#Does a Dog's Breed Really Dictate Its Behavior?(Op-Ed) Vanessa Woods is a research scientist at Duke university
and the cofounder of Dognition a website that helps owners find the genius in their dogs.
She is also the co-author of the New york times bestseller The Genius of Dogs. She contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices:
           The smartest dog breed is the border collie.
A beagle will always find its way home. Golden retrievers are attached lovingly to their owners. There are many breed stereotypes
but are they based on more than intuition? With the Dognition citizen-science project it may soon be on the verge of finding out.
Dogs and wolves split from each other between 15000 and 40000 years ago and their DNA only differs by 0. 04 percent.
what a dog could do not what a dog looked like. So any dog that chased hares was a harrier any lapdog was a spaniel
and any large intimidating dog was a mastiff. Over time this could cause certain dogs to have a certain appearance.
For instance a barbaric practice in 18th-century England was bullbaiting in which butchers tied a bull to the stake
and unleashed dogs to kill it since this supposedly made the meat tender. Any dog who killed bulls was called a bulldog
but in general it helped for the dog to be low to the ground with strong jaws to lock onto the bull.
Wide flared nostrils and a protruding mandible helped the dog breathe. All these traits shaped the bulldog into
what we know today. But the upwardly mobile middle classes who were insecure about lineage and social standing did not just want any mutt on the end of their leash.
They wanted people to know at a glance that they had a first-rate dog that had cost a lot of money
and had impeccable bloodlines. The easiest way to broadcast this was by the dog's appearance.
A breed by any other name Today the emphasis on appearance is still stronger than how a dog thinks
or behaves and there are often more differences within a breed than between breeds. So a dog that doesn't retrieve is still a retriever
and a dog that doesn't herd sheep is still a shepherd. All this makes finding breed differences in qualities like intelligence and behavior all the more difficult.
That does not mean there are no breed differences or that researchers are not trying to find out what they are.
In fact as part of the Dognition citizen-science project we have begun chipping away at the iceberg.
Already thousands of people who have signed up are contributing to an ever-growing database that dog owners can use to compare their dogs to other breed groups.
Is their dog more logical than a herding dog? More bonded than a toy breed?
More impulsive than a sporting dog? Even if you have not done the tests you can explore the data to see
if such expectations are correct. is breed your stereotype correct? Explore the Dognition database here. Of dogs and data In an initial study of 433 dogs we found that purebreds were better at communication than mixed breeds
and mixed breeds had better memories than purebreds. To test a dog's communicative abilities owners pointed to food
and recorded if their dogs followed their pointing. The ability to follow a human point to find food
or retrieve is something owners usually take for granted but it is remarkable in the animal kingdom. Even humans'closest relatives chimpanzees do not follow human gestures as well as dogs do.
Both purebreds and mixed breeds followed their owners'gestures but purebreds were consistently more reliant on their owner's gestures.
To test memory dogs were given a series of games that tested working memory which is the ability to hold information in mind
and mentally manipulate that information. An example of working memory is remembering a phone number long enough to dial it.
Working memory is important for any kind of problem solving and in humans has been correlated with skills in learning math reading and language.
In one game dogs saw their owners hide food under a cup but then point to the opposite cup.
Purebreds were statistically more likely to choose the cup their owner pointed to rather than the cup they remembered seeing the food go into.
In a slightly different version of the game dogs saw their owner hide the food
but then the owner switched the food to the other cup while the dog's eyes were covered.
Again all dogs tended to rely on their memory but mixed breeds were significantly more likely than purebreds to use their memory to locate the food.
This does not mean that purebreds have bad memories. In fact when we tested only their memories they were just as successful as the mixed breeds.
It's just that purebreds seem to rely more on other strategies such as social information.
 One explanation for this is that historically when the emphasis was still on function over form many purebreds were bred to be depended working dogs that on reading human gestures.
Does Your Dog Love You? Yawn and Find out (Op-Ed) For example Labrador retrievers were bred originally to be hunting dogs
and German shepherds were bred originally to herd and guard sheep. Although all dogs are good at reading human gestures purebreds might have an extra edge because of their original jobs.
Conversely mixed breeds can read human gestures but perhaps hybrid vigor has given them more flexibility
so they can also rely on other cognitive strategies like their memories. As more people sign up to participate in Dognition we will soon be able to parse these differences down to the breed level.
Who knows? Perhaps Chihuahuas will be the most empathic and puggles will have the best reasoning skills.
With enough people we may soon have breed profiling down to a science and we will see how closely expectations reflect reality.
Woods'most recent Op-Ed was Why Lines for Disney Rides are'Magic'The views expressed are those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was published originally on Livescience. a
In fact some animals are actually less likely to die the older they get at least up to a point.
If you put all your energy into reproduction then you will have a low survival. 5 Mysterious Animal Die offs No matter how healthy
Jellylike animals called hydras (Hydra magnipapillata) have low mortality rates that are constant throughout their lives.
Hydra die so infrequently in laboratory conditions that researchers estimate it would take 1400 years for 95 percent of a population to die of natural causes.
 The desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) actually becomes less likely to die with age. The tortoises aren't immortal of course they do still die.
But their mortality rate in youth is actually higher than their mortality rate in old age. If they make it past their younger years they're likely to keep trucking until as old as 80 years of age.
so they drew from across the tree of life comparing aging patterns in 11 mammals 12 other vertebrates (animals with backbones) 10 invertebrates 12 plants and a green alga.
In comparison a white mangrove tree at the same so-called terminal age (123 years for mangroves) is less than half as likely to die than the average adult of its species. The Southern fulmar (Fulmarus glacialoides) a seabird becomes more likely to die with age.
Hydras have constant fertility rates their entire lives. And many animals other than humans have life spans that continue past their reproductive years including killer whales (Orcinus orca) mynah birds (Leucopsar rothschildi) and nematode worms (Caenorhabditis elegans.
The diversity of mortality and aging is independent of life span Jones added. It's not only long-lived creatures like the desert tortoise that show declining or constant mortality with age.
The collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis) a migratory black-and-white bird lives only about five years maximum at that age 95 percent of collared flycatchers are dead.
But the flycatcher's mortality is fairly constant throughout adulthood not rising with age. Challenging theory The findings challenge the assumptions of classical theory suggesting the old ideas need a tweak Jones said.
In order to make sense of what we're seeing theoreticians need to figure out why it is that we're seeing these patterns
Fish that outgrow all of their predators are likely to make it to a ripe old age for example.
#Dog Treat Made from Bull Penis May Pose Health Risks When dog owners toss their canine companions a bully stick to chew on they might not be aware that the popular treat could be packed with calories
and contaminated with bacteria researchers say. And pet owners might not even know that the stick is made from an uncooked dried bull penis. In a small study researchers examined a sample of 26 bully sticks also known as pizzle sticks manufactured in the United states and Canada.
That means the average 6-inch bully stick potentially represents 9 percent of the recommended daily calorie count for a larger 50-pound (22-kilogram) dog
and 30 percent of the requirements for a smaller 10-pound (4. 5-kg) dog a significant source of calories pet owners might not be aware of.
With obesity in pets on the rise it is important for pet owners to factor in not only their dog's food
While the source of the bully sticks is no secret many pet owners don't seem to be aware that the treats are made from the raw penises of bulls
A 20-question online poll completed by 852 dog owners from 44 states and six countries showed that 44 percent of respondents could correctly identify the source of bully sticks as bull penises. Twenty-three percent said they fed their dogs the treats.)
And there was even some confusion among veterinarians an unimpressive majority of vets (62 percent) polled by the researchers knew where bully sticks came from.
For example 71 percent of people feeding bully sticks to their pets stated they avoid by-products in pet foods yet bully sticks are for all intents and purposes an animal by-product.
and effects such as bark beetles or parasites on stressed trees were measured not. Different than uncontrolled burns Predicting the effects of climate change on trees is difficult
#Drunk Fruit flies! Lots of Animals Self-Medicate The use of medicine can no longer be considered a solely human trait
if it ever was. An ever-growing list of animals use various chemicals to self-medicate
and to treat peers and offspring usually to fight off and prevent infection. And this list runs the gamut with the usual suspects primates chewing on medicinal herbs as well as some more surprising drug-takers such as fruit flies ants
and butterflies a new study finds. Previously scientists thought such behavior was unique to primates
and more intelligent animals where self-medication could be learned and passed on from parents to offspring.
But according to the study scientists who examined recent research in the field animals from insects to chimpanzees may self-medicate as an innate response to parasites and perhaps for other reasons as well.
Self-medication in animals is really common more common than previously thought said study author Jaap de Roode a researcher at Emory University in Atlanta.
Drunk fruit flies Medication can be taken either in response to an active infection or to prevent future parasitic attacks of an animal
or its offspring according to the paper published online today (April 11) in the journal Science. Fruit flies for example will lay their eggs in more alcoholic fruit (produced by natural fermentation)
when parasitic wasps are hanging around said Todd Schlenke an Emory researcher who wasn't involved in the review paper.
In the flies increased blood-alcohol content causes the wasp maggot parasites living in their blood to die in a particularly gruesome way by having their internal organs evert outside their bodies through their anuses Schlenke told Livescience.
The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites Whereas the alcohol can have negative effects on the developing flies it also makes infection less likely.
When parasitic wasps are scarce the flies prefer to lay their eggs in less fermented fruit.
Infected larvae can also preferentially seek out areas of a fruit with more alcohol Schlenke said.
We think there is a cost-benefit analysis going on here if you don't need it don't use it de Roode said.
If it's very likely you'll be infected you may use it regardless. If your risk is much lower it's easier to see how you'd use it only when infected.
Ants have also been found to medicate their colonies against infection bringing back chemicals with antifungal properties.
And monarch butterflies fight parasites by laying their eggs in toxic milkweed plants. Helping humans Animal medicine can be useful to humans in a variety of ways.
For instance bees collect plant resins with antifungal and antimicrobial properties and bring it back to their hives to help them fight infection.
Beekeepers have selected against this trait since resin is sticky and hard to work with; this has made likely bees more prone to infection de Roode said.
These medicines could also possibly be used to fight infection in humans or other animals. One chemical in bee resin has been shown to have inhibitory effects against HIV-1 de Roode said.
Another plant eaten as a medicine by primates is now being used as an antiemetic (to treat nausea
Villalba's work has shown that animals can benefit when artificial medicines are made available to them to eat when necessary.
#Dwarf Lemurs Hibernate Like Bears The western fat-tailed dwarf lemur was the only primate thought to be a hibernator.
Now scientists have discovered that two other lemurs in Madagascar can put their lives on pause too by entering seven-month snoozefests.
as if the animals are dead researcher Anne Yoder director of the Duke Lemur Center said of the two species Crossley's dwarf lemur and Sibree's dwarf lemur.
Yoder and colleagues captured several of the lemurs and outfitted them with temperature-sensitive radio collars before they were released.
The team found that the lemurs take different sleep strategies depending on which part of Madagascar they live.
Meanwhile western dwarf lemurs hide out in drafty tree holes where their body temperature fluctuates with the chancing temperature of the outside air the scientists found.
The researchers suspect these clawless lemurs might make do with trees because they simply can't bury themselves safely in western Madagascar's hard and dry soils;
what triggers hibernation in these lemurs. The burrowing behavior is especially weird to see in a tropical forest;
most mammals that spend their winters curled up underground live in the arctic or temperate areas where winters are frigid and forbidding.
But winters in the eastern forests of Madagascar present their own energetic challenges for lemurs.
And high-quality fruits a crucial part of dwarf lemur diets are scarce during this time. Beyond finding surprising similarities with other mammals that spend their winters snoozing it's exciting to think about lemur hibernation
since the animals are closely related to humans. Studying how the lemurs'pause button works may help scientists investigate the possibility of inducing human hibernation (think 2001:
A Space Odyssey. The research was detailed May 2 in the journal Scientific Reports. Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+.
+Follow us@livescience Facebook & Google+.+Original article on Livescience. com m
#Earliest Evidence of Human Hunting Found Archaeologists have unearthed what could be the earliest evidence of ancient human ancestors hunting and scavenging meat.
Animal bones and thousands of stone tools used by ancient hominins suggest that early human ancestors were butchering and scavenging animals at least 2 million years ago.
In addition we find cut marks on their bones where crude stone tools were used to de-flesh the animal
The combination of evidence suggests the animals must have been hunted not scavenged. In modern-day Africa scavengers don't eat such animals
because their primary predators such as lions and hyenas will consume them entirely leaving nothing behind.)
The site also contained the cracked skulls of larger antelopes similar in size to wildebeests.
Scavengers like hyenas will consume all the rest of the carcass but they'll leave the heads behind
Hyenas at the Kill The team hypothesized that ancient human ancestors found the discarded heads in their landscape
Mystery man So far however the researchers have found no traces of the hominins who hunted those animals.
Until about 4 million years ago our early hominin ancestors had diets that were isotopically at least very similar to chimpanzees'said Matt Sponheimer a paleoanthropologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
and underground roots and even termites or small scavenged animals although the exact composition of the diet still remains a mystery.
or Nutcracker Man were becoming more specialized narrowing their diets and focusing on C4 foods.
#Earthworms Trap Carbon, But Do They Influence Climate Change?(ISNS)--Earthworms have long been the organic gardener's friend.
They aerate soil as they burrow into the earth and release nutrients as soil passes through their digestive systems.
when researchers reported in Nature Climate Change  that earthworms contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
They claim that as the earthworms go about their soil-transforming business they release carbon dioxide that was trapped in the soil.
Overall the researchers determined that earthworms'burrowing causes a 33 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions
 Jan Willem van Groenigen of Wageningen University in The netherlands and lead author on the Nature Climate Change article doesn't advocate exterminating earthworms. oeyou cannot say earthworms are good or bad.
Their results published in Nature Communications suggest that earthworms actually trap carbon dioxide in soil for an overall decrease in emissions.
But in a process called stabilization earthworms convert the digestible carbon to a form that stays in the soil.
 Earthworms ingest the organic matter or litter that lies atop the soil. The litter is ground to a pulp in their gizzard broken down and digested by their gut bacteria
and excreted back into the soil. Soil digested by earthworms is much richer in nitrogen potassium and phosphates.
Their excrement also adds physical structure to the soil that holds in the carbon reduces erosion
and fungi and not at the role of the earthworms that are said eating them Neher.
Researchers found the earthworms provide checks and balances to the soil microbes'carbon dioxide emissions. In the northern part of the U s. forests rely on a layer of litter to regulate the temperature moisture and nutrient content of the soil.
Most earthworm species in the area are invasive. They eat up litter layers more quickly than the forests regenerate.
In a way these earthworms determine which trees will grow there in the future. Knowing the problems invasive earthworms bring the researchers chose to study two invasive species one from Asia and one from Europe.
They measured the carbon dioxide emission carbon mineralization and carbon stabilization of a batch of soil with just microbes and compared that with a batch of soil with microbes and earthworms.
They found that earthworm-stocked soil releases no more carbon dioxide than soil with microbes alone. In fact the earthworms excreted carbon that stuck in the ground rather than releasing it into the air.
Essentially earthworms created a carbon trap. We're losing the litter on the surface of the soil
which has affects on future forest composition but a lot of that may be moving deeper into the soil
and holding the carbon there said Neher. The carbon is just moving into deeper layers in the soil.
Other new studies find that the fecal matter of millipedes and oribatid mites also transform carbon into its more decay resistant form.
The second study was conducted over 54 days too short a time to judge the total effect of earthworms on the environment.
Van Groenigen and other researchers from the first report have completed just a 750-day study
He stressed the importance of understanding the effects earthworms have on plants. If more plants grow because of the earthworm fertilization then those plants would use carbon dioxide in their normal photosynthesis cycle
and help reduce greenhouse gases in the environment. Whether or not earthworms contribute to climate change both sides agree that earthworms have unmistakable benefits.
As Darwin mused It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have organized these lowly creatures.
This story was provided by Inside Science News Service. Jenna Bilbrey is a freelance writer based in Athens GA She tweets at@Jennabilbrey t
and through the rats inadvertently brought to the island that ate palm nuts before they could sprout into new trees.
#Eating Insects Will feed Help Hungry World, UN Says NEW YORK The problem is familiar: How to feed a growing world population.
Eat insects. Now the United nations'Food and agriculture organization has weighed in favor of entomophagy the practice of eating insects.
In a 200-plus-page report issued in May the FAO provides the first comprehensive assessment of insects'current and potential uses food for humans and livestock.
It is accepted widely that by 2050 the world will host 9 billion people. To accommodate this number current food production will need to almost double reads the report titled Edible Insects:
Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security. We need to find new ways of growing food.
and a proponent of bug eating told an audience on Wednesday (June 26) night here at the New york Academy of Sciences.
The FAO report as well as books published over the past 20 years featuring appealing insect recipes
and photos have been a part of the greater acceptance of bug-eating Sorkin said. You have to get people to
Although many Westerners may react to the idea of bug-eating with disgust insects make up a part of the traditional diets of about 2 billion people the report estimates.
These include the larvae of the palm weevil a type of beetle in a number of tropical regions;
mopane worms in southern Africa; yellow jacket wasp larvae in Japan; and grasshoppers known as chapulines in Oaxaca Mexico to name a few.
Beetles account for the most commonly eaten group of insects. I happen to like more the immature beetles the grubs.
They're softer Sorkin said. They don't have the exoskeleton and they are more flavorful but to each his own.
Insects offer a clear environmental benefit because they can convert their own food to body mass more efficiently than traditional livestock
because unlike chickens pigs and cows insects are not warm-blooded Sorkin said. As a result they do not have to expend energy to keep themselves warm
and can use it to grow instead. Â Among other benefits insects take up little space can be raised on waste
and research indicates they emit fewer greenhouse gases than conventional livestock according to the report. They can be nutritious with high fat protein vitamin fiber
and mineral content although the nutritional value varies among species the report says. But for Westerners entomophagy may require disguising dinner.
I think most people here probably don't like to eat insects because they look like insects. But if you cook the insects dry the insects
and grind them into a flour more people would consume it Sorkin said. One company Utah-based Chapul has taken this approach
and sells energy bars made of cricket flour. Â Humans aren't the only ones who could stand to eat more insects.
Research is exploring using insect protein to feed farmed fish and poultry the report says. Follow us@livescience Facebookâ & Google+.
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#Eating Peppers May Lower Parkinson's Risk Regularly eating peppers may lower the risk of Parkinson's disease a new study suggests.
#Elephants Vanish in Congo Reserve The Okapi Faunal Reserve was thought to be a safe haven for forest elephants in the otherwise conflict-stricken eastern region of the Democratic Republic of congo.
Just 1700 elephants are left inside the reserve and that number could be zero within 10 years conservationists warn.
A lucrative black-market trade in ivory drives the hunt for elephants in the region. In the last 15 years 75 percent of the Okapi population or 5100 animals have been killed
and in the last five years the population has declined 37 percent according to a Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) survey.
because the Okapi Faunal Reserve a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering more than 5000 square miles (14000 square km) is considered the best protected conservation area in the Democratic Republic of congo.
Before a civil war broke out in the region in the late 1990s the WCS counted about 6800 forest elephants in the reserve.
In 2007 after the war officially ended the WCS's elephant count was down to 2700.
Since then park rangers have reduced the number of elephants killed in the reserve each year from 400 to 170
but conservationists warn that instability in the Ituri region could spell more trouble for the animals.
Elephant Images: The Biggest Beasts On land The WCS says it's working with the country's wildlife department (the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature
and will continue to work in their country to protect elephants and the landscapes where they live.
We urge the international community to support the DRC in the fight against the threat of extinction of the forest elephant.
The forest elephant is a subspecies of the African elephant which is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
In addition to poaching the massive mammals are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation. Follow Livescience on Twitter@livescience. We're also on Facebookâ & Google+.
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