dogs

The origin of dogs in the United States is still a topic of research

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It is believed that by 1492 until the present day, the indigenous lines of dogs in America were replaced by the dogs from Europe. Therefore, researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Iowa decided to study the remains of dogs that lived in Jamestown, Virginia because there were enough specimens to study.

They knew that prior to the introduction of European dogs, there were a lot of Indigenous dogs in the United States and that many of them disappeared. The researchers wanted to try and determine if they were culled, was it competition with European dogs or was their demise due to disease.

The team studied 22 remains that spanned the years from 1607 to 1619. What they found was that the body size of the dogs ranged between 22 – 39 lbs., about the size of a modern Beagle. The remains indicate that some of the dogs were eaten, which implies that the colonists did not have enough food. At least six of the dogs were of Indigenous North American ancestry suggesting that the colonists and Indigenous tribes traded dogs and were not overly concerned with interbreeding. The study also indicates that the Indigenous dogs were not immediately eradicated when Europeans arrived in North America.

Sue’s Note: The Carolina Dog is considered the last wild dog in North America.

Carolina Dog

Journal Reference:

  1. Ariane E. Thomas, Matthew E. Hill, Leah Stricker, Michael Lavin, David Givens, Alida de Flamingh, Kelsey E. Witt, Ripan S. Malhi, Andrew Kitchen. The Dogs of Tsenacomoco: Ancient DNA Reveals the Presence of Local Dogs at Jamestown Colony in the Early Seventeenth Century. American Antiquity, 2024; 1 DOI: 10.1017/aaq.2024.25

Cite This Page:

Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Ancient DNA reveals Indigenous dog lineages found at Jamestown, Virginia.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 16 August 2024. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/08/240816173937.htm>.

When did dogs come to America?

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Researchers were sequencing DNA from a collection of hundreds of bones excavated years before in Southeast Alaska by researchers including Timothy Heaton, PhD, professor of earth sciences at the University of South Dakota when they discovered a dog bone. Charlotte Lindqvist, an evolutionary biologist from University at Buffalo, was studying how Ice Age climatic changes impacted animals’ survival and movements in Southeast Alaska.

Lindqvist originally thought that the bone was from a bear but quickly realized that it was a dog bone. This gave them evidence about early human migration through that area and possibly how dogs first arrived in America.

Researchers analyzed the dog’s mitochondrial genome and concluded that the animal belonged to a lineage of dogs whose evolutionary history diverged from that of Siberian dogs as early as 16,700 years ago.

This discovery showed the the dog had a marine diet and supports the hypothesis that the first dog and human migration occurred through the Northwest Pacific coastal route.

Journal Reference:

  1. Flavio Augusto da Silva Coelho, Stephanie Gill, Crystal M. Tomlin, Timothy H. Heaton, Charlotte Lindqvist. An early dog from southeast Alaska supports a coastal route for the first dog migration into the Americas. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2021; 288 (1945): 20203103 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.3103

Cite This Page:

University at Buffalo. “How did dogs get to the Americas? An ancient bone fragment holds clues.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 23 February 2021. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210223192442.htm>.

God’s Creatures a Biblical View of Animals

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As a Christian and an animal behavior consultant, I am always asked questions about God’s relationship with animals. Does God care about them? Does God talk to them? Can they be evil? Surprisingly, the Bible gives us the answers to these and many more questions. Often people are surprised to learn that animals have been part of Biblical miracles. God’s Creatures covers fifteen different topics that involve animals, all questions that I have been asked.

Everything in this book is backed by Scripture and has been reviewed by two theologians for accuracy. When I wrote this book, I compared critical English words with the original Greek to ensure that the translation was accurate to the English meaning. And of course, the most often and the most controversial question that I have been asked is, do animals go to Heaven? This question is covered in the book. Even if you are not a Christian, I am sure you will find the references to scientific studies and the topics in God’s Creatures interesting. God’s Creatures is a great Bible study for churches or Sunday school. It is written so that children can read and understand what it says. Offering a Bible study about animals is a good way to reach out to the members of your community. You can order the book from my website, www.sbulanda.com, on Amazon or from the publisher, www.Caladach.com.

Dogs help people relieve stress

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Researchers at the University of South Korea have studied the benefits people have from interacting with dogs. Although is this not new information, they researched further to see if different activities produced a different reaction in people. They had people play, walk, groom and massage dogs while studying their brainwaves. They found that the people who walked or played with dogs had an increase in relaxed wakefulness. The participants who groomed, played and massaged a dog had a heightened level of concentration. They also observed that the subjects felt a significant drop in the feeling of fatigue, depression and stress after interacting with dogs.

Sue’s Note: I would think that the same results would be found when people interact with other animals that they enjoy. This study supports the use of therapy animals in all situations.

Journal Reference:

  1. Onyoo Yoo, YuTong Wu, Jin Soo Han, Sin-Ae Park. Psychophysiological and emotional effects of human–Dog interactions by activity type: An electroencephalogram study. PLOS ONE, 2024; 19 (3): e0298384 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0298384

Cite This Page:

PLOS. “Interactions with dogs can increase brainwaves associated with stress relief and heightened concentration.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 13 March 2024. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240313185025.htm>.

Cancer in dogs

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This article is loaded with a lot of important information, therefore I suggest that my readers click on the link and read the whole article.

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have found that medium sized dogs have a higher risk of getting cancer than very large or small breeds of dogs. For example, the smallest dogs, including Pomeranians, Miniature Pinschers, Shih Tzus and Chihuahuas have about a 10% chance of dying from cancer.

On the other hand, large dogs, such as Burmese Mountain dogs, have more than a 40% chance of death from cancer. Yet the largest breeds such as the Great Dane have a less chance of getting cancer.

The article points out that scientists do not understand why the life expectancy of dogs decreases with size. “For every pound increase in typical breed size you lose about two weeks of life.”

What is interesting, is that this article points out that the ratio of cancer to size only applies to the same species, in this case dogs. The same correlation does not apply to size difference between other species.

Journal Reference:

Leonard Nunney. The effect of body size and inbreeding on cancer mortality in breeds of the domestic dog: a test of the multi-stage model of carcinogenesis. Royal Society Open Science, 2024; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1098/rsos.231356

Cite This Page:

University of California – Riverside. “Study reveals cancer vulnerabilities in popular dog breeds.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 29 April 2024. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/04/240429103104.htm>.

Decoding dog vocalizations

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Researchers at Mexico’s National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (INAOE) along with the researchers at the University of Michigan, have devised a program using AI to begin the process of understanding dog vocalizations.

They found that AI models used for human speech can be used as a starting point to develop new systems that understand animal vocalizations. The human voice models can encode the very complex patterns of human languages and speech, so the researchers have started to develop similar programs to decode canine barks.

If they are successful, they feel that it will benefit biologists as well as animal behaviorists and other people who work with animals. Of course, it will benefit dogs as well. Such a system could enhance the care of dogs by letting people interpret their emotional and physical needs. This information could prevent potentially dangerous situations.

Sue’s Note: While this is very good, understanding dogs and any other animal depends heavily on their body language. Will this program take that into consideration? To the best of our knowledge, animals do not have a word by word vocal communication system.

Journal Reference:

  1. Artem Abzaliev, Humberto Pérez Espinosa, Rada Mihalcea. Towards Dog Bark Decoding: Leveraging Human Speech Processing for Automated Bark Classification. Submited to arXiv, 2024 DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2404.18739

Cite This Page:

University of Michigan. “Using AI to decode dog vocalizations.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 4 June 2024. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/06/240604132204.htm>.

Dogs understand and visualize objects words

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A very important study has illustrated that dogs understand instructional words as well as well as object words. An instructional word is what people commonly referred to as a command, such as sit. Object words are when a dog knows that the word represents an object. They can visualize the object when it is named whether the object is present or not. What this means is that dogs understand the meaning of some words the same as people do. Now researchers want to learn if other animals have the same capability. For an interesting video that shows a Border Collie named Chaser who illustrates this ability by identifying an object that he was told to fetch but was not taught the name of. He was able to identify all the other objects and pick out the one he was not taught the name of.  

Sue’s Note: Consider people who cannot speak, such as infants, who illustrate that they recognize objects even though they cannot say the name of the object.

Chaser finds “Darwin”

https://www.google.com/search?q=chaser+finds+darwin+video&oq=chaser+finds+darwin&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgBECEYoAEyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigATIHCAYQIRirAtIBCTEwMjQ3ajBqN6gCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:44a17764,vid:IYcxH9mXQvc,st:0

Journal Reference:

  1. Marianna Boros, Lilla Magyari, Boglárka Morvai, Raúl Hernández-Pérez, Shany Dror, Attila Andics. Neural evidence for referential understanding of object words in dogs. Current Biology, 2024; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.029

Cite This Page:

Cell Press. “Your dog understands that some words ‘stand for’ objects.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 22 March 2024. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240322145438.htm>.

A new cancer treatment for dogs and cats

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Researchers have found a new way to extend the life of terminally ill dogs who have cancer. This new form of chemoimmunotherapy repurposes stem cells that uses a non-viral gene delivery treatment instead of the usual virus treatment. The new method is safe has had great results.

The researchers treated 65 dogs and two cats who had either adenoma, lung metastasis or sarcoma. After three to eight weeks of treatment, 55 showed signs of positive response. Of that 14 had a full recovery. Two animals remained cancer free for at least 30 months and 46 enjoyed a good quality of life for 32 months. None of the animals treated had significant side effects.

The research team are conducting further studies and plan to research the possibility of using this treatment on humans.

Journal Reference:

  1. Yoon Khei Ho, Kin Man Loke, Jun Yung Woo, Yee Lin Lee, Heng-Phon Too. Cryopreservation does not change the performance and characteristics of allogenic mesenchymal stem cells highly over-expressing a cytoplasmic therapeutic transgene for cancer treatment. Stem Cell Research & Therapy, 2022; 13 (1) DOI: 10.1186/s13287-022-03198-z

Cite This Page:

National University of Singapore, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. “Novel cancer therapy extends lives of terminally ill dogs.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 30 January 2023. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230130112405.htm>.

Sleep apnea in dogs

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Many people may not be aware that brachycephalic dogs breeds such as French Bulldogs, Pugs and other breeds with short, flat noses can suffer from sleep apnea. It has been found that these dogs suffer from disordered breathing that is similar to human obstructive sleep apnea which is caused by upper airway obstruction. The result is daytime fatigue and interruptions in sleep.

Researchers at the University of Helsinki Lung Insight group found that a neckband system that is used in people, was successful in determining if dogs suffered from sleep apnea.  

Their research showed that brachycephalic dogs snore and suffer from sleep disorders more than dogs with long snouts. Sleep apnea causes health issues in humans such as hypertension and cardiovascular disease. It affects the body’s immune system, hormone secretion and metabolism. Since dogs and humans share similar health issues, it is important to monitor your dog’s sleep habits and if you think that your dog has sleep apnea contact your veterinarian.   

Journal Reference:

  1. Iida Niinikoski, Sari‐Leena Himanen, Mirja Tenhunen, Liisa Lilja‐Maula, Minna M. Rajamäki. Description of a novel method for detection of sleep‐disordered breathing in brachycephalic dogs. Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, 2023; DOI: 10.1111/jvim.16783

Cite This Page:

University of Helsinki. “A short snout predisposes dogs to sleep apnea.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 13 June 2023. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230613110050.htm>.

Stress causes overeating in pets

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Researcher Sora Shin, an assistant professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech has discovered a molecule that triggers the need to eat high fat foods in mice 24 hours after being exposed stress in the form of the scent of cats.

This molecule is found in the hypothalamus section of the brain which is the part of the brain that is connected to changes in the brain that lead to emotional overeating.

 The same molecule is found in people as well as animals. This discovery may lead to treatment methods that can help people who react to the emotionally driven need to overeat, even when they are not hungry.

Sue’s Note: There are many animals, particularly dogs and cats that tend to overeat which result in them becoming obese. Pet owners who have pets that have this problem should consider stress as a factor that causes their pets to overeat. First be sure that the family or friends are not over feeding the pets. If this is not the case the pet owner should evaluate the possibility that stress may be a cause. Since the study showed that the effects of stress can cause overeating 24 hours later, the pet owner should consider events that happened in the last 24 hours. An example would be someone or something that passes the pet’s home when the owner is not home that causes high stress in the pet. In situations where stress is a factor, reducing the amount of food that the pet has access to may cause a greater amount of stress. In this case over the counter calming remedies may help the pet. If not a visit to your veterinarian would be in order explaining to the veterinarian that you suspect stress is a cause of the overeating. Print a copy of the article in the link below to show your veterinarian if necessary.

Journal Reference:

  1. In-Jee You, Yeeun Bae, Alec R. Beck, Sora Shin. Lateral hypothalamic proenkephalin neurons drive threat-induced overeating associated with a negative emotional state. Nature Communications, 2023; 14 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42623-6

Cite This Page:

Virginia Tech. “Scientist discovers potential brain link between stress, emotional eating.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 November 2023. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231127180702.htm>.