Why do cats and dogs get 'the zoomies'?
Does your cat or dog suddenly get a burst of energy and perform athletic feats around the house that would make even a gold medalist jealous? Welcome to the world of zoomies.
Does your cat or dog suddenly get a burst of energy and perform athletic feats around the house that would make even a gold medalist jealous? Welcome to the world of zoomies.
Plants & Animals
Jan 26, 2023
1
371
A team of researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, working with a colleague from AS University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, has found evidence that suggests dogs, under some circumstances, are ...
Researchers at the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) Department of Ethology, Budapest investigated if companion pigs and dogs would show their owners the location of a food reward that was out of their reach (but reachable ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 23, 2023
0
131
You might think evolution is glacially slow. At a species level, that's true. But evolution happens every time organisms produce offspring. The everyday mixing of genes—combined with mutations—throws up new generations ...
Evolution
Jan 20, 2023
0
60
A study by the University of Liverpool's Small Animal Veterinary Surveillance Network (SAVSNET) provides new insights into the breeds, ages and geographical origins of ear-cropped dogs in the U.K.
Veterinary medicine
Jan 19, 2023
0
4
A team of scientists from the U.S. have conducted new research—published in the journal Human-Animal Interactions—which aimed to show whether or not toddlers choose to help dogs impulsively within certain scenarios.
Plants & Animals
Jan 16, 2023
1
109
Dogs walked every day by their owners are less aggressive. Dogs owned by women bark less at strangers. Heavier dogs tend to be less disobedient than lighter pets. Pugs, Bulldogs, Shih Tzus and other short-snouted breeds may ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 12, 2023
0
1103
The vast majority of people use one hand or the other for most things—and for nearly 90% of the human population this is the right hand. Some 10% to 13% of humans are left-handed, with men being three times more likely ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 10, 2023
0
53
A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in Finland has analyzed test data to investigate how breeds differed in different cognitive and behavioral traits. In their paper published in Scientific Reports, ...
When an outbreak of sylvatic plague decimated black-tailed prairie dog numbers in the Thunder Basin National Grassland in 2017, researchers saw an opportunity for a "natural experiment" to explore the impact of the rodents' ...
Ecology
Jan 6, 2023
0
65
The dog (Canis lupus familiaris, pronounced /ˈkeɪ.nis ˈluːpəs fʌˈmɪliɛəris/) is a domesticated subspecies of the Gray Wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The domestic dog has been one of the most widely kept working and companion animals in human history. Amongst canine enthusiasts, the word "dog" may also mean the male of a canine species, as opposed to the word "bitch."
The dog quickly became ubiquitous across culture in all parts of the world, and was extremely valuable to early human settlements. For instance, it is believed that the successful emigration across the Bering Strait might not have been possible without sled dogs. Dogs perform many roles for people, such as hunting, herding, protection, and, more recently, assisting handicapped individuals. Currently, there are estimated to be 400 million dogs in the world.
Over the 15,000 year span that the dog had been domesticated, it diverged into only a handful of landraces, groups of similar animals whose morphology and behavior have been shaped by environmental factors and functional roles. As the modern understanding of genetics developed, humans began to intentionally breed dogs for a wide range of specific traits. Through this process, the dog has developed into hundreds of varied breeds, and shows more behavioral and morphological variation than any other land mammal. For example, height measured to the withers ranges from a few inches in the Chihuahua to a few feet in the Irish Wolfhound; color varies from white through grays (usually called "blue'") to black, and browns from light (tan) to dark ("red" or "chocolate") in a wide variation of patterns; coats can be short or long, coarse-haired to wool-like, straight, curly, or smooth. It is common for most breeds to shed this coat, but non-shedding breeds are also popular.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA