I don’t know what topic described in this article fascinates me more: that dogs have been trained to locate right whale scat in the middle of the ocean to help scientists learn more about these animals, or the wealth of information that scat provides. Granted it didn’t come as a surprise that whale scat smells, but I had no idea that even the smallest bits of it could attract the attention of trained sniffing dogs a nautical mile away. Not only that, these dogs must work fast because, in addition to stinking, right whale scat sinks in less than
Read more →Here’s an interesting article about a course being offered by the Harvard Extension School called The Cognitive Dog: Savant or Slacker. What I found intriguing about this is that the course’s creator, Bruce Blumberg, works in animation and began studying his dogs in an attempt to understand their behavior. As a result, students gain the insights of someone who has objectively observed the way dogs behave in real-life situations. Compare this to the view of dogs we gain from observing a movie in which dogs have been trained to do what people want them to do in specific situations.
Read more →This is another one of those articles that demonstrates the Faustian bargain that sometimes (many times?) underlies the proposed salvation of working dog breeds. In this case, Chinese conservationist Wong How Man scours the mountains of Tibet seeking the sturdy and highly aggressive mastiffs used by nomads to guard their herds in the harsh and dangerous environment. However, doing so costs money and promoting his quest worldwide to gain funding naturally attracts dog-lovers. Unfortunately, the more affluent and naive among see Tibetan mastiffs as a perfect image pet, i.e., one which communicates that person’s wealth to others. Whether the
Read more →Click here for more evidence illustrating the elegance underlying normal animal behavior. This article is about a mathematician who mathematically analyzed his dog’s path to retrieve thrown sticks. I’m passing it along because of both its bond and behavioral elements. Among the bond ones, we see a man who is enchanted by his dog’s perfectly doglike behavior and seeks to translate these into the language of his profession. People who see a shared human-animal experience in terms of what it means to the animal as well as themselves are becoming increasing rare in our society. In a tribute to balanced
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