It’s raining and blowing a gale in Christchurch today. So I thought I’d share this little video to cheer everyone up!
Researchers have now proven what dog trainers have known for some time: dogs have a sense of quality when it comes to treats and they will seek out the higher value ones.
Kristina Pattison and Thomas Zentall of the University of Kentucky tested the principle by feeding baby carrots and string cheese to ten dogs of various breeds
The research was conducted on dogs that would willingly eat cheese and baby carrots when offered, but showed a preference for the cheese. However, when given a choice between one slice of cheese, or the cheese together with a piece of carrot, nine of the ten dogs chose the cheese alone. That is, they chose less food over more food.
People, for instance, tend to place greater value on a set of six baseball cards that are in perfect condition, than on the same set of six perfect cards together with three more cards in fair condition.
In cases where rapid decisions must be made, quick solution-driven heuristics such as the “less is more” effect may come in handy. For instance, it is helpful when members of the same species, such as a pack of dogs, feed together. The one that hesitates may lose food to faster-choosing competitors.
But the fact that one in ten dogs did choose the cheese-and-carrot combination suggests that levels of motivation may play a role in this effect. The outlier dog, for instance, had a history of living in shelters and fending for himself.
Source: Springer media release
Just received this link from a friend – a cute puppy and an Australian Magpie playing in the yard. Great pals.
Happy Friday!
This week, the Duchess of Cambridge visited the Irish Guards to present sprigs of shamrocks to the regiment’s members. That included Domhnall, the Guards’ mascot. Domhnall is an Irish Wolfhound (how appropriate!)
(Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
Posted in Dogs, special dogs and awards
Tagged Domhnall, Duchess of Cambridge, Irish Guards, Irish Wolfhound, St Patrick's Day
copyright Bill Buelow
Well done to Olympic skier Gus Kenworthy for helping to save some of Sochi’s stray dogs. Don’t forget to click through on the link in this article to the Today Show interview where Kenworthy and his friend talk about the challenges they faced in saving the dogs.
Posted in animal welfare
Tagged 2014 Winter Olympics, dogs, Gus Kenworthy, Olympics, Sochi, Today Show, Winter Olympics
This video comes via the Center for Pet Safety, a registered 501(c)3 research and advocacy organization dedicated to companion animal and consumer safety.
Darla was the victim of a poorly designed dog toy purchased at Walmart by her unsuspecting owner. Darla ingested nylon fabric that wrapped around her tongue and proceeded into her digestive tract causing peritonitis. She fought for her life for over 3 days before losing her battle.
You can read Darla’s story by clicking on this link.
Dog owners must understand that dog toys are not subject to recalls and the burden of proof and legal remedies rest with the dog owner in cases like these.
I’m sharing this story to spread the word about this dog toy and to remind everyone to be careful in their selection of toys. Toys sold at discount retailers are particularly suspect, such as those in New Zealand that are imported from China and are not well made and use paints and dyes that clearly rub off when being chewed.
Read Darla’s story and then give your dog a hug – and promise to keep them safe from deadly toys.
Source: National Geographic
Posted in animal welfare, dog breeds, Dogs
Tagged adoption, American Pit Bull Terrier, bully breeds, euthanasia, Pit Bull, second chance, Staffordshire Bull Terrier
Yet more research on how dogs’ brains work. This time from a research team at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary and published in the journal Current Biology.
Using functional MRI, the team could see where blood flowed in the brains of a group of 11 dogs. The dogs had been specially trained using positive reinforcement techniques to lie still in the MRI scanner for six minutes.
A dog lies still in the fMRI scanner, wearing earphones to pipe in sounds as part of the study. (Photo by Eniko Kubinyi)
The team played each dog a series of over 200 sounds across several MRI sessions. The sounds included human voices, dog vocalizations, and meaningless noises.
When the results were compared, it showed that the dogs’ brains appear to have a dedicated area that displays more activity in response to voices (whether human speech or dogs barking) than other meaningless noises (such as glass breaking).
More importantly, that part of the brain shows more activity upon hearing an emotionally positive sound, as compared to a negative one. This means that our dogs are able to distinguish a tone of voice that is positive from one that is negative. (Something many of us probably already knew)
The voice areas of the dogs’ brains is similar to that found in humans, suggesting that our species evolved from a common ancestor almost 100 million years ago, enabling a high degree of communication and social structure.
“We know that dogs don’t have language, per se, but we see now that dogs have very similar mechanisms to process social information as humans,” Attila Andics, lead researcher on the study says. “It makes us wonder what aspects of so-called ‘language skills’ are not so human-specific after all, but are also there in other species. That’s something we plan to look at.”
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Here are my earlier blogs about functional MRI studies on dogs:
DoggyMom.com 