diff --git a/cooler/util.py b/cooler/util.py
index a230f9af..0ae23d67 100644
--- a/cooler/util.py
+++ b/cooler/util.py
@@ -687,7 +687,7 @@ def _empty_series(name, dtype, index=None):
 
 
 def get_meta(
-    columns, dtype=None, index_columns=None, index_names=None, default_dtype=np.object
+    columns, dtype=None, index_columns=None, index_names=None, default_dtype=np.object_
 ):  # pragma: no cover
     """
     Extracted and modified from pandas/io/parsers.py :