Pets and Animal

Clever canines: can dogs really tell when you’re being

August 5, 2022 AKDSEODogs

Name: Canis familiaris (AKA dogs).

Age: As a distinct species, at least 15,000 years old.

Appearance: Varies widely.

Common traits: Excellent sense of smell, exceptional intelligence.

What are you talking about? My dog is a moron. It’s more of an emotional intelligence.

Why would a dog need emotional intelligence? They specialise in understanding humans.

Again, not my dog. He speaks barely a word of English. Maybe not, but most dogs can pick up on human gestures without training. For example, they know what pointing at something means.

Big deal. Apes don’t understand pointing.

I thought apes were smart. They are on many levels, but they just aren’t as attuned to human behaviour as dogs are.

Give me another example. According to a new study from the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, dogs can even interpret our intentions.

What does that mean? It means your dog knows the difference between you being unkind, and you being merely hopeless.

How would you go about discovering something like that? Through experimentation. In the study, humans were placed inside transparent boxes, with a small hole through which they could feed the test dogs a bit of food.

I’m more or less with you so far. On some occasions the experimenters pretended to be clumsy and dropped the food inside the transparent box; on others they withheld the food in a teasing fashion. The dogs consistently displayed more patience with clumsiness.

So how do you measure the amount of patience being displayed by a dog? I’m glad you asked: right-tail wagging.

Come again? A tail wagging more to the right is thought to be associated with the left side of the dog’s brain, and with more positive dog emotions.

Seriously? “The rightward tail bias found in the clumsy condition is supportive of the interpretation that

10 families in Iowa town told to give up dogs by authorities

August 4, 2022 AKDSEODogs

KEYSTONE, Iowa (KCRG/Gray News) – Ten families in an Iowa town must get rid of their family dogs after being told to do so by local authorities. The dogs are pit bulls or look like pit bulls.

The Benton County Sheriff’s Office told the dog owners living in Keystone that they had 10 days to find new homes for their pets, according to KCRG. That was on July 22.

MaKinzie Brecht found out her dog Nightmare couldn’t live with her anymore during the course of a normal day.

“My mom told the sheriff where I was,” she said. “He came and spoke to me at my work and let me know that me, along with nine other addresses, were turned in because we had pit bulls or dogs that look like pit bulls.”

Benton County has an ordinance prohibiting dangerous animals; included in the list is “any dog which has the appearances and characteristics of being the breed of Staffordshire Terrier, American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, any other breed commonly known as pit bulls, pit bull dogs or pit bull terriers, or a combination of any of these breeds.” The ordinance dates from March 21, 2000.

According to Preston Moore, Iowa state director for the Humane Society, the Benton County ordinance is “one of the most vague.”

“It doesn’t actually necessarily say a dog has to be proven to be a quote unquote pit bull,” Moore said. “In Benton County, a dog just has to have some characteristics of those dogs. And then a very arbitrary process can take place where somebody can determine this dog happens to look like, sort of, one of these dogs, so it’s not allowed.”

Gabby Gormley is one of the Keystone dog-owners who was told to get rid of her pet because

Chris Evans shares his approach to dog parenting

August 3, 2022 AKDSEODogs

His owner is also actor Chris Evans, which makes the pair’s selfies ten times more “like”-able on Instagram.

Named after a character from the movie “Oliver & Company,” Dodger is a boxer-mix that the Marvel star adopted in 2015. One half of a “pair of dysfunctional codependents,” Dodger has at least as many admirers as his famous owner, who this week announced a partnership with dog food company Jinx in a move that’s as on-brand for Evans, one of Hollywood’s most prolific dog dads, as one could get.

In a conversation with CNN, Evans talks about how Dodger inspired his new business venture, which will have him playing “an active role in the business and creative direction of the brand,” according to a press release, and the humbling pleasures of pet parenting.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

CNN: I was told Dodger was going be here, and I see him roaming about.

CHRIS EVANS: Yeah, yeah. He’s back there.

Not exactly a keep-him-on-your-lap-during-a-Zoom dog.

No, he might take up the whole frame.

Chris Evans announced his partnership with dog food company Jinx on Wednesday.

I’m a passionate dog mom myself, so I wanted to ask you a little bit about your journey as a dog dad, and what inspired you to get involved with a company like this.

I mean, we’re always looking for different partnerships and ways to expand and have fun creatively beyond acting. I had actually been giving Dodger the Jinx treats for a while, and he loved them, and then my business manager brought me this opportunity. When you actually sit down with the company, you get to know the people, it’s so nice to meet people who have a shared passion and who kind of seem like they’re really doing something good in the world and actually helping. Then on

Dogs can ‘see’ with their noses, study suggests

August 2, 2022 AKDSEODogs

Dogs are renowned for their ability to identify and track objects by scent. Now it’s been revealed they enhance this talent with special brain structures that link it to how they see.

A study published this month in the Journal of Neuroscience revealed that vision and the sense of smell are connected in the brains of dogs, something not yet found in any other species.

“The most interesting thing about this research are the connections from the nose up to the occipital lobe, which houses the visual cortex,” said veterinary neurologist Philippa Johnson, an associate professor at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and senior author of the study.

She and her colleagues studied MRI scans of the brains of 23 dogs that showed neurological connections between the olfactory bulb, where smells are recognized, and their occipital lobe, where vision is processed.

Humans, who rely mainly on vision, have no such connections in their brains, although it’s possible there’s something similar in other animals that depend heavily on scent, Johnson said.

The discovery suggests smell and vision in dogs are integrated in some way, although it’s not known how dogs experience the two senses functioning together.

“Scent contributes to the visual cortex in dogs, but a dog’s experience is hard for us to know,” Johnson said. “But I think they can use scent to work out where things are.”

She explained that when humans walk into a room, they primarily use their sense of vision to establish who is there or how furniture is positioned. But dogs seem to integrate scent into their interpretation of their environment and how they are orientated in it, she said.

That’s borne out by the behavior of dogs that have lost their vision but don’t seem greatly affected by the fact that they have

Seven pseudoscorpion species discovered by Bush Blitz

August 1, 2022 AKDSEOInsects Arthropods Arachnids

Australia’s leading species discovery program, Bush Blitz, has discovered seven pseudoscorpion species which are believed to be new to science, during an expedition to Wilinggin Country in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia.

The pseudoscorpions were discovered by Dr Mark Harvey, Head of Department and Curator (Arachnids and Myriapods) from the Western Australian Museum, at Charnley River Station, an Australian Wildlife Conservancy property, and at Wunaamin Conservation Park.

Dr Harvey, who is an arachnologist specialising in spiders, scorpions and pseudoscorpions, believes some of the pseudoscorpions may be endemic to the Kimberley region, meaning they are found nowhere else in the world.

As the name suggests, pseudoscorpions are not actually scorpions – although with eight legs and the pincers of a scorpion they look very similar. Pseudoscorpions and scorpions are both arachnids, but pseudoscorpions have a pear-shaped body and no tail. They look like a cross between a spider, a scorpion and a tick.

Like spiders, pseudoscorpions hunt their prey or ambush them. They have glands in their claws that produce venom, which is used to immobilise their prey. They can also spin silk from a gland in their jaw to make cocoons for mating or moulting.

Bush Blitz undertakes expeditions on conservation areas across Australia. It has discovered more than 1,800 new species of Australian plants and animals in the last decade – adding thousands of new species records to those already known.

There are an estimated 580,000-680,000 species in Australia, but up to three-quarters of this biodiversity is yet to be identified and scientifically described. Around forty-five per cent of continental Australia and over 90 per cent of our marine area have never been comprehensively surveyed by scientists.

Fifteen scientists, Indigenous rangers, Traditional Owners and five Western Australian teachers from the Bush Blitz TeachLive project are working together

Inflation leading families to hand pets to animal shelters,

August 1, 2022 AKDSEOPets and Animal

ROANE COUNTY, WV (WOWK) — As the price of everything goes up, and families struggle to stretch their budget, many are handing their pets over to animal shelters and rescue organizations.

“She’s been on antibiotics and medications,” said Roane County Humane Officer Tanya Hicks, as she prepared a recent shelter intake, Grace, for a follow-up vet visit.

Grace came to the Roane County Animal Shelter after being attacked by other dogs. Her story has been shared many times over the last several days on their Facebook page.

But she’s one of 107 animals currently being cared for here at the small rural shelter with three full-time employees.

“I mean, we adopted two and we got three adult dogs in and five puppies, you know, that were abandoned,” Hicks said. “Today we got in two more puppies. I mean, we are crunched.”

Adoptions are down and the number of animals needing help is up.

“Please keep in mind, we are full,” Hicks said. “We don’t have room for anything. It is like that everywhere.”

They say people needing to surrender their animals can help by planning ahead and not waiting until the last minute.

“We try to help out as much as possible. Just please be patient with us. I mean everybody is struggling,” Hicks said.

There are currently 107 animals at the Roane County Animal Shelter.

If you think your budget is getting so stretched you can no longer provide basic care for your pet, shelters want to know as soon as possible so they have time to work on a solution.

“There’s not enough adopters, not enough fosters, not enough volunteers,” Hicks said.