In a field near the Kansas Humane Society’s Murfin Animal Care Campus, a concrete storm drain peeks out of the green grass, its circular opening extending into a black tunnel below. One morning this past July, humane society team members arrived at work and heard a heartbreaking sound echoing from within this drain — the sound of animals crying for help.
Kansas Humane Society
The rescuers hurried over and found the source of the noise. There, cowering inside, were six little puppies left to fend for themselves.
KANSAS HUMANE SOCIETY
Using treats as a tasty incentive, the team coaxed each puppy out from the hole. The pups served a mandatory stray hold at the Wichita Animal Shelter next door. Then they returned to the Kansas Humane Society for further care.
KANSAS HUMANE SOCIETY
Staff members gave the pups a comfortable place to recover. They named the dogs Abby, Ellie, Greg, Lev, Mike and Tommy, and made sure each of them received the necessary vaccines and medical attention needed to grow up healthy and strong.
KANSAS HUMANE SOCIETY
“The puppies were very wiggly, especially Ellie,” a representative from Kansas Humane Society told The Dodo. “All were friendly and very social.”
Local news stations soon began covering the amazing rescue, urging community members to adopt or foster the pups. Within two days, every puppy was either adopted or put on hold for adoption.
KANSAS HUMANE SOCIETY
Today, Abby, Ellie, Greg, Lev, Mike and Tommy are all safe in their forever homes, and rescuers couldn’t be happier.
“We hope their futures are full of love, cuddles and treats,” the representative said.
Bill Watterson of the AHA posted the following yesterday:
I wish people were more like animals. Animals don’t try to change you. Animals like you just the way you are. They listen to your problems, they comfort you when you’re sad, and all they ask in return is a little kindness.
Graham Greene, the Canadian First Nations actor who starred in films including Dances With Wolves, has died aged 73, his manager says.
“It is with deep sadness we announce the peaceful passing of award-winning legendary Canadian actor Graham Greene,” Gerry Jordan said in a statement to CBC News. The outlet reported he died of natural causes.
Greene scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Kevin Costner’s 1990 epic western, where he played Kicking Bird.
He was a member of the Oneida Nation, part of the Six Nations Reserve in southern Ontario.
Greene worked as a draftsman, civil technologist, steelworker and rock-band crew member before starting his career in theatre in the UK in the 1970s.
In a 2012 interview with Canadian publication Playback, he credited theatre with giving him a grounding for acting.
“It helps you build a character. When you get into film you don’t have that luxury. The discipline of theatre is what I recommend to all actors.”
In the same interview, he said a key moment for him came when he married his wife Hilary Blackmore, which led to “the best time of my life”.
His breakthrough came in 1990 when he played Kicking Bird, a Lakota medicine man, in Dances With Wolves. Greene won widespread acclaim for the role.
He also appeared in the 1992 western thriller Thunderheart, playing tribal officer Walter Crow Horse.
In the 1999 fantasy drama The Green Mile, Greene played Arlen Bitterbuck, a Native American man on death row in prison.
He also starred in Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995), Maverick (1994), The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) and Wind River (2017).
He picked up numerous awards through his storied career, including the Earle Grey Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Academy of Canadian Film and Television in 2004.
In 2016, he was inducted into the Order of Canada, the country’s second highest civilian honour.
There are few people visiting Learning from Dogs these days but so what! I do not publish posts to elicit comments or ‘Likes’, I just do it for my own pleasure, and if there are a very few who like my blog posts then that is a bonus.
Plus I cannot guarantee that some of these photographs have not appeared in earlier Picture Parades.
Came across this a few days ago and you will love it!
The new world comes up with some marvellous treats. Here I was listening to the radio (BBC – Radio 4) from Southern Oregon and they had this item about a Scottish thatcher using a variety of plants to thatch roofs. The thatcher had been thatching for years.
Then a quick search on the internet found this video:
An interesting article about the benefits of being active.
I try and stay as active as I can mainly by bicycle riding. This article from The Conversation shows the importance of this. It is just a shame that they do not mention being old and active; as in being 80!
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Some pro athletes keep getting better as they age − neuroscience can explain how they stay sharp
Recovery and mental resilience support the development of neuroplasticity, which helps athletes like Allyson Felix stay sharp. AP Photo/Charlie Riedel
In a world where sports are dominated by youth and speed, some athletes in their late 30s and even 40s are not just keeping up – they are thriving.
Novak Djokovic is still outlasting opponents nearly half his age on tennis’s biggest stages. LeBron James continues to dictate the pace of NBA games, defending centers and orchestrating plays like a point guard. Allyson Felix won her 11th Olympic medal in track and field at age 35. And Tom Brady won a Super Bowl at 43, long after most NFL quarterbacks retire.
The sustained excellence of these athletes is not just due to talent or grit – it’s biology in action. Staying at the top of their game reflects a trainable convergence of brain, body and mindset. I’m a performance scientist and a physical therapist who has spent over two decades studying how athletes train, taper, recover and stay sharp. These insights aren’t just for high-level athletes – they hold true for anyone navigating big life changes or working to stay healthy.
Increasingly, research shows that the systems that support high performance – from motor control to stress regulation, to recovery – are not fixed traits but trainable capacities. In a world of accelerating change and disruption, the ability to adapt to new changes may be the most important skill of all. So, what makes this adaptability possible – biologically, cognitively and emotionally?
The amygdala and prefrontal cortex
Neuroscience research shows that with repeated exposure to high-stakes situations, the brain begins to adapt. The prefrontal cortex – the region most responsible for planning, focus and decision-making – becomes more efficient in managing attention and making decisions, even under pressure.
During stressful situations, such as facing match point in a Grand Slam final, this area of the brain can help an athlete stay composed and make smart choices – but only if it’s well trained.
In contrast, the amygdala, our brain’s threat detector, can hijack performance by triggering panic, freezing motor responses or fueling reckless decisions. With repeated exposure to high-stakes moments, elite athletes gradually reshape this brain circuit.
They learn to tune down amygdala reactivity and keep the prefrontal cortex online, even when the pressure spikes. This refined brain circuitry enables experienced performers to maintain their emotional control.
Creating a brain-body loop
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, is a molecule that supports adapting to changes quickly. Think of it as fertilizer for the brain. It enhances neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to rewire itself through experience and repetition. This rewiring helps athletes build and reinforce the patterns of connections between brain cells to control their emotion, manage their attention and move with precision.
In moments like these, higher BDNF availability likely allows him to regulate his emotions and recalibrate his motor response, helping him to return to peak performance faster than his opponent.
Rewiring your brain
In essence, athletes who repeatedly train and compete in pressure-filled environments are rewiring their brain to respond more effectively to those demands. This rewiring, from repeated exposures, helps boost BDNF levels and in turn keeps the prefrontal cortex sharp and dials down the amygdala’s tendency to overreact.
This kind of biological tuning is what scientists call cognitive reserve and allostasis – the process the body uses to make changes in response to stress or environmental demands to remain stable. It helps the brain and body be flexible, not fragile.
Importantly, this adaptation isn’t exclusive to elite athletes. Studies on adults of all ages show that regular physical activity – particularly exercises that challenge both body and mind – can raise BDNF levels, improve the brain’s ability to adapt and respond to new challenges, and reduce stress reactivity.
Programs that combine aerobic movement with coordination tasks, such as dancing, complex drills or even fast-paced walking while problem-solving have been shown to preserve skills such as focus, planning, impulse control and emotional regulation over time.
After an intense training session or a match, you will often see athletes hopping on a bike or spending some time in the pool. These low-impact, gentle movements, known as active recovery, help tone down the nervous system gradually.
Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic practices meditation, which strengthens the mental pathways that help with stress regulation. AP Photo/Kin Cheung
Over time, this convergence creates a trainable loop between the brain and body that is better equipped to adapt, recover and perform.
Lessons beyond sport
While the spotlight may shine on sporting arenas, you don’t need to be a pro athlete to train these same skills.
The ability to perform under pressure is a result of continuing adaptation. Whether you’re navigating a career pivot, caring for family members, or simply striving to stay mentally sharp as the world changes, the principles are the same: Expose yourself to challenges, regulate stress and recover deliberately.
While speed, agility and power may decline with age, some sport-specific skills such as anticipation, decision-making and strategic awareness actually improve. Athletes with years of experience develop faster mental models of how a play will unfold, which allows them to make better and faster choices with minimal effort. This efficiency is a result of years of reinforcing neural circuits that doesn’t immediately vanish with age. This is one reason experienced athletes often excel even if they are well past their physical prime.
Physical activity, especially dynamic and coordinated movement, boosts the brain’s capacity to adapt. So does learning new skills, practicing mindfulness and even rehearsing performance under pressure. In daily life, this might be a surgeon practicing a critical procedure in simulation, a teacher preparing for a tricky parent meeting, or a speaker practicing a high-stakes presentation to stay calm and composed when it counts. These aren’t elite rituals – they’re accessible strategies for building resilience, motor efficiency and emotional control.
Humans are built to adapt – with the right strategies, you can sustain excellence at any stage of life.
It is what we share with animals, but it is not as straightforward as one thinks!
The range of thinking, in terms of logical thinking, even in humans, is enormous. And when we watch animals, especially mammals, it is clear that they are operating in a logical manner. By ‘operating’ I am referring to their thought processes.
So a recent article in The Conversation jumped out at me. Here it is:
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Humans and animals can both think logically − but testing what kind of logic they’re using is tricky
Can a monkey, a pigeon or a fish reason like a person? It’s a question scientists have been testing in increasingly creative ways – and what we’ve found so far paints a more complicated picture than you’d think.
Imagine you’re filling out a March Madness bracket. You hear that Team A beat Team B, and Team B beat Team C – so you assume Team A is probably better than Team C. That’s a kind of logical reasoning known as transitive inference. It’s so automatic that you barely notice you’re doing it.
It turns out humans are not the only ones who can make these kinds of mental leaps. In labs around the world, researchers have tested many animals, from primates to birds to insects, on tasks designed to probe transitive inference, and most pass with flying colors.
As a scientist focused on animal learning and behavior, I work with pigeons to understand how they make sense of relationships, patterns and rules. In other words, I study the minds of animals that will never fill out a March Madness bracket – but might still be able to guess the winner.
Logic test without words
The basic idea is simple: If an animal learns that A is better than B, and B is better than C, can it figure out that A is better than C – even though it’s never seen A and C together?
In the lab, researchers test this by giving animals randomly paired images, one pair at a time, and rewarding them with food for picking the correct one. For example, animals learn that a photo of hands (A) is correct when paired with a classroom (B), a classroom (B) is correct when paired with bushes (C), bushes (C) are correct when paired with a highway (D), and a highway (D) is correct when paired with a sunset (E). We don’t know whether they “understand” what’s in the picture, and it is not particularly important for the experiment that they do.
In a transitive inference task, subjects learn a series of rewarded pairs – such as A+ vs. B–, B+ vs. C– – and are later tested on novel pairings, like B vs. D, to see whether they infer an overall ranking. Olga Lazareva, CC BY-ND
One possible explanation is that the animals that learn all the tasks create a mental ranking of these images: A > B > C > D > E. We test this idea by giving them new pairs they’ve never seen before, such as classroom (B) vs. highway (D). If they consistently pick the higher-ranked item, they’ve inferred the underlying order.
What’s fascinating is how many species succeed at this task. Monkeys, rats, pigeons – even fish and wasps – have all demonstrated transitive inference in one form or another.
The twist: Not all tasks are easy
But not all types of reasoning come so easily. There’s another kind of rule called transitivity that is different from transitive inference, despite the similar name. Instead of asking which picture is better, transitivity is about equivalence.
In this task, animals are shown a set of three pictures and asked which one goes with the center image. For example, if white triangle (A1) is shown, choosing red square (B1) earns a reward, while choosing blue square (B2) does not. Later, when red square (B1) is shown, choosing white cross (C1) earns a reward while choosing white circle (C2) does not. Now comes the test: white triangle (A1) is shown with white cross (C1) and white circle (C2) as choices. If they pick white cross (C1), then they’ve demonstrated transitivity.
In a transitivity task, subjects learn matching rules across overlapping sets – such as A1 matches B1, B1 matches C1 – and are tested on new combinations, such as A1 with C1 or C2, to assess whether they infer the relationship between A1 and C1. Olga Lazareva, CC BY-ND
The change may seem small, but species that succeed in those first transitive inference tasks often stumble in this task. In fact, they tend to treat the white triangle and the white cross as completely separate things, despite their common relationship with the red square. In my recently published review of research using the two tasks, I concluded that more evidence is needed to determine whether these tests tap into the same cognitive ability.
Small differences, big consequences
Why does the difference between transitive inference and transitivity matter? At first glance, they may seem like two versions of the same ability – logical reasoning. But when animals succeed at one and struggle with the other, it raises an important question: Are these tasks measuring the same kind of thinking?
The apparent difference between the two tasks isn’t just a quirk of animal behavior. Psychology researchers apply these tasks to humans in order to draw conclusions about how people reason.
For example, say you’re trying to pick a new almond milk. You know that Brand A is creamier than Brand B, and your friend told you that Brand C is even waterier than Brand B. Based on that, because you like a thicker milk, you might assume Brand A is better than Brand C, an example of transitive inference.
But now imagine the store labels both Brand A and Brand C as “barista blends.” Even without tasting them, you might treat them as functionally equivalent, because they belong to the same category. That’s more like transitivity, where items are grouped based on shared relationships. In this case, “barista blend” signals the brands share similar quality.
Researchers often treat these types of reasoning as measuring the same ability. But if they rely on different mental processes, they might not be interchangeable. In other words, the way scientists ask their questions may shape the answer – and that has big implications for how they interpret success in animals and in people.
This difference could affect how researchers interpret decision-making not only in the lab, but also in everyday choices and in clinical settings. Tasks like these are sometimes used in research on autism, brain injury or age-related cognitive decline.
If two tasks look similar on the surface, then choosing the wrong one might lead to inaccurate conclusions about someone’s cognitive abilities. That’s why ongoing work in my lab is exploring whether the same distinction between these logical processes holds true for people.
Just like a March Madness bracket doesn’t always predict the winner, a reasoning task doesn’t always show how someone got to the right answer. That’s the puzzle researchers are still working on – figuring out whether different tasks really tap into the same kind of thinking or just look like they do. It’s what keeps scientists like me in the lab, asking questions, running experiments and trying to understand what it really means to reason – no matter who’s doing the thinking.
It is seemingly a simple question but in practice not so.
Listening to danger or telling others of a danger is a very ancient practice. For it is better to share a potential danger than not to. It was easy to look this up:
Modern sense of “risk, peril, exposure to injury, loss, pain, etc.” (from being in the control of someone or something else) evolved first in French and was in English by late 14c. For this, Old English had pleoh; in early Middle English this sense is found in peril. For sound changes, compare dungeon, which is from the same source.
Thus a post on The Conversation that was about happiness caught my eye.
I am delighted to share it with you.
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Philly psychology students map out local landmarks and hidden destinations where they feel happiest
I am the director of the Happiness Lab at Drexel University, where I also teach a course on happiness. The Happiness Lab is a think tank that investigates the ingredients that contribute to people’s happiness.
Often, my students ask me something along the lines of, “Dr. Z, tell us one thing that will make us happier.”
As a first step, I advise them to spend more time outside.
Achieving lasting and sustainable happiness is more complicated. Research on the happiest countries in the world and the places where people live the longest, known as Blue Zones, shows a common thread: Residents feel they are part of something larger than themselves, such as a community or a city.
So if you’re living in a metropolis like Philadelphia, where, incidentally, the iconic pursuit of happiness charge was ratified in the Declaration of Independence, I believe urban citizenship – that is, forming an identity with your urban surroundings – should also be on your list.
He believed that this relationship was crucial to our psychological well-being.
More recent research in neuroscience and functional imaging has revealed a vast, intricate and complex neurological architecture underlying our psychological perception of a place. Numerous neurological pathways and functional loops transform a complex neuropsychological process into a simple realization: I am happy here!
For example, a happy place should feel safe.
The country of Croatia, a tourist haven for its beauty and culinary delights, is also one of the top 20 safest countries globally, according to the 2025 Global Peace Index.
The U.S. ranks 128th.
The availability of good food and drink can also be a significant factor in creating a happy place.
However, according to American psychologist Abraham Maslow, a pioneer in the field of positive psychology, the opportunity for social connectivity, experiencing something meaningful and having a sense of belonging is more crucial.
Furthermore, research on happy places suggests that they are beautiful. It should not come as a surprise that the happiest places in the world are also drop-dead gorgeous, such as the Indian Ocean archipelago of Mauritius, which is the happiest country in Africa, according to the 2025 World Happiness Report from the University of Oxford and others.
Happy places often provide access to nature and promote active lifestyles, which can help relieve stress. The residents of the island of Ikaria in Greece, for example, one of the original Blue Zones, demonstrate high levels of physical activity and social interaction.
I asked my undergraduate psychology students at Drexel, many of whom come from other cities, states and countries, to pick one place in Philadelphia where they feel happy.
From the 243 student responses, the Happiness Lab curated 28 Philly happy places, based on how frequently the places were endorsed and their accessibility.
Philadelphia’s founder, William Penn, would likely approve that Rittenhouse Square Park and three other public squares – Logan, Franklin and Washington – were included. These squares were vital to Penn’s vision of landscaped public parks to promote the health of the mind and body by providing “salubrious spaces similar to the private garden.” They are beautiful and approachable, serving as “places to rest, take a pause, work, or read a book,” one student told us.
My students said these are small, unexpected spots that provide an excellent opportunity for a quiet, peaceful break, to be present, whether enjoyed alone or with a friend. I checked them out and I agree.
The students also mentioned places I had never heard of even though I’ve lived in the city for over 30 years.
The “cat park” at 526 N. Natrona St. in Mantua is a quiet little park with an eclectic personality and lots of friendly cats.
Mango Mango Dessert at 1013 Cherry St. in Chinatown, which is a frequently endorsed happiness spot among the students because of its “bustling streets, lively atmosphere and delicious food,” is a perfect pit stop for mango lovers. And Maison Sweet, at 2930 Chestnut St. in University City, is a casual bakery and cafe “where you may end up staying longer than planned,” one student shared.
I find that Philly’s happy places, as seen through the eyes of college students, tend to offer a space for residents to take time out from their day to pause, reset, relax and feel more connected and in touch with the city.
Happiness principals are universal, yet our own journeys are very personal. Philadelphians across the city may have their own list of happy places. There are really no right or wrong answers. If you don’t have a personal happy space, just start exploring and you may be surprised what you will find, including a new sense of happiness.
See the full Philly Happiness Map list here, and visit the exhibit at the W.W. Hagerty Library at Drexel University to learn more.
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