positions are reviewed to provide a rigorous assessment. All findings are referenced to primary sources in accordance with APA style, and a summary of key nutrients is presented in tabular form (see Table 1). ...

July 13, 2025 · 35 min · Xing Shi Cai

AI and the Humbling of Human Intellect

I often test new LLM models with the following question — Given the following conditions, how many ways can Professor Y assign six different books to four different students? The most expensive book must be assigned to student X. Each student must receive at least one book. The first model that could solve this problem was OpenAI’s o1 model. The second one was Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking model. Then more thinking models came out, like DeepSeek’s R1, Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 (with extended thinking mode), all of which can solve this problem without any mistakes. (Update on 2025-07-13: Now the models that can solve the problem include: Grok, Mistral, Qwen — I have lost count of how many models can solve the problem now.) ...

March 26, 2025 · 3 min · Xing Shi Cai

Gemini 2.0 Thinking

I recently learned, from the ever-illuminating Simon Willison, that Google has released a new model, gemini-2-0-flash-thinking-exp. So, naturally, I posed it a question, a little puzzle if you will. Given the following conditions, how many ways can Professor Y assign six different books to four different students? The most expensive book must be assigned to student X. Each student must receive at least one book. It took the model some time, a moment of digital contemplation, to complete the task. But it did, correctly yielding the answer 390. So now, alongside gpt-o1, we have another model capable of solving this combinatorial problem, a problem that, it must be said, eludes most of my students. It seems that these “inference scaling” based models will be able to solve more such problems, each one a small victory for the silicon mind. Another reason, perhaps, why I no longer set homework and only give quizzes, a small act of surrender in the face of the inevitable. ...

December 20, 2024 · 1 min · Xing Shi Cai
Will can AI do for us today?

What Can AI Do?

I planned to give a talk on AI’s application at a local cafe. Unfortunately there was not a single one who signed up. In order to not to waste my entire effort in preparing for the talk, I translated my slides into a blog post. You can check out my original slides (in Chinese) here. 😨 Will AI Threaten Humanity? 🤖 What is AI? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a broad term encompassing various technologies. Here are some key areas: ...

November 1, 2024 · 9 min · Xing Shi Cai
Can LLM Write Poems?

LLM and Tang Ying

For some random reason, I decided to test whether ChatGPT and Claude could write poems in an ancient Chinese style. So, I sent Claude 18 poems by Tang Yin (唐寅, 6 March 1470 – 7 January 1524) and asked it to compose three new ones in Tang’s style. The initial results were impressive but sounded a bit modern, so I asked ChatGPT to revise them. Afterward, I gave them back to Claude, asking it to change any words that sounded modern. Below are four poems: one by Tang Yin and three by AI. If you can guess which is which without Googling, I would say you are an expert in ancient Chinese poetry. ...

October 26, 2024 · 1 min · Xing Shi Cai

Using Claude to Visualize Algorithms

I have been trying to use the Large Language Model (LLM) Claude to generate artifacts (apps written in JavaScript and HTML) to visualize algorithms for my COMPSCI 308 course. It works amazingly well. If I had to write them myself, it would have taken hours. It also has the added benefit that I can run them in a browser on my iPad, which I use for teaching. Previously the only way I found to run code on iPad is to use Wolfram Player, which is quite buggy. ...

October 23, 2024 · 1 min · Xing Shi Cai