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Dogs have been found to be sensitive to Earth's magnetic field, and apparently align themselves along the magnetic north-south axis before they defecate. Czech and German researchers studied 70 dogs during 1,893 defecations and 5,582 urinations over the course of two years, and found that when the Earth's magnetic field was stable the dogs chose to align themselves with it. When it was unstable, such as during a solar flare, the dogs would become confused.

Scientists said Wednesday they had discovered the oldest remains of a domestic dog in the Americas dating back more than 10,000 years, suggesting the animals accompanied the first waves of human settlers. Humans are thought to have migrated to North America from Siberia over what is today the Bering Strait at the end of the last Ice Age -- between 30,000 and 11,000 years ago. A new study led by the University at Buffalo analysed the mitochondrial DNA of a bone fragment found in Southeast Alaska. The team initially thought the fragment belonged to a bear. But closer examination revealed...

FAIRFIELD, Idaho — Great Pyrenees dogs that are working to protect flocks of sheep in the southern Idaho wilderness keep getting “rescued” by people who think the dogs are lost. Flat Top sheep rancher Cory Peavey is frustrated because he is spending a lot of time picking up his expensive dogs that he uses to protect his herd from shelters or people’s homes. There are many sheep ranchers in Idaho, and many use Great Pyrenees dogs, something that might look out of the ordinary in the woods to someone camping. Peavy understands that it might be strange to see a...

Last summer, a Russian man was strolling along the shore of the local Tirekhtyakh River in Yakutia when he came upon a grisly sight: the severed head of an ancient wolf. The head had been well preserved by the permafrost and still sported a full head of hair and sharp fangs. The man, Pavel Efimov, handed the ancient head over to scientists, who dated it to over 40,000 years ago, or the end of the Pleistocene epoch, according to The Siberian Times. Their analysis also revealed that the wolf was fully grown and was between 2 and 4 years old...

UPPSALA, Sweden — Thinking of getting a pet, but not sure it’s worth it? Some new research may change your mind. A new study finds that dog owners enjoy longer lives than others. Researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden looked at a broad set of data on more than 3.4 million healthy adult Swedes between ages 40 and 80 to determine whether dog ownership could help prevent cardiovascular disease. Man carrying dog A new study finds that dog owners may live longer thanks to lower rates of heart disease and other deadly ailments. (Photo by Jordan Koons on Unsplash) Interestingly,...

Results point to a single origin for modern canines and push back the timing by thousands of years. Researchers chasing the origin of modern dogs find that canines were domesticated once, between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago. The results, published on 18 July in Nature Communications1, push back against a controversial 2016 study2 that suggested dogs were domesticated twice. The latest analysis also add weight to previous research that moves the timing of domestication back as far as 40,000 years ago. Everyone has their own idea about where and when dogs originated, says Krishna Veeramah, a palaeogeneticist at Stony Brook...

We all get moved by images we see. Some images make us angry, some make us sad, yet others will make us laugh. Here is an image of two dogs, and only God knows what is going through their heads. We can all speculate, yet 99% of us will be wrong. Why? Because no one but God knows. People anthropomorphize animals in many ways, but often times the animals just do things themselves (without training) which remind us of human behavior. This behavior probably helped our ancestors understand other creatures that would help us get to where we are....

OLLIE is in many ways a typical dog. She likes going for walks and chasing birds, and is especially fond of having her tummy rubbed. But in one respect, the Staffordshire Terrier differs radically from her canine peers: she has a burgeoning academic career, and sits on the editorial boards of seven medical journals. As you may have guessed, the journals on whose boards Ollie sits are of the predatory variety. These are shadowy, online publications that mimic legitimate journals, but are prepared to publish anything in exchange for a fee that can run into thousands of dollars. Predatory journals...

Claudia Fugazza, Ákos Pogány, and Ádám MiklósNovember 23, 2016 People have a remarkable ability to remember and recall events from the past, even when those events didn't hold any particular importance at the time they occurred. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on November 23 have evidence that dogs have that kind of "episodic memory" too. The study found that dogs can recall a person's complex actions even when they don't expect to have their memory tested. "The results of our study can be considered as a further step to break down artificially erected barriers between non-human animals...

Dogs make us human By Heidi De Wald Monday, 25 Mar, 2002 About 48% of Australian households own dogs. But can you imagine a world without dogs. And would we be the same if they were not here? Would human beings have developed in very different ways had our best friends not been by our sides? A recent study suggests that the domestication of dogs mutually led to profound changes in the biological and behavioural evolution of both species. It has long been known that the first species domesticated by humans was the wolf. In essence, we made wolves into...

Dogs are becoming more intelligent and are even learning morals from human contact, scientists claim. They say the fact that dogs' play rarely escalates into a fight shows the animals abide by social rules. During one study, dogs which held up a paw were rewarded with a food treat. When a lone dog was asked to raise its paw but received no treat, the researchers found it begged for up to 30 minutes. But when they tested two dogs together but rewarded only one, the dog which missed out soon stopped playing the game. Dr Friederike Range, of the University...

A French bulldog named Simba is probably alive today because of the attentiveness of an Air Canada pilot. Simba was flying via Air Canada Flight 85 from Tel Aviv to Toronto when the pilot noticed a problem with the cargo area’s heating system, according to CNN Canadian affiliate City News. Simba’s owner, German Kontorovich, was in the cabin. “As soon as the crew became aware of the temperature issue, the captain grew rightfully concerned for the dog’s comfort and well-being,” Air Canada spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick told CNN via email. “With the altitude it can become very uncomfortable, and possibly the...

They may be man's best friend, but dogs have little to thank humans for it seems. Research suggests the domesticated pets can't solve problems as well as their wild cousins because living with us has made them 'incapable of thinking for themselves.' In tests, experts presented a 'puzzle box' containing food to a group of dogs, and a group of wolves and while the wolves were capable of breaking inside, the dogs looked to humans for help.

Using sophisticated 3D imaging to analyze several fossil skulls, a study in this week's Nature Scientific Reports found dogs emerged much more recently than previously thought. Other studies in recent years had suggested dogs evolved as early as 30,000 years ago, a period known as the late Paleolithic, when humans were hunter-gatherers. Abby Grace Drake, a biologist at Skidmore College and one of the co-authors of the latest study, said there is an abundance of evidence -- including the skulls as well as genetic and cultural evidence -- to show dogs arrived instead in the more recent period known as...

When did dogs first become domesticated? A sophisticated new 3D fossil analysis by biologists Abby Grace Drake, visiting assistant professor of biology at Skidmore, and Michael Coquerelle of the University Rey Juan Carlos contradicts the suggested domestication of dogs during the late Paleolithic era (about 30,000 years ago), and reestablishes the date of domestication to around 15,000 years ago... Whether dogs were domesticated during the Paleolithic era, when humans were hunter-gatherers, or the Neolithic era, when humans began to form permanent settlements and take up farming, is a subject of ongoing scientific debate. Original fossil finds placed dog domestication in...

Scientists argue that friendly wolves sought out humans.In the story of how the dog came in from the cold and onto our sofas, we tend to give ourselves a little too much credit. The most common assumption is that some hunter-gatherer with a soft spot for cuteness found some wolf puppies and adopted them. Over time, these tamed wolves would have shown their prowess at hunting, so humans kept them around the campfire until they evolved into dogs. (See "How to Build a Dog.") But when we look back at our relationship with wolves throughout history, this doesn't really make...

It's no secret to any dog-lover or cat-lover that humans have a special connection with animals.... paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman of Penn State University argues that this human-animal connection goes well beyond simple affection. Shipman proposes that the interdependency of ancestral humans with other animal species... played a crucial and beneficial role in human evolution over the last 2.6 million years... "Having sharp tools transformed wimpy human ancestors into effective predators who left many cut marks on the fossilized bones of their prey," Shipman said. Becoming a predator also put our ancestors into direct competition with other carnivores for carcasses and...

<p>From Yorkshire terriers the size of a teacup to Irish wolfhounds near the size of a small pony, all dogs originated from a single species, probably an East Asian wolf seeking the warmth of the human hearth and an easy meal.</p>

Speak, Fido: Device Promises Dog Translations A dog may be man's best friend, but if people ever figure out what dogs are really thinking, will the friendship sour? That's a risk that a few inventors in Europe are willing to take: They've received funding to develop "No More Woof," an electronic device that promises to analyze dogs' brain waves and translate a few of their thoughts into rudimentary English. It's still a work in progress, but once No More Woof is ready for the market, it will join a wide range of other scientific efforts aimed at "breaking the language...

A team of European scientists with way too much time on its hands has discovered that dogs tend to position themselves in alignment with the earth’s magnetic field before they take every big, steamy dump. The Czech and German researchers committed two years of their professional lives to the longitudinal study of canine crap, reports The Christian Science Monitor. The point was to determine magnetic sensitivity in dogs—at least when they poop. The proud scientists say the findings “open new horizons for biomagnetic research.” There were 37 dog owners in Germany and the Czech Republic involved in the study. There...