Articles imported from Science News Daily: Dog News
Researchers have identified two novel anxiety-related genomic regions in German Shepherd dogs. The region associated with fearfulness corresponds with the locus of human chromosome 18, which is associated with various psychiatric disorders, while the region associated with noise sensitivity includes several genes related to human and canine behavior and mental disorders.
New research has found that the best trained alert dogs have the potential to vastly improve the quality of life of people living with Type 1 diabetes.
11,500 years ago in what is now northeast Jordan, people began to live alongside dogs and may also have used them for hunting, a new study shows. The archaeologists suggest that the introduction of dogs as hunting aids may explain the dramatic increase of hares and other small prey in the archaeological remains at the site.
Analysis of the skulls of lions, wolves and hyenas has helped scientists uncover how prehistoric dogs hunted 40 million years ago.
With their small size, stubby faces and wide-set eyes, bulldogs, French bulldogs and Boston terriers are among the most popular of domestic dog breeds. Now researchers have found the genetic basis for these dogs' appearance, and linked it to a rare inherited syndrome in humans.
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New research reveals overweight dogs are more likely to have shorter lives than those at ideal body weights.
Working with nine animal models, researchers find a preference for stability over energy conservation during speed-related gait transitions.
A better understanding of the way dogs communicate distress could be the first step in reducing the risk of dog bites for both children and adults, a new study has found.
Wolves travel shorter distances and move slower during snowfall events, according to new research. The effects were most pronounced at night, when wolves hunt, and behavior returned to normal within a day.
Researchers are running a large-scale camera-trap study called eMammal, recently enlisted the help of K-12 students from 28 schools and four countries -- the United States, India, Mexico and Kenya. What the researchers, and the kids, discovered was surprising.
The healthcare costs of injuries caused by encounters with animals in the USA exceed US $1 billion every year, finds new research.
Red wolves, once nearly extinct, again teeter on the abyss. New research finds red wolf ancestry in Texas -- providing opportunities for additional conservation action and difficult policy challenges. Researchers have identified red wolf ''ghost alleles'' in canid population on Galveston Island.
Animals are much better at smelling a complex 'soup' of odorants rather than a single pure ingredient, a new study has revealed.
Researchers have developed a new treatment for dogs with a rare, but life-threatening, arrhythmia caused by atrioventricular accessory pathways (APs). The minimally invasive technique, which uses radiofrequencies, is modified from a human cardiology procedure and has a more than 95 percent success rate in treating dogs with this type of arrhythmia.
Domestic dogs play a key role in the transmission and expansion of rabies in rural areas of China, according to a new study.
Research into one of the 'genetic orchestra conductors', microRNAs, sheds light on our selectively guided evolution of domestic pets and farmyard animals such as dogs and cows.
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Researchers have shown that dogs possess some 'metacognitive' abilities -- specifically, they are aware of when they do not have enough information to solve a problem and will actively seek more information. The researchers created a test in which dogs had to find a reward behind one of two fences. They found that the dogs looked for additional information significantly more often when they had not seen where the reward was hidden.
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Every day, thousands of trained K9 dogs sniff out narcotics, explosives and missing people. These dogs are invaluable for security, but they're also expensive. Researchers have made the beginning steps toward an artificial 'robot nose' device that officers could use instead of dogs. The heart of the system would be living odor receptors grown from mouse genes that respond to target odors, including the smells of cocaine and explosives.
Biologist have compared the genes of large-beaked Cameroonian finches to those of their smaller-beaked counterparts, found the answer to a 20-year old mystery: 300,000 base pairs, apparently inherited as a unit, always varied between them, and right in the middle of that genetic sequence was the well-known growth factor, IGF-1.
Growing up with dogs is linked to a lower risk of asthma, especially if the dogs are female, a new study shows. However, the researchers found no relation between 'allergy friendly' breeds and a lower risk of asthma.
A vaccine used to prevent dogs from contracting the deadly, parasitic disease canine leishmaniasis also can be used to treat currently infected dogs, providing a new avenue of treatment for millions of infected dogs globally.
As the global battle against malaria stalls, scientists may be adding a novel tool to the fight: sniffer dogs. In recent tests trained sniffer dogs successfully diagnosed malaria infections simply by sniffing samples from socks worn briefly by children from a malaria endemic area of West Africa, according to a new study.
Scientists have discovered a neural pathway that links olfaction to locomotion.
A canine cognition test could help organizations that train working dogs identify the dogs that are most likely to succeed, according to new research. If organizations could better predict which dogs will succeed in working roles, it could save thousands of dollars in training costs and ensure people in need get dogs faster.
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A new study finds that glyphosate, the active herbicidal ingredient in widely used weed killers like Roundup, was present at low levels in a variety of dog and cat foods the researchers purchased at stores. Before you go switching Fido or Fluffy's favorite brand, however, be aware that the amounts of the herbicide found correspond to levels currently considered safe for humans.
