For puppies, children and us older folk stairs can be a challenge!
Someone posted the following on the Care2 blogsite.
Enjoy!
Oh, nearly forgot! If you live in a home with stairs then be careful!
Category: Culture
Tanja Brandt
I promised you more background information.
You will all recall that when we were ‘enjoying’ the chaos of having new flooring installed in three of our rooms I posted over a number of days a selection of wonderful, incredible photographs taken by Tanja Brandt. Here is one of those photos.
We were all utterly enthralled by them and wanted to know more about Tanja.
But Tanja is German and her website and blogsite are, not surprisingly, in German. However, a good friend of mine from times past, Chris Snuggs, who is fluent in German (and French) came to the rescue when I asked for a favour of an English translation.
I sent Chris the link to Tanja’s ‘About Me’ page and here is what Chris emailed me yesterday.
Paul
At this URL: https://www.ingoundelse.de/%C3%BCber-mich/
…. she introduces herself with two short texts followed by a list of publications and/or photographic events and awards etc.
I have done a translation of the two elements of her introduction but not attempted to translate the list that follows.
I am assuming that if you want to write an introduction to her you can take her words according to my translation and reformulate them in your own words.
If you want a proper translation of her own words then I think I would need to work on it a bit more. The difficulty there is that if I translate her words directly it will not sound great in English; to get her meaning across in good English I would have to be a bit more free with the phrasing.
I hope that makes sense.
Made sense to me! Wonderful sense!
Here are those translations with the original German in blockquotes and the English translation by Chris topped and tailed with Tanja’s photographs:
Über mich …
Verlasse dich auf dein Herz – es schlug schon, bevor du denken konntest ……. gibt es nicht so viel zu erzählen. Meine große Leidenschaft, seit ich in Windeln krabbeln kann, sind Tiere.
Tiere im Allgemeinen – vor allem auch Greifvögel und Raubkatzen – und Hunde im Speziellen.
Ich glaube, ich spreche ihre Sprache.
Ein Leben ohne Tiere ist für mich schwer vorstellbar und wenn Jemand keine Tiere mag, dann wird er sich vermutlich nicht sehr lange bei mir aufhalten.
About me
Trust your heart; it was beating before you were capable of thought.
There’s not all that much to say. My greatest passion even since I was a baby are animals – all kinds of animals, above all birds of prey and big cats – and especially dogs.
I believe I speak their language!
For me a life without animals is difficult to imagine, and if someone doesn’t like animals, then he or she would probably not be around me for long.
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Fotografie ist meine Leidenschaft
Wie es begann?
Ich wollte schöne Fotos von meinen Tieren. Bzw überhaupt von Tieren. Fotos, die die Seele und den Charakter des jeweiligen Tieres widerspiegeln. Nicht einfach nur Fotos.
So kam mir der Gedanke, mit einer professionellen Kamera dürfte das kein Problem sein. Die Kamera wurde gekauft und es ging los – das Ergebnis war ernüchternd ….
Ich musste dann doch noch einige Workshops besuchen, um da zu sein, wo ich heute stehe.Kurse, Workshops, Webinare, Bücher, Austausch mit anderen Fotografen und viel üben. Und ich versuche jeden Tag, was dazu zu lernen und zu entdecken.
Aber allein das Technikverständnis macht es nicht aus, um die Seele der Tiere zu zeigen und die Arbeit mit den Tieren ist so wertvoll. Ich kann Tiere nur fotografieren, wenn sie sich wohlfühlen und mit Begeisterung mitmachen oder Wildtiere eben keine Angst vor mir haben.
Photography is my passion. How did it all begin?
I wanted to take beautiful photos of my animals, indeed, of all animals: photos which would reveal the soul and character of each animal – not just snaps …..
So I had the idea that all I needed was a professional camera. The camera was bought and off I went – the experience was chastening. I realized I needed training to get where I am now: went to workshops, on courses, internet lessons, books, exchanges with other photographers and lots more. And I still try every day to discover and learn something new.
But technique alone doesn’t suffice to lay bare the soul of a creature. Working with animals is so fulfilling, but I can only photograph them when they are at ease and enthusiastically join in the process, or if with wild animals when they are not afraid of me.
So many things make presenting this blog to you so very special for me. Then something comes along that takes it into the stratosphere of being special. That is Tanja Brandt. Tanja’s photographs and how she describes herself are stratospheric!
I am so pleased to have been granted permission by Tanja to share her photographs; something I never want to stop doing!
It’s in the language!
A comprehensive guide to the body language of our beautiful dogs.
Back in August 2016 I shared a post with you all from Vetstreet.com about interpreting the growls of a dog. It seemed to be liked by many of you.
Now fast forward to eleven days ago and an email that came in from Emma.
Dear Learning from Dogs Team,
My name’s Emma, a blogger at Hello Cute Pup.I have been reading your blog for some time, and I absolutely love what you have been doing! Your content inspires me on a daily basis, and I’m really in love with your website.
I’ve been thinking about how I could help add value to you and your blog and I would love to contribute a guest post on your site.
I was inspired to write this article after reading your great piece “Why Dogs Are Friendly”.
I promise that I will provide HIGH-quality content that you won’t find anywhere else.
As a pet parent myself, I’ve had tons of amazing experience that I could bring to your audience.
Here are some links to other pieces that I have written to give you an idea of the quality that I am bringing to the table.
Dog Express
http://www.dogexpress.in/how-to-choose-the-best-dog-food-for-pugs
Imagine Forest
http://www.imagineforest.com/blog/baileys-best-buddy/Safe and Healthy Life
http://www.safeandhealthylife.com/food-diet-for-dogs-the-ultimate-guide/
Let me know if you are interested. I already know your blogging style, plus I understand what your readers love as I am one.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Cheers and have a good day!
Emma
Well you all know me sufficiently well to know that I couldn’t resist. Especially after seeing how nicely Emma had presented those pieces she linked to above.
Here is Emma’s article.
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A Comprehensive Guide to Basic Dog Body Language
Understanding your loved ones’ body language is always important. If you understand how your partner, sister, mother, or father acts when they feel a certain way, you can more accurately meet their emotional needs. This is the same as it is with the canine members of your family.
Understanding how your dog behaves when he or she feels certain things will help you bond, and help build trust, as well as make both you and your dog happier.
How do you decode dog behavior? There are a few ways, and a few certain body signals that your dog will give you that you should understand. Here are a few of them.
Play Bow
You may have noticed that when a dog is feeling frisky and energetic, he or she will bow their front end to the ground and push their rear end into the air. Typically, this means that the dog wants to play.
Tail Wagging
It’s a common belief that tail wagging means that a dog is happy. While this can be true, tail wagging can also mean a few other things.
- A tail that wags low can mean your dog is scared or unsure.
- A high and stiff tail wag can mean that your dog feels irritated, scared, or unsure. This kind of tail wagging can often lead to a dog becoming aggressive if pushed.
Freezing
Dogs often “freeze” when they are scared or guarding something like food, water, a toy, or their owner. This means that the dog will stop what he or she is doing and stand in one position without moving. When a dog is frozen, he or she is more likely to bite.
Rolling
When a dog rolls over, it usually means that he or she is submissive- but it’s important to pay attention to the dog’s whole body. If your dog’s tail and mouth are hanging loose, it can mean that he or she wants a belly rub or some attention. If the tail is tucked in or his or her mouth is stiff, it can mean that your dog is scared or nervous. Before you touch a dog who is rolled over, look for the signs of comfort.
Perked Ears
Chances are, if you own a dog, you’ve seen him or her with his ears perked up. This means that your dog is alert and attentive.
Tail Between Legs
When a dog tucks his or her tail between his legs, this is a classic sign of fear. Dogs who are scared, as a general rule of thumb, are prone to becoming aggressive in an attempt to protect themselves- so be careful when getting too close to a dog who is acting fearful.
Signs of stress
Like humans, dogs can become stressed. Stress in dogs can make them act in certain ways and exhibit specific body language. Some of the signs that mean that a dog is stressed are:
- Yawning in new situations
- Panting when it isn’t hot
- Licking their front paws as someone new approaches
- Licking of the lips despite not recently having eaten or drank
- Scratching
- Avoiding eye contact
- Shaking himself off after someone new touches him
- Highly audible exhales that can be accompanied by whining or avoiding eye contact
- Lying down and refusing to participate
Signs of fear
Dogs exhibit easy-to-read signs of fear. Some of these signs are:
- Drooling
- Pacing
- Tucking his tail while moving away from something
- Whining
- His or her feet start to sweat
- Growling and moving away
- Curling his or her lips and showing teeth
- Trying to hide
- Running away
Signs of Happiness
Along with taking up the play bow position, dogs offer us other physical signs that they are happy. These include:
- Energetic tail wagging
- Tail thumping on the floor or ground
- Lying in a relaxed, one paw tucked under, position
- Bumping or pressing against you
- Initiating physical contact
- Jumping up
- Smiling (yes, sometimes it really does look as if your dog smiles)
- Playful barking to get your attention
Although the above behaviors are common in most dogs, it’s important to remember that dogs have individual personalities – what one dog does in a situation, isn’t necessarily what another does in that same situation. For example, if your dog reacts well with some dog shampoo, another dog might hate it. This shampoo might make him panic and he could fear baths forever.
To truly understand what your dog’s body is trying to tell you, pay attention to how he or she acts. He may react in the ways that are listed above, or he may have his own unique way of expressing to you how he feels.
Context is also a key point to focus on when you’re trying to determine how your dog feels based on his body language. For example, if your dog is being cornered by another, bigger and more intimidating dog and he wags his tail, chances are that he isn’t happy. In this situation, he more than likely is gearing up for a fight or is feeling scared.
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My hopes are that Emma will be writing many more guest posts for this place.
Oh, want to know a little more about Emma?
Emma is the founder of HelloCutePup. As the owner of 3 dogs, Emma has had the pleasure of learning the ins and outs to becoming a pet owner. With years of experience working on training, at-home dog health care, and aesthetic maintenance, she has the real-world experience that every pet owner is looking for. She is an avid blogger who enjoys giving realistic tips and tricks to help dog owners understand their pet’s personalities and to help pets easily become a part of the family.
Fabulous!
Picture Parade Two Hundred and Nine
Just a few memories of the last week.
Our English guests, Mark and Debbie, who stayed with us after traveling to Warm Springs, South-East of Portland, Oregon, to view the eclipse took the following three photographs.
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Then you will love the next one. Sent in by Neil Kelly from Devon, England.
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And another beauty courtesy of Neil K.
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Back to the stars!
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Finally, back to Tanja Brandt whose most beautiful photographs will be gracing these Picture Parades in the future.
The day of the eclipse!
The day has arrived! Listen carefully!
Listen?? Yes, and thanks to The Smithsonian, if you are blind or visually impaired!
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What Does an Eclipse Sound Like?
A new app will allow blind and visually impaired users to experience the upcoming solar eclipse on August 21.
By Nathan Hurst
smithsonian.com August 14, 2017
How would you describe an eclipse to a blind person? The moon moves in front of the sun, yes. But what does that look like? Someone trained in illustrative description of images might say, “The moon appears as a featureless black disk that nearly blocks out the sun. The sun’s light is still visible as a thin band around the moon’s black disk. To the upper right, at the moon’s leading edge, a small area of sunlight still shines brilliantly.”
That’s just an example of how such an event could be described. Bryan Gould, director of accessible learning and assessment technologies at the National Center for Accessible Media, a non-profit working to make media experiences accessible to people with disabilities, is hoping to offer oral descriptions of the eclipse in an app. Paired with other features, like a tactile diagram and audio from the changing natural environment as the eclipse darkens the sky, the app is designed to make the event more accessible to blind or visually impaired people who want to experience it.
Gould is working with Henry Winter, a solar astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, to develop the app, called Eclipse Soundscapes. As the August 21 solar eclipse darkens a path across the United States, Eclipse Soundscapes will release descriptions, timed—based on the user’s location—to match the progress of the eclipse.
Winter conceived Eclipse Soundscapes after a conversation with a friend who’s been blind since birth. She asked him to explain what an eclipse means.
Such an event might provide an interesting representation of the eclipse, thought Winter, so he partnered with the National Park Service’s Natural Sounds program, which preserves and catalogs sounds from the parks. Helpers stationed at national parks along the route will record audio during the eclipse, to hear the change in the “bioacoustical chorus” of the animals.
This can’t happen in real time, of course, so the National Center for Accessible Media is providing illustrative descriptions, based on a previous eclipse. The sounds of crickets, frogs and birds becoming active on the day of the eclipse will be added to the app later.
Last, with the help of an audio engineer named Miles Gordon, Winter is trying something completely new. Gordon developed a “rumble map” of the eclipse: The app places images of different stages of an eclipse on your smartphone’s screen, and as you trace your finger across the eclipse’s image, the vibration increases or decreases based on the brightness of the image.
“It does give you the impression that you’re actually feeling the sun, as you move your finger around,” says Winter.
“I realized I didn’t have the vocabulary to answer that question for her,” says Winter. “Every way I thought about it was visual in nature, and I didn’t know how to explain it to somebody … light, dark, bright, dim, flash. All these different words have no meaning to somebody that’s never seen.”
But the project goes well beyond audio descriptions. It includes two further elements: audio of the changing soundscape caused by the eclipse, and a tactile exploration of the eclipse’s image (which means that people who are blind or visually impaired can “feel” the eclipse using vibrations on their smartphones).
Many creatures become active as the sun sets, and many of them use darkness as an indicator of time of day. During an eclipse, crickets will chirp and frogs will chorus, thinking night has fallen. These habits were noted as far back as 1932, in a Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences article titled “Observations on the Behavior of Animals During the Total Solar Eclipse of August 31, 1932.”
Scientists around the world will be using the eclipse as an opportunity to study solar astronomy in a way they usually can’t, measuring the ultraviolet light emitted from the sun’s corona, which Earth-based observers can’t normally see, as it is overpowered by the normal sunlight. It’s also rare for an eclipse to cover this much land — it traverses from Oregon to South Carolina — and Winter points out that it is a particularly good opportunity for education and outreach.
Though education is important, for Wanda Diaz Merced, a visiting scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who is completely blind, there’s a lot more to the eclipse than that. Merced, who has consulted on the Eclipse Soundscapes project, studies human-computer interaction and astrophysics, and to do her research, she needs assistance translating data into a format she can interact with. She’s been building tools to help with that translation, and sees elements of Winter’s project that could contribute.
“It’s still not a prototype that I may use, for example, to study elements of the photosphere. It is not on that stage,” says Merced. “But hopefully one day we will be able to not only hear, but to touch.”
The eclipse will occur on August 21, starting around 10 a.m. in Oregon and finishing by 3 p.m .in South Carolina. The Eclipse Soundscapes app is available for iOS now, and the team is working on an Android app as well.
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I can’t imagine there’s anyone still pondering on whether or not to view the eclipse.
But that still doesn’t stop me offering you this recently presented TED Talk.
On August 21, 2017, the moon’s shadow will race from Oregon to South Carolina in what some consider to be the most awe-inspiring spectacle in all of nature: a total solar eclipse. Umbraphile David Baron chases these rare events across the globe, and in this ode to the bliss of seeing the solar corona, he explains why you owe it to yourself to witness one, too.
This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxMileHigh, an independent event. TED editors featured it among our selections on the home page.
About the speaker: David Baron David Baron writes about science in books, magazines, newspapers and for public radio. He formerly served as science correspondent for NPR and science editor for PRI’s The World.
Enjoy it, good people. And protect your eyes!!!
Or better still allow NASA Television to show the eclipse to you.
NASA Television will air a four-hour show – Eclipse Across America – which will include live video of the event, along with coverage of activities in parks, libraries, stadiums, festivals and museums across the nation, and on social media. NASA’s show begins at 15:00 UTC (11 a.m. EDT; translate to your time zone), or later (we’ve seen this time waffle around a bit). Check the website for changes or further details.
Flooring Saga Day Five
Hopefully back to normal for tomorrow.
(And, apologies, if there have been some duplications of these fabulous photographs.)
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Don’t know about you but returning to my ‘normal’ style of blog posts could run the risk of being seen as inferior to the posts of the last four days!
But can’t resist sharing one further photograph with you.
Just stunningly beautiful!
Flooring Saga Day Four
In lieu of being ‘off line’ over the weekend.
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These photographs are as good as any animal photos ever get!!
Enhancing the life of our dogs!
We truly do want our dogs to live to a grand old age.
In recent posts I have included photographs of Cleo and Brandy. (As I will now do again!)
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However, one of the sad aspects of our bigger dogs is that their lifespan is usually shorter than our smaller dogs.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could live longer lives.
That is the reason that I didn’t hesitate for a moment in wanting to share an essay that was recently published on the Care2 site.
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Want Your Dog to Live to 30? Add This to Their Bowl
a Care2 favorite by Lisa Spector
About Lisa Follow Lisa at @throughadogsear
As I watched pet nutrition blogger Rodney Habib’s TedX video below, I found it simultaneously jaw-dropping and not surprising. After his dog, Sammie, was diagnosed with cancer, Habib went on a mission to find out why canine cancer is a growing epidemic. Currently, one out of every two dogs will be diagnosed with cancer at sometime in their life, mostly between age 6 and 12.
I have a 13-year-old Labrador. Admittedly, I’m obsessed with my awareness that he’s approaching the end of his life. But, what if he weren’t? What if he could live until he’s 30 like Maggie, the Kelpie, from Australia. Maggie was possibly the world’s oldest dog.
During Habib’s trek around the world, he spoke with researchers and scientists. He learned that dogs have a higher rate of cancer than any other mammal. In the ’70s, dogs lived to age 17; today the average life span is 11. Why?
Diabetes is up 900 percent in dogs in the last five years. Obesity is up 60 percent. While 10 percent of all cancer cases are genetic, 90 percent are the results of lifestyle and environmental influences, including stress, obesity, infection, sedentary lifestyle, toxins, pollution and most importantly diet.
Habib spoke with Norwegian scientist, Thomas Sandberg, who is conducting a 30-year-old study (the longest observational study to date). Sandberg is hoping to prove that poor quality food may cause cancer to develop in dogs and cats, mainly due to a compromised immune system.
Here’s the part of Rodney’s TedX Talk that was jaw-dropping for me: Research shows that dogs on a diet of dry commercial pet food fed leafy green vegetables at least three times a week were 90 percent less likely to develop cancer than dogs that weren’t. And dogs fed yellow/orange vegetables at least three times a week were 70 percent less likely to develop cancer.
I feed Sanchez and Gina organic kale, spinach, green beans and carrots, along with many fruits. Personally, I wasn’t surprised by the benefits, but by the research showing that just a little bit of produce added to kibble could have such a profound effect on canine health.
Thomas Sandberg has Great Danes, who typically live only six to eight years. In a 6-year study of 80 dogs fed a completely raw diet with low amounts of carbs, only one dog developed cancer.
Another study at Purdue University showed a 90 percent decrease risk of cancer when they added green leafy vegetables to a bowl of processed food three times a week.
Remember Maggie, the world’s oldest dog? In addition to a diet that included raw fed grass milk, she also self fasted some days. She lived on a dairy farm and exercised all day long, often getting in 9 kilometers (5 1/2 miles ). Obesity is also now known to be a contributing factor to canine cancer, which is why exercising with your pet is so important.
We have dogs because we love them. We bring them into our human world and expect them to adjust. They do, because they want to please us. We expect them to follow our house rules, listen to the music we choose, build their life around our schedules, and accept the food we choose for them. But, what if we knew more and chose differently for them? How long would they live?
Do your pets eat green leafy veggies?
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Now if you have read down to this point but not yet watched Rodney Habib’s talk then …. STOP!
Go back and watch that talk!
Then you can truly appreciate the value of looking at the diets of our beautiful dogs!
Love to hear your thoughts on this!
Oh, and both Brandy and little Pedy are great vegetable eaters. But we will be following the recommendations of Rodney Habib and will share our findings with you all later on.
Those deeper ways of listening
How humans and animals communicate with each other has more than an edge of mystery to it!
We sleep with our bedroom door open to the main run of the rest of the house. Generally, all six dogs sleep in our bedroom unless it is a very warm night when some of them may choose the cooler tiled surface of the kitchen floor.
Cleo, our female German Shepherd, has a bit of a sensitive stomach and it is not unknown for her to need to be let outside in the middle of the night. Just a couple of nights ago her need for a ‘poo’ break came at 02:40!
But the point of this is that no matter how deeply I am sleeping, all it takes is a short, quiet whimper next to my side of bed and I am instantly awake. I need no time at all to know that Cleo has to be let outside from our bedroom door that opens out onto the deck. A few minutes later I hear her feet padding along the wooden boards of the deck and she is let back in to the bedroom.
Thus this demonstrates how well I understand her and in turn how well she acutely listens to me.
Just look at this photograph.
The connection, the intensity, of her attention towards me. And this was just from me pointing the camera at her and ‘click, clicking’ my tongue.
Moving on!
My introduction today was inspired by an article that I recently read on the Care2 site and that I want to share with you. Here it is.
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Can Humans Understand When Animals Are in Distress?
By: Laura Burge August 13, 2017
About Laura Follow Laura at @literarylaura
Have you ever jumped at the sound of birds fighting or a squirrel screaming? Heard an animal make a sound somewhere nearby that made your heart race?
More than one hundred years ago, Darwin suggested that there was a universal understanding of certain animal vocalizations — a way of expressing emotion that went all the way back to the Earth’s earliest animals. Now, researchers are re-examining that theory, and they’re making some interesting headway.
In a study published in the journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,” researchers decided to explore the idea that animal vocalizations, including distress calls, might be recognizable across different species — and even into different animal classes.
Earlier research delved into whether or not humans could detect which emotion, or signal, another mammal was using, but this study is the first to examine other vertebrates as well. Amphibians and reptiles joined the club, and, perhaps surprisingly, humans did pretty well determining what these animals were trying to communicate.
The researchers primarily looked into whether or not people listening to certain animal sounds would be able to detect the level of arousal — high or low — that an animal expressed vocally. High arousal indicates an animal in distress, expressing desperate or negative screams, who might be calling out because of a fight, a predator in the area or another perceived danger. Scientists believe that these sounds are part of an old signaling system.
Researchers asked 75 college-aged individuals to listen to sounds from nine different species. In order to account for language differences, these people included English, German and Mandarin speakers.
Scientists collected 180 recordings of animal vocalizations, reflecting high or low levels of excitement, such as “the sounds of frogs in competition for mates, monkeys reacting to danger or ravens confronted by a dominant bird,” and included humans in that list, instructing actors to react neutrally or with different, heightened emotions while speaking Tamil.
The 75 people were then asked to identify which vocalization out of paired sounds from the same species represented the higher level of arousal.
In this study, the results showed that people identified the correct “emotion,” roughly speaking, better than expected by chance. Here is how the accuracy broke down across species:
- Humans: 95 percent correct
- Giant panda: 94 percent correct
- Hourglass tree frog: 90 percent correct
- African bush elephant: 88 percent correct
- American alligator: 87 percent correct
- Black-capped chickadee: 85 percent correct
- Pig: 68 percent correct
- Common raven: 62 percent correct
- Barbary macaque (monkey): 60 percent correct
It seems strange that people were less able to identify the distress call of a monkey than a frog, but Harold Gouzoules, a bioacoustician and animal behavior expert at Emory University, posits that the monkey calls may have sounded less extreme in intensity than those of the other species, making it harder to tell the difference.
“Our study shows that humans are naturally able to recognize emotional arousal across all classes of vocalizing animals,” said Piera Filippi, who studies the evolution of cognition and communication at the Vrije University Brussels in Belgium.
This doesn’t mean that humans should feel confident in interpreting animal emotions or body language in general, though. Those behaviors can vary greatly, and humans are prone to misinterpretation and anthropomorphism. You wouldn’t, for example, want to assume a wolf baring its teeth is simply smiling at you.
Naturally, much remains to be studied in the effort to understand a wider range of animal emotions. Filippi hopes to repeat the experiment, but with the black-capped chickadees taking the place of the college-aged humans in interpreting the distress calls. It will be interesting to see if this understanding between humans and other animals goes both ways.
Could there be a beneficial reason for animals to understand each other’s distress calls? What do you think?
Photo Credit: Valentino Funghi/Unsplash
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Just so long as too many different animals don’t all sound out distress calls at the same time around here!
Why Dogs Are Friendly
Yes, we know that they are but the science as to why this is nonetheless is fascinating!
Inevitably when you think about my cultural roots you would not be surprised to hear that I use the BBC News website as a key source of staying in touch with the world. But very rarely would I think of sharing a news item with you via these pages.
One of those rare exceptions greeted my eyes back on July 20th. It was an article published by Helen Briggs of the BBC under the Science & Environment news classification. I can’t imagine any reason why I can’t republish it here.
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Why dogs are friendly – it’s written in their genes
By Helen Briggs – BBC News, 20 July 2017
Being friendly is in dogs’ nature and could be key to how they came to share our lives, say US scientists.
Dogs evolved from wolves tens of thousands of years ago.
During this time, certain genes that make dogs particularly gregarious have been selected for, according to research.
This may give dogs their distinctive personalities, including a craving for human company.
“Our finding of genetic variation in both dogs and wolves provides a possible insight into animal personality, and may even suggest similar genes may have roles in other domestic species (maybe cats even),” said Dr Bridgett vonHoldt of Princeton University.
The researchers studied the behaviour of domestic dogs, and grey wolves living in captivity. They carried out a number of tests of the animals’ skills at problem-solving and sociability.
These showed that wolves were as good as dogs at solving problems, such as retrieving pieces of sausage from a plastic lunchbox.
Dogs, however, were much more friendly. They spent more time greeting human strangers and gazing at them, while wolves were somewhat aloof.
DNA tests found a link between certain genetic changes and behaviours such as attentiveness to strangers or picking up on social cues.
Similar changes in humans are associated with a rare genetic syndrome, where people are highly sociable.
Dr Elaine Ostrander of the National Institutes of Health, who was a co-researcher on the study, said the information would be useful in studying human disease.
“This exciting observation highlights the utility of the dog as a genetic system informative for studies of human disease, as it shows how minor variants in critical genes in dogs result in major syndromic effects in humans,” she said.
Dogs were domesticated from wolves between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago.
New story for domestication of dogs
This process began when wolves that were tolerant of humans sneaked into hunter gatherer camps to feed on food scraps.
Over the course of history, wolves were eventually tamed and became the dogs we know today, which come in all shapes and sizes.
The finding of genetic changes linked to sociability in dogs shows how their friendly behaviour might have evolved.
“This could easily play into the story then of how these wolves leave descendants that are also ‘friendlier’ than others, setting the path for domestication,” said Dr vonHoldt.
The research is published in the journal, Science Advances.
Follow Helen on Twitter.
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When it comes to sociability in dogs, try this one for size!
Learning from Dogs 