dog
bleimanb | February 4, 2010Get a room...
Special thanks to Hydia Blobinson for forwarding this along!
jchosy | August 6, 2009The folks at PNAS have been biting their nails to the quick, anxiously awaiting the release of their groundbreaking news- Mutts are more genetically diverse than purebreds! The article had been under embargo until yesterday, forcing the researchers and journal editors to keep the valuable information under wraps. "I had a really hard time not telling my wife," admitted one of the journal editors, "I almost slipped up two times!"
As a precaution to prevent leaks to the media, the authors of the study have spent the last 10 days sequestered at an undisclosed hotel. Insider reports said they…
edyong | July 16, 2009Compare the elegant grace of a running wolf with the comical shuffle of a waddling dachshund, and you begin to understand what millennia of domestication and artificial selection can do to an animal. As dachshunds develop, the growing tips of their limb bones harden early, stunting their growth and leading to a type of dwarfism called chondrodysplasia. The same applies to at least 19 modern breeds including corgis, Pekingese and basset hounds, all of which have very short, curved legs.
These breeds highlight the domestic dog's status as the most physically diverse of mammals. Now, a team of…
zooillogix | July 16, 2009In the Midwest they have a game called "cornhole" which involves throwing bean bags into holes in boards. Growing up on the East Coast, cornhole had a completely different meaning, but living in Chitown for three years now, I am doing my best to blend in.
As a patron of the arts, I recently had a very special cornhole board commissioned featuring the likenesses of my two hunting dogs, Izzy and Mathman. I wanted to share the glorious result.
bioephemera | June 10, 2009While I was out of town this weekend, one of my friends lost her dog. As I read over the many caring comments on her Facebook page, it struck me how difficult it is to express condolences - especially on the loss of a pet. Like many others, I ended up simply saying "I'm sorry."
The significance of the relationship between pet and person is often minimized, even though we know that the unconditional love supplied by a pet can do astonishing things for human mental and physical health. Personally, I don't believe animals have souls, but neither do I believe they are soulless automatons. Cats…
pontiff | March 23, 2009Sundries.
Warren Buffet is often attributed as saying, "only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked" referring to how a bad economy exposes problems in a business. After reading too many comment sections on New York Times articles on the financial crisis, I think it should be "only when the tide goes out do you discover who's a real communist." (Note, dear reader beginning to flame me in the comments, that I didn't say whether I thought this was good or bad or neither good or bad.) Hard economic times really bring out the daggers in economic ideology. I love to…
bleimanb | January 14, 2009We're not going to go to in depth into this story, but it's worth a read.
Click for the Channel 9 News On Your Side report!
NVDH...the man!
zooillogix | January 13, 2009I took this pic of my dog Mathman in the vet's office last week just minutes before his neutering. He clearly knew what was in store...
zooillogix | August 21, 2008There's no interesting news. It appears all the world's animals have finally been discovered, their strange mating behaviors documented, and their interest in acting all crazy for YouTube evaporated. But we are undaunted. We will make the logical transition and become a knitting blog.
Once again, we bring you critters from Mochimochi Land complete with their creator's commentary. Past installments here and here.
Evolving Punk
Evolution is still a pretty radical idea - just ask this little Evolving Punk. He recently made the big step onto dry land from the primordial ooze of a dirty toilet.…
zooillogix | August 6, 2008Fascinating video from the PBS special, Dogs that Changed the World, on the changes that took place when foxes were bred for tameness in the former Soviet Union. This was originally posted on Greg Laden's Blog but I had to repost it here.
sporte | June 16, 2008Pet cloning is back!
Pets are funny things. Some owners find their pets to be closer than some human friends, other owners never really bond with their pets at all.
BioArts, a California biotech company, founded by ex-CEO of the now defunct Genetic Savings & Clone, is counting on the strength of those human-dog emotional bonds .
I've had several pets during the course of my life; dogs, cats, fish, scorpions, spiders, frogs, turtles, gerbils, and a hermit crab. Some pets were really easy to train and live with and some - well, let's just say some were more challenging. So, I…
esiegel | April 27, 2008Dear Reader(s):
This is Ethan, and I'm writing this to you to let you know that I owe you an apology. I have gotten so excited with the idea of bringing the story of the Universe to you -- to tell you how we got from the birth of the Universe to the present day, to tell you what the world, galaxy, and Universe is like and how it got to be that way -- that I've gotten carried away.
You deserve the story, because it's wonderful and beautiful. You deserve the story, because it's something specialized and complicated, and it's something that I happen to have studied, hard, for the last seven…
grrlscientist | March 27, 2008tags: playing fetch, cute dog, pets, streaming video
This is the funniest video of a cute dog that plays fetch all by himself! You've got to see how he does it! [2:09].
zooillogix | March 25, 2008Our cute Raccoon Dog post (directly below this one) just took a turn for crudeness and hilarity. Thanks to the combined efforts of readers Hypatia and pough, we now know that #1 - Raccoon dogs are known in Japanese folklore to have the magical ability to expand their scrotums and #2 - we got our hands on some truly classic old woodprint images from mid 1800s Japan.
Raccoon Dogs fishing and walking on the street
Raccoon Dogs river fishing and sheltering from an evening shower.
Raccoon dogs doing something religious and depicted as the seven lucky gods (guess Buddhism is a little mellower…
zooillogix | March 25, 2008Sometimes there is no news. Sometimes we have to tell you about dog sweaters. Today we will tell you about the Raccoon Dog.
The Raccoon Dog is a member of the canid family but is not a true dog. It is called a raccoon dog because it bears a superficial resemblance to a raccoon. It is a basal genus of Canidae, meaning it branched off into it's own adorable subgroup earlier than others. It is believed that the Racoon Dog family Nyctereutes has been evolutionarily distinct for seven to ten million years.
Like most dogs, the Raccoon Dog is omnivorous, but is unique in the range of different…
bleimanb | March 24, 2008A totally normal British couple has made headlines by wearing sweaters, knitted out of the hair of their deceased pet dogs. Beth and Brian Willis have made two sweaters, one out of Kara, a Samoyed, and the other from Penny, a Swedish Lapphund.
I can't decide which one is hotter.
Says Mrs Willis in this exclusive article in the Peabody Award winning Daily Mail, "It is not actually a hair but a wool, which is why it is so good for clothes," and, "Apparently it is quite popular with lots of the people who breed long-haired dogs." You know what is even more popular? Not being a total freak.
zooillogix | March 21, 2008Why are we posting so many videos these days you ask? I don't know!
Anyway this is both cool and somewhat off-putting/frightening but only because it is awesome.
From Slashdot:
"The US company Boston Dynamics has released an amazing new video of its quadruped robot BigDog. The highlight of the video (at 1:24) shows how the robot starts slipping on ice, almost falls several times, but finally regains its balance and continues walking. The video also shows the robot's ability to cope with different types of terrains, climb and descend steep slopes, and jump. Two years ago, the older version of…