The Odyssey

Since the movie inception came, I usually watch  Nolan’s movies the very first day. Last night, I watched his latest movie Odyssey. 

From the very first scene I was waiting for Argos and his bond with Odysseus. Although, the movie didn’t show too much about this dog-human bond but that scene when Argos dies did make my eyes wet. 

Max and I are a small drop in this ocean of immense bond between humans and animals. 

The movie is beautiful and conveys an important message on the vanity of war, religion, ideology, and the bottomless pit of human desires. 

Matt Damon playing Odysseus has done a fantastic job especially the final scenes and dialogue which starts with: 

"I had a lot of time to think…”

Heart Of The Beast

WOW! 

It’s not who you live for,

It’s who you'd die for. 

Golden Retriever Lifetime Study - Update From Morris Animal Foundation

Got this poignant email from Morris Animal Foundation today: 

As we approach the 15th year of the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, we are entering a new, exciting stage every pet owner will appreciate. To date, 386 of our dogs have lived to age 13 or older, including three who have reached the remarkable milestone of 15 years. As a lifelong golden retriever owner, it warms my heart to see these dogs thrive. As a veterinarian and epidemiologist, I am eager to leverage this unique dataset to understand what sets these “super-seniors” apart. After all, that is our ultimate goal: we don’t just want dogs to avoid cancer, we want dogs that remain healthy and vibrant well into their golden years.

To capture the shifting challenges these dogs may face as they age, the Study utilizes supplemental surveys that participants can opt into every six months. These provide vital data on mobility and cognition. This initiative began when most dogs in the Study were approximately 8 years old and is rapidly becoming a robust dataset that will aid researchers for decades. Current research suggests dogs fall into two categories: "cognitive maintainers" and "cognitive decliners." Our data is uniquely positioned to help us identify the specific factors that contribute to prolonged cognitive health.

Because the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study is longitudinal, scientific interest has accelerated alongside the Study’s progress. While we have sadly said goodbye to 1,780 heroes, the information they contributed from puppyhood onward is of historic importance. As I write this, more than 100 studies have leveraged our data to investigate a wide variety of health topics. We recently closed our annual call for canine research proposals, and of the 142 pre-proposals submitted, 21 plan to incorporate Study data.

While the Study’s evolution into aging is exciting, our primary objective — to make progress against canine cancer — remains unchanged. The Foundation recently invested in two cancer studies that showed promising initial results. Both successfully identified genetic regions related to hemangiosarcoma and histiocytic sarcoma, respectively. Researchers are now building on these findings using Study data, which could lead to life-saving genetic tests. These are just two examples of the many promising studies currently underway that have the potential to change the future of canine health.

From all of us at Morris Animal Foundation, thank you for making this work possible and supporting the research that will help dogs run, play and be with us to create more memories well into their golden years.

Please keep up the good work; your team will always have wishes from Max and I.  

I said this when Max had cancer and I am saying this now - a lot of insights will come from this study and the Dog Aging Project which will help Sapiens although my moronic species refuse to give data. 

Researchers need a lot of data from healthy people to understand what it looks like not having cancer - a fundamental machine learning common sense. 

Humans Had Dogs Before They Had Farming

By roughly 14,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer societies across Europe had discovered dogs, scientists reported in two new papers, which were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The studies provide the first definitive genetic evidence that dogs existed during the Paleolithic period, before humans developed agriculture.

The researchers, who used several approaches to analyze DNA extracted from ancient canine specimens, identified Paleolithic dogs at five different archaeological sites in Europe and Western Asia. The oldest of these dogs lived about 15,800 years ago, pushing back the oldest known genetic evidence of dogs by nearly 5,000 years.

These early dogs came from sites that extend from Britain to Turkey, and were associated with several very different hunter-gatherer populations. But the dogs themselves were closely related. Across the five sites, the dogs were more genetically similar than the humans were, the researchers found.

“The people are so different, but the dogs are very much the same,” said Greger Larson, a paleogeneticist at the University of Oxford and one of the authors on both new studies, which were conducted by large, international scientific teams.

The finding suggests that these early human societies were exchanging dogs or acquiring them from one another.

“It is kind of the equivalent of a new blade or a new point or a new kind of material culture or art form or something, where everybody’s getting really excited about having this fun new thing around.” Dr. Larson said. “And it’s useful and it’s interesting and it’s probably cute.”

The research provides new insight into the early history of dogs, as well as the genetic legacy and the interspecies relationship that extends to today.

“It’s really a major step forward in advancing our knowledge of humans and dogs,” said Elaine Ostrander, a canine genomics expert at the National Human Genome Research Institute who was not involved in the research.

[---]

The finding suggests that these early human societies were exchanging dogs or acquiring them from one another.

“It is kind of the equivalent of a new blade or a new point or a new kind of material culture or art form or something, where everybody’s getting really excited about having this fun new thing around.” Dr. Larson said. “And it’s useful and it’s interesting and it’s probably cute.”

The research provides new insight into the early history of dogs, as well as the genetic legacy and the interspecies relationship that extends to today.

“It’s really a major step forward in advancing our knowledge of humans and dogs,” said Elaine Ostrander, a canine genomics expert at the National Human Genome Research Institute who was not involved in the research.

- More Here

Keanu Reeves - Building 15 Dog and Cat Rescue Sanctuaries Across the U.S

Thank you, Sir! 

You are an inspiration. 

“Wick’s Eternal”: The Heart of the Initiative

The name “Wick’s Eternal” is a tribute to Keanu’s iconic role as John Wick, a character who is well-known for his fierce love and protection of his dog, Daisy. This bond, as seen in the movie series, mirrors Keanu’s own relationship with animals. By naming his sanctuary project after this character, Keanu is reinforcing the message that animals are worth fighting for and that their safety and well-being are non-negotiable.

The project aims to offer animals a sanctuary where they are treated with respect and given a chance to heal from past traumas. The sanctuaries will be more than just shelters – they will be homes, providing comfort and safety for animals that have often been victims of neglect or cruelty.

The Sanctuaries: A Safe Haven for Animals

Keanu’s sanctuaries will be located in both urban and rural areas across the U.S. Each facility will be designed to cater to the needs of abandoned, elderly, and sick animals, offering a space where they can feel secure and loved. The design of each sanctuary reflects Keanu’s dedication to providing a high-quality environment for the animals. The sanctuaries will feature:

• Veterinary Services – Each sanctuary will have a state-of-the-art veterinary clinic offering medical care to the animals. These clinics will focus on treating common and chronic illnesses, providing necessary surgeries, and offering routine check-ups. Specialized care will be available for elderly animals, ensuring they receive the attention they need. 

• Hydrotherapy Pools – Many of the animals in need of a safe haven have physical ailments such as joint issues or arthritis. To help them regain mobility and improve their quality of life, hydrotherapy pools will be available. These pools offer a low-impact way for the animals to exercise and recover from injuries or age-related issues. 

• Trauma Recovery Areas – For animals who have experienced abuse, neglect, or trauma, the sanctuaries will feature designated quiet spaces where they can recover in peace. These areas will be designed to reduce stress, allowing the animals to heal both physically and emotionally in a safe, tranquil environment. 

• Spacious Outdoor Areas – Each sanctuary will feature expansive outdoor spaces where animals can roam freely, play, and socialize with other animals. These areas will be fenced in, allowing dogs and cats to exercise and enjoy the natural environment. These spaces are crucial for the animals’ well-being, offering them freedom and the ability to engage in natural behaviors. 

• Adoption Services – While these sanctuaries are a permanent home for some animals, others will eventually be adopted out to loving families. Keanu’s initiative is designed to ensure that no animal stays without a family for long. The adoption process will be thorough, ensuring that animals are placed with families who truly care about their well-being. 

• No Adoption Fees – Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Keanu’s project is that there will be no adoption fees for any animals. All services, from medical care to adoption, will be provided free of charge, ensuring that no financial barrier prevents an animal from finding a home.

 

Tracking Dogs Are Helping Wildlife & People Northern Tanzania

After a few minutes, one of the handlers leads a striking maroon-red Alsatian named Rosdaz, its nose to the ground, to the area between the tents and from there, to an open-air kitchen. Here, the handler directs five camp staff members and about 10 others, including me, to stand still as he presents the dog with one of the pieces of gauze. After a few sniffs, Rosdaz matches the scent to one of the staff members; the dog stands up on his hind legs and places his front paws firmly against the man’s waist. The man, dressed in a crisp, collared shirt, stands motionless and stares straight ahead, avoiding the gaze of his accuser.

Because Rosdaz is still young, the handlers decide they want a second opinion. Rocky is a more classic looking Alsatian with a sloping back and dusty grey coat. At 7 years old, he’s more experienced and bolder than Rosdaz. As one of Tanzania’s two original tracker dogs, Rocky has already made a name for himself. He and another dog, now based in the Serengeti National Park, once tracked a poachers’ trail for some 7 hours. Ultimately, the dogs led rangers to a hidden stash of ivory weighing 60 kilograms (130 pounds), representing tusks from at least a half dozen elephants (Loxodonta africana).

[---]

This type of investigation, while not the team’s primary role, is an important demonstration of the dogs’ keen ability to track down individuals—from poachers to petty thieves—who have left even the slightest clue at the scene of their crime. The methods the dog team used here are the same as those used in the pursuit of some of Tanzania’s most lethal poachers. And in that high-stakes fight, there’s little time to lose.

Tanzania, which recently boasted the continent’s second largest elephant population after Botswana, lost more than 60 percent of its elephants to poaching between 2009 and 2014. Seeking effective low-tech solutions to the problem, rangers began considering using dogs to track down poachers in the bush.

The use of highly trained dogs like Rocky and Rosdaz was pioneered by the Tanzanian conservation organization Honeyguide. (The organization is named after a group of birds in the Indicatoridae family that are known to lead people to sources of wild honey.) Honeyguide first established a conservation tracker dog unit in 2011 in West Kilimanjaro and was one of only a few such programs in Africa.

[---]

With the dogs’ ability to follow a scent—sometimes days-old—from crime scenes over many miles to poachers’ camps or villages, and to match scents collected at a scene to individual suspects, the dogs have proven their value to the rangers. According to Olekashe, this can be measured in the relative prices poachers charge to work in various areas. The higher the risk, the more compensation is required. “From intelligence, we know that a shooter’s charge can now be as much as 5 million Tanzanian Shillings ($2,200) in areas where we operate. Elsewhere, it may be 500,000 ($223) or as little as 200,000 ($89).”

Poaching incidents in Manyara Ranch have fallen as well. In 2014 and 2015, poachers killed 17 elephants inside the ranch. This number fell to zero in 2016, although three elephants were speared on the outskirts of the ranch in retaliation for feeding on farmers’ crops. Thus far, 2017 has been quiet, with no elephants poached or speared. “These days, not only does an elephant die naturally, its tusks are left intact,” Olekashe says. “This would have never happened before.”

In Tanzania’s Manyara Ranch, elephants were once the main targets of poaching.

Thanks to tracker dogs like Rocky and Rosdaz, elephant poaching at Manyara Ranch has since been greatly reduced.

[---]

“I was fond of dogs before becoming a handler,” Isaack says. “Training improved my commitment to them. People were more accustomed to using dogs for hunting. Now we’re using dogs to stop hunting.”

[---]

“In conservation, we have limited resources,” says Damian Bell, Honeyguide’s executive director. “While dogs are expensive to maintain, they have proven effective at helping government and community ranger teams curb poaching and crime.” Bell estimates that it costs at least $30 thousand per year to maintain an established dog unit. The rationale is that if dogs are helping to keep the region’s protected areas, campsites, and communities safe, they are not only fostering positive attitudes toward conservation, but also helping secure a vital sector of Tanzania’s economy. Tourism is a mainstay in the country where the northern circuit—together with the islands of Zanzibar—generate some 90 percent of the country’s $1.3 billion in tourism earnings annually. These funds help subsidize Tanzania’s lesser-known and more remote national parks.

- More Here

Origin Of The Word 'Dog' Remains A Mystery

 Centuries ago, dogs were more commonly called "hounds" — a term derived from the Old English word "hund." Today, "hound" typically refers to a specific breed of dog, but back then, it referred to all domestic canines, according to Gorrie.

Early forms of the word "dog" did appear in land charters and place names over a millennia ago. But most notably, during the Middle English period from roughly 1100 to 1450, "dog" was often used as an insult directed at people.

" The use of terms for dog to insult people are pretty common historically and across cultures and we see it all over the place," Gorrie said. "So not just in the history of English but in related languages of Europe and Asia."

Over time, the positive emotions people felt toward the four-legged creature eclipsed some of the word's negative, derogatory charge, he said. Around the 1500s, "dog" replaced "hound" as the standard term we use for the pet today.

"It's very possible that the same word that you use as an insult, you can repurpose as a term of affection," Gorrie said. " Almost as if they're reclaiming that word or using it ironically to show just how strong the affection is."

Since "dog" became ubiquitous, it has continued to broaden in meaning. According to Gorrie, the term was used to describe an ugly woman in the 1930s, while in the 1950s, it came to mean a sexually aggressive man. Today, it is used widely as slang for a close friend.

Theories behind the origin of "dog"

While the evolution of "dog" is fairly clear, the mystery lies in its origins.

One theory among linguists is that "dog" comes from the Old English word "dox," which was a term used to describe color, according to Gorrie. "It's not entirely clear what it meant, but it probably meant something like dark or golden or yellow," he said.

Another possibility is that it's related to the Old English word "dugan," which meant to be good, of use or strong, Gorrie added.

Part of the difficulty in tracing the origin of the word "dog," he said, is that dogs have been part of human life for a very long time. That's also true for common words such as "boy" and "she," as well as animal-related ones like "pig" and "hog."

"  There are theories about some of them," Gorrie said. "But dog is the one that's the real mystery."

- More Here

New York Court Recognizes Dogs As Family Members

Today, Justice Aaron D. Maslow of the Kings County Supreme Court issued a decision affirming that dogs can be recognized as immediate family members under New York law.

Specifically, Justice Maslow ruled that Nan Deblase may recover emotional distress damages for having witnessed the death of her son’s dog Duke who was hit by a car while they were walking through a crosswalk. In 2024, the NhRP filed two amicus briefs in support of the plaintiffs in the case, arguing that justice and the flexible nature of the common law require allowing the plaintiffs to recover emotional damages for having witnessed Duke’s death. Justice Maslow relied extensively on the NhRP’s briefs in his decision.

NhRP Executive Director Christopher Berry on this legal win for animals: “Too often, courts reflexively apply outdated precedents that treat animals as mere property, even when those precedents no longer reflect common sense. Today’s decision shows the justice system at its best: fulfilling its fundamental duty to deliver justice based on facts and reason, not outdated legal fictions. The Nonhuman Rights Project is proud to have contributed to this important outcome. It serves the interest of justice to recognize that Duke was not a legal ‘thing.’ He was a member of the family.” 

The defendant had moved to dismiss the case on the ground that dogs can’t be considered immediate family. Justice Maslow disagreed. “Adhering to unyielding general precedent no longer aligns the law with current societal norms concerning family pets,” Justice Maslow wrote.

A trial on damages will follow Justice Maslow’s decision.

- More Here

Cat Owners Asked To Share Pets’ Quirks For Genetic Study

Cat owners are being asked share their pet’s quirky traits and even post researchers their fur in an effort to shed light on how cats’ health and behaviour are influenced by their genetics.

The scientists behind the project, Darwin’s Cats, are hoping to enrol 100,000 felines, from pedigrees to moggies, with the DNA of 5,000 cats expected to be sequenced in the next year.

The team say the goal is to produce the world’s largest feline genetic database.

“Unlike most existing databases, which tend to focus on specific breeds or veterinary applications, Darwin’s Cats is building a diverse, large-scale dataset that includes pet cats, strays and mixed breeds from all walks of life,” said Dr Elinor Karlsson, the chief scientist at the US nonprofit organisation Darwin’s Ark, director of the vertebrate genomics group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and associate professor at the UMass Chan medical school.

“It’s important to note, this is an open data project, so we will share the data with other scientists as the dataset grows,” she added.

The project follows on the heels of Darwin’s Dogs, a similar endeavour that has shed light on aspects of canine behaviour, disease and the genetic origins of modern breeds.

Darwin’s Cats was launched in mid-2024 and already has more than 3,000 cats enrolled, although not all have submitted fur samples.

Participants from all parts of the world are asked to complete a number of free surveys about their pet’s physical traits, behaviour, environment, and health.

However, at present, DNA kits – for owners to submit fur samples – can be sent only to US residents, and a donation of $150 (£120) for one cat is requested to cover the cost of sequencing and help fund the research.

Karlsson added the team had developed a method to obtain high-quality DNA from loose fur without needing its roots – meaning samples can simply be collected by brushing.

The researchers hope that by combining insights from cats’ DNA with the survey results they can shed light on how feline genetics influences what cats look like, how they act and the diseases they experience.

“Understanding the genetics behind personality traits could even shed light on human neurodevelopmental conditions,” said Karlsson.

The team also hopes to learn more about the genetic diversity of different breeds and unpick the ancestry of modern cats, with Karlsson adding she is particularly interested in many-toed cats.

- More Here

Grow Up - Enough With the Fireworks Already

Growing up in India, I enjoyed celebrating Diwali because I could play with fire and be macho. 

As time passed, I grew the fuck up. I grew the fuck up. I learned how much fireworks harm animals, ecosystems and the environment. 

So grow the fuck up and stop using fireworks in name of god knows what. Fireworks has nothing to do with you political ideology. 

Margaret Renkl reminds us that same but more politely than I do: 

For 15 straight years, our old dog Clark — a hound-shepherd-retriever mix who was born in the woods and loved the outdoors ever after — spent the Fourth of July in our walk-in shower. He seemed to believe a windowless shower in a windowless bathroom offered his best chance of surviving the shrieking terror that was raining down from the night sky outside.

Did he think the fireworks, with their window-rattling booms, were the work of some cosmic predator big enough to eat him whole? Did he think they were gunshots or claps of thunder spreading out from inexplicable lightning bolts tearing open the sky above our house?

There’s no way to know what he was thinking, but every single year that rangy, 75-pound, country-born yard dog spent the Fourth of July in our shower, trembling, drooling and whimpering in terror.

Clark was lucky. We have friends whose terrified dog spent one Fourth of July fruitlessly trying to outrun the explosions. The next day a good Samaritan found him lying on a hot sidewalk miles away, close to death. Other friends came home from watching the fireworks to discover that their dog had bolted in terror from their fenced backyard and been killed by a car.

And those were all companion animals, the ones whose terror is clear to us. We have no real way of knowing how many wild animals suffer because the patterns of their lives are disrupted with no warning every year on a night in early July. People shooting bottle rockets in the backyard might not see the sleeping songbirds, startled from their safe roosts, exploding into a darkness they did not evolve to navigate — crashing into buildings or depleting crucial energy reserves. People firing Roman candles into the sky above the ocean may have no idea that the explosions can cause seabirds to abandon their nests or frighten nesting shorebirds to death.

Then there’s the wildlife driven into roads — deer and foxes, opossums and skunks, coyotes and raccoons. Any nocturnal creature in a blind panic can find itself staring into oncoming headlights, unsure whether the greater danger lies in the road or in the sky or in the neighborhood yards surrounding them.

And all that’s on top of the dangers posed by fireworks debris, which can be toxic if ingested, or the risk of setting off a wildfire in parched summertime vegetation. Little wonder, then, that fireworks are banned in all national wildlife refuges, national forests and national parks.

[---]

“All flourishing is mutual,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, in her best-selling book, “Braiding Sweetgrass.” This is one of the most repeated lines in contemporary environmental literature, and for good reason. It reminds us that all creation, human and other than human, is interconnected. At a time when life on this planet is faltering in every possible way, Dr. Kimmerer gently points out that our own flourishing depends on the flourishing of planetary systems that we are barely beginning to understand.

Addressing climate change and biodiversity loss on a planet with eight billion human residents won’t be simple. How to grow affordable food without using petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides that poison pollinators, for example, is a challenge. How to build enough housing for human beings without also disrupting natural ecosystems is a challenge. Such things are doable, though they won’t be easy.

But there are easy things we can do at no real cost to ourselves. We can eat more vegetables and less animal protein. We can cultivate native plants. We can seek out products that aren’t packaged in plastic, spend less time in cars and airplanes, raise the thermostat in the summer and lower it in the winter. As Dr. Kimmerer points out in “The Serviceberry,” her forthcoming book, “We live in a time when every choice matters.”

In that context, surely, we can give up fireworks. Of all the little pleasures that give life meaning and joy, surely fireworks don’t come close to the top of the list, and it costs us nothing to give them up. This is one case in which doing the right thing requires no significant sacrifice, one case in which doing the right thing has an immediate, noticeable, undeniably positive effect on a suffering world.

The conflation of selfishness with patriotism is the thing I have the hardest time accepting about our political era. Maybe we have the right to eat a hamburger or drive the biggest truck on the market or fire off bottle rockets deep into the night on the Fourth of July, but it doesn’t make us good Americans to do such things. How can it possibly be American to look at the damage that fireworks can cause — to the atmosphere, to forests, to wildlife, to our own beloved pets, to ourselves — and shrug?

The truly American thing would be to join together to make every change we can reasonably make to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, human and other than human alike. The truly American thing would be to plant a victory garden large enough to encompass the entire natural world.

 

How To Make Drugs (Without Animal Testing) - A Documentary

Animal testing is the most CRUEL thing in the world. Humans fuck up their lives by drinking, smoking, eating crap, lethargic lifestyle etc., to make their bodies fragile, And to fix it, they use these poor animals to test drugs. 

It has been proved over and over again - animal testing and studies on drugs are not good indicators for the drugs effectiveness on humans. 

In a nutshell, humans are torturing animals for no use and continue to do so because no one questions. 

I am glad this is getting a lot of moral attention now. 

HOW TO MAKE DRUGS Trailer 2 from First Spark Media on Vimeo.

Jon Stewart Remembers His Best Boy, Dipper

 Boy! My wish for you is to find that one dog. 

 

I got more than I dreamt for in this life from Max. People don't understand that unique oneness which transcends everything I know as a human being. 

I am blessed because of you Max. 

I miss you and miss me in you my love. 

But I have you in me which keeps me going.

Last-Chance Pets & The People Who Rescue Them

This is a moral area I fail miserably. 

Rescuing old pets and seeing them die will kill me daily. I know who I am,  what drives me and what kills me. 

I will be emotionally drained. I don't know if this is an excuse to protect myself. 

One thing I know about myself is that I do change everyday. I hope I become stronger to give these beautiful animals one last chance soon or work ways that this horrible fate doesn't happen to any animal. 

This piece is about my human heroes who rescue them. I bow in front of you. Thank you. I hope your acts will change my mind.

In a car on the way back from an animal shelter, with a 12-year-old chihuahua on his lap, Steve Greig felt peace. For months, since the death of his dog, Wolfgang, he had been inconsolable. “I couldn’t make sense of it,” he says. Wolfgang had been hit by a car. Greig had the idea that he could adopt a dog that nobody else wanted, to give an animal a last chance of a loving home. The chihuahua, whom he named Eeyore, was the oldest dog in the shelter and had a heart murmur and four bad knees. Eeyore spent that car journey looking out of the window, tail wagging. “It was not a no-kill shelter, so his future didn’t look that good, but he had a new lease on life,” says Greig. “I’ll never forget it. It felt like Wolfgang had a hand in letting this dog live and it was exactly what I needed.”

It was so rewarding that he soon adopted another old dog – “and one turned into another”. He now has 11. Every so often, a shelter calls him with news of a dog that might be put down and he can’t resist. “The problem with seniors in shelters is they’re the last that are looked at. If you have a senior with health problems, they’re the last of the last.” Greig lives in Colorado, but most of his dogs have been rescued from other states – from “high-kill shelters” where dogs who are elderly, disabled or can’t find homes are euthanised.

Being older – the dogs, not Greig, although he recently retired as an accountant – means they are easier to handle, he says. “It’s not like I’ve got 11 puppies running around. They, like myself, love a routine.” The oldest is 19 and the youngest is eight, but since she is an Irish wolfhound it is as though she were a centenarian. Greig gets up early, takes them out – five can walk without problems; the others usually sit in a wagon – then back for medication and breakfast. Some need more care – one of his dogs is diabetic and has stomach problems. This means boiled fish for his meals and insulin at the same time each day. “I have to plan around that. Others are on special diets as well. A couple are blind, so they won’t go out by themselves; I have to place them outside and bring them in.” Sometimes, he says with an affectionate laugh, they get lost.

[---]

As for the inevitable, everyone goes into it knowing this. “It’s just the idea that you’ve made a difference for a short time to an animal’s life,” says Kennedy. Williams has no idea how long Libby has left, “but every day is a delight”. Crockett says he will mope around for a while once Tia goes, “then reach the conclusion there’s another poor old cat out there who needs a home”. Lewis thinks that, for Sheba and Teddy, “whatever time they’ve got left, they deserve some love”.

For Greig, going through mourning periods fairly regularly has given him an appreciation for life. “I don’t take things for granted. I constantly see how fleeting life is. I see them happy and doing well, usually much better than when they came in, and I feel like I’ve given them the best of whatever time they have left. I don’t mean to say that it’s not hard, but I comfort myself knowing how their lives could have been.”

His last-chance dogs have taught him a great lesson, he says. “The advice I always have if you want to make your life better? Realise that it’s not about you. The people I have seen that are most unhappy think everything is about them. Once you realise that almost everything isn’t, which is what these dogs have taught me, life is so good.”

 

Self domestication and the evolution of language

Abstract

We set out an account of how self-domestication plays a crucial role in the evolution of language. In doing so, we focus on the growing body of work that treats language structure as emerging from the process of cultural transmission. 

We argue that a full recognition of the importance of cultural transmission fundamentally changes the kind of questions we should be asking regarding the biological basis of language structure. If we think of language structure as reflecting an accumulated set of changes in our genome, then we might ask something like, “What are the genetic bases of language structure and why were they selected?”

 However, if cultural evolution can account for language structure, then this question no longer applies. Instead, we face the task of accounting for the origin of the traits that enabled that process of structure-creating cultural evolution to get started in the first place. 

In light of work on cultural evolution, then, the new question for biological evolution becomes, “How did those precursor traits evolve?” We identify two key precursor traits: 

(1) the transmission of the communication system through learning; and 

(2) the ability to infer the communicative intent associated with a signal or action. 

We then describe two comparative case studies—the Bengalese finch and the domestic dog—in which parallel traits can be seen emerging following domestication. Finally, we turn to the role of domestication in human evolution. We argue that the cultural evolution of language structure has its origin in an earlier process of self-domestication.

- Full paper here

Understanding Animal Subjectivity Through Their Languages

Review of the book Animal Languages: The secret conversations of the living world by Eva Meijer.  

Damn, I didn't know most of what Eva covers in this book! Thank you 

Several years ago, there was big news: Dolphins call one another by name. Like humans, they all have a unique sound that they use to introduce themselves to new dolphins and to call one another. Dolphins are far from the only animals that have names. Parrots receive a name from their parents. Squirrel monkeys have a special “chuck” sound for each individual. Bats have names that they use to call one another so that they can stay together in the darkness. This can be particularly useful in a big group. A name is handy because it allows you to call someone else and to indicate that it is you who is coming.

[---]

Like cats, snakes have a Jacobson’s organ. Located in the roof of the mouth, this is an organ of chemoreception that is part of the olfactory system, which these animals use to smell. Their tongues capture scent particles that they place in the Jacobson’s organ, which has two openings, allowing them to smell the world in stereo. Snakes use this to find both predators and prey, and to communicate with other snakes. The trail that their body leaves behind and the air that they pass through contain pheromones with information about their gender and age, and whether they are pregnant. Young snakes follow this trail to find the location of the shared hibernation space. Puff adders, venomous snakes found mainly in southern Africa, not only leave behind scents for others to follow but also camouflage their own scent in order to deceive predators. Snakes also communicate by touch, and some cobras make low growls.

[---]

There are problems with the mirror test though: First, there are some animals who do not mind having a sticker on their skin. Second, in some cultures looking at yourself in the mirror is not good form. Third, it is not that suitable for animals whose other senses are more important than sight.

To start with the first point: Elephants use mud to keep cool and to prevent itching, so they often do not object to a little thing like a sticker on their skin and therefore score badly in the mirror test, in spite of their intelligence and socially minded attitude. We find the second, cultural aspect in gorillas, who are social animals and assumed to be self-aware, but they are naturally shy and long eye contact is not common among their kind, so they too score badly on the mirror test. The same applies, incidentally, to children from some non-Western cultures. Out of 82 children from Kenya, only two passed the test, whereas Western children pass the test almost without exception — clearly the difference here is cultural, not cognitive. Thirdly, the test is also not very suitable for animals whose sight is not good. Dogs are more focused on scent than on sight, so animal ethologist Marc Bekoff came up with the yellow snow test, a variation on the mirror test. Dogs live in a universe of scents, which inspired Bekoff to carry out an experiment in which he collected pee from the snow and investigated how his dog reacted. The dog in question, Jethro, spent considerably less time sniffing his own pee than that of other dogs, so he was clearly reacting differently to the scent profile of other dogs than to his own.

These examples show us that there is more going on in the social lives of animals than we may think. Looking at their languages can help us to better understand their inner lives. However, as the mirror test demonstrates, there are also problems with research methods that are based on human capacities: Human bias distorts how we view other animals. Similarly, if we only study the languages of other animals on the basis of how much they resemble human language, many animals will not fare well. In order to move beyond anthropocentrism, power relations in research need to be taken into account, and we need to develop new research practices together with other animals. In this process, existing concepts such as language can be a starting point.

Poop Redux!

When Max was a puppy, it took me a few months to train him to understand the difference between poop time vs walk time.  I wanted to make sure he knew this difference since in case of emergency or bad weather , we can skip the walk. 

He would have to poop in a particular area(s) without walking so that he doesn't take his sweet time to poop. Max understood the difference and for the rest of his life he followed this. 

Yes, Max would take his time to sniff but after he squats, he would poop within 10 to 30 seconds. Neo does the same now. And yes, same for me as long as I could remember. 

So it always baffles me when people sit in the toilet and read New Times for minutes if not hours. 

After years of living with Max and when he got prostate cancer, he started struggling to poop. It would happen to me very rarely when I had too much junk food or not feeling well mentally. 

I don't remember when I came up with this hypothesis but it was long before Max had cancer:  

Evolutionarily, if John squatted to poop in African Savanna's pondering about life for minutes, he would soon be an easy dinner for any predator.  We all are evolved to poop only for few seconds. 

If someone breaks this rule daily then their health and/or diet is not good. There is something fundamentally wrong with their microbiome which in turn also affects their thought process, outlook of life and god knows what else we don't know. 

Hence, we could cautiously come up with a heuristic that not only eyes but "time to poop" is also a window to someone's character (I am not sure what soul means so let's stick to observable, known and simple words here). 

In recent years, there has been a lot of research going on to support my simple hypothesis. Earlier post stating that around 12 seconds should be our optimal poop time!

A new paper is telling us, microbiome helps to extract energy effectively from what we eat and hence we poop within seconds. If someone is struggling to poop then the process of extracting energy from food is not optimized ad takes a long time because of lack of microbial diversity. 

Abstract

Background

It has been hypothesised that the gut microbiota causally affects obesity via its capacity to extract energy from the diet. Yet, evidence elucidating the role of particular human microbial community structures and determinants of microbiota-dependent energy harvest is lacking.

Results

Here, we investigated whether energy extraction from the diet in 85 overweight adults, estimated by dry stool energy density, was associated with intestinal transit time and variations in microbial community diversity and overall structure stratified as enterotypes. We hypothesised that a slower intestinal transit would allow for more energy extraction. However, opposite of what we expected, the stool energy density was positively associated with intestinal transit time. Stratifications into enterotypes showed that individuals with a Bacteroides enterotype (B-type) had significantly lower stool energy density, shorter intestinal transit times, and lower alpha-diversity compared to individuals with a Ruminococcaceae enterotype (R-type). The Prevotella (P-type) individuals appeared in between the B- and R-type. The differences in stool energy density between enterotypes were not explained by differences in habitual diet, intake of dietary fibre or faecal bacterial cell counts. However, the R-type individuals showed higher urinary and faecal levels of microbial-derived proteolytic metabolites compared to the B-type, suggesting increased colonic proteolysis in the R-type individuals. This could imply a less effective colonic energy extraction in the R-type individuals compared to the B-type individuals. Notably, the R-type had significantly lower body weight compared to the B-type.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that gut microbial energy harvest is diversified among individuals by intestinal transit time and associated gut microbiome ecosystem variations. A better understanding of these associations could support the development of personalised nutrition and improved weight-loss strategies.

 

"Alpha" Male Is A Myth; Wolf Packs Are Simply Families

Everyone I know, I mean everyone uses the phrase "Alpha'' to address a human male, dog , wolf and even other animals. 

Little did I know that the roots of it evolved from a 1970 book, The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species.

This book because of biased research done with captive wolves (not wolves in wild) coined the prefix "alpha" for male dominance!! 

Thank goodness for L. David Mech this has now been removed from the latest edition of the book. 

But yet, can we remove the idea of "alpha" instilled in the human brain? I don't think so because of the curse of "locked in syndrome" (stuck with the wrong idea or choice) in a complex system. 

The lessons here are: 

1. Never take anything at face value and dig a little to find the roots from where it started. I have been doing this a lot lately and its fun and enlightening - plus made me more humble, have more gratitude and be open minded. 
2. Before you leash an idea into the world, be cautious of the unintended consequences  and understand complex systems. 
3. Even if one was not successful in doing 1 and 2 through themselves and at some point new truth emerges then please change your mind.

This is a beautiful case of how science learns from past mistakes and corrects itself. 

If you’ve ever heard the term “alpha wolf,” you might imagine snapping fangs and fights to the death for dominance. The idea that wolf packs are led by a merciless dictator is pervasive, lending itself to a shorthand for a kind of dominant masculinity.

But it turns out that this is a myth, and in recent years wildlife biologists have largely dropped the term “alpha.” In the wild, researchers have found that most wolf packs are simply families, led by a breeding pair, and bloody duels for supremacy are rare.

“What would be the value of calling a human father the alpha male?” says L. David Mech, a senior research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, who has studied wolf packs in the wild for decades. “He’s just the father of the family. And that’s exactly the way it is with wolves.”

          [---] 

Mech, like many wildlife biologists, once used terms such as alpha and beta to describe the pecking order in wolf packs. But now they are decades out of date, he says. This terminology arose from research done on captive wolf packs in the mid-20th century—but captive packs are nothing like wild ones, Mech says. When keeping wolves in captivity, humans typically throw together adult animals with no shared kinship. In these cases, a dominance hierarchy arises, Mech adds, but it’s the animal equivalent of what might happen in a human prison, not the way wolves behave when they are left to their own devices.

In contrast, wild wolf packs are usually made up of a breeding male, a breeding female and their offspring from the past two or three years that have not yet set out on their own—perhaps six to 10 individuals. In the late 1980s and 1990s Mech observed a pack every year at Ellesmere Island in northeastern Canada. His study, published in 1999 in the Canadian Journal of Zoology, was among the first multiyear research on a single pack over time. It revealed that all members of the pack defer to the breeding male and that all other pack members, regardless of sex or age, defer to the breeding female. The youngest pups also submit to their older siblings, though when food is scarce, parents feed the young first, much as human parents might tend to a fragile infant.

The same is true across gray wolf packs: Infighting for dominance is basically unheard of in a typical pack. When offspring are two to three years old, they leave the pack in search of mates, aiming to start their own pack. The alpha wolf notion of challenging dad for dominance of the existing pack just isn’t in the wolf playbook.

Indeed, even general family conflict is rare, Mech says. “Let’s say that [a] pair has some yearling wolves that haven’t dispersed yet. The adults will kind of keep the yearlings away from the carcass while the adults feed and feed the pups,” he says. “Those are places where there can be at least competition and sometimes conflict, but it’s a snap or two.”

Mech used the alpha wolf nomenclature in a classic book of wolf biology, The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species, which was published in 1970. But he has made a point of pushing back against the term as new research has come to light. After a years-long effort, he finally got The Wolf taken out of print in 2022, he says. The 2003 book Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, which he co-edited with zoologist Luigi Boitani, is now far more accurate and up-to-date, he says.

There were many people who used to address Max and I as an Alpha - Beta relationship. I used to repel at that phrase. 

What Max and I have is a simple and ordinary bond between two living beings.  What a beautiful and wonderful life it has been because of it. 

And that's what wolf families have too. Nothing less nor more. 

Dog Amma In Delhi

 I salute you Amma! Thank you for everything you do. 

Ant's Can Detect Cancer Soon!

Ants have such a refined sense of smell, in fact, that researchers are now training them to detect the scent of human cancer cells.

A study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences highlights a keen ant sense and underscores how someday we may use sharp-nosed animals — or, in the case of ants, sharp-antennaed — to detect tumors quickly and cheaply. That’s important because the sooner that cancer is found, the better the chances of recovery.

“The results are very promising,” said Baptiste Piqueret, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany who studies animal behavior and co-wrote the paper. He added, however: “It’s important to know that we are far from using them as a daily way to detect cancer.”

[---]

For his study, Piqueret’s team grafted pieces of a human breast-cancer tumor onto mice and trained 35 ants to associate urine from the tumor-bearing rodents with sugar. Placed in a petri dish, the silky ants (Formica fusca) spent significantly more time near tubes with urine from the “sick” mice compared with urine from healthy ones.

“The study was well conceived and conducted,” said Federica Pirrone, an associate professor at the University of Milan who was not involved in the ant research but has conducted similar investigations into the smelling ability of dogs.

[---]

The way we diagnose cancer today — by drawing blood, taking biopsies and conducting colonoscopies — is often expensive and invasive. Animal behaviorists are imagining a world in which doctors one day tap species with keen senses to help spot tumors quickly and cheaply.

Dogs can sniff out the presence of cancer in body odor, past research has shown. Mice can be trained to discriminate between healthy and tumor-bearing compatriots. Nematodes are attracted to certain organic compounds associated with cancer. Even the neurons of fruit flies fire in the presence of certain cancerous cells.

But ants, Piqueret suggested, may have the edge over dogs and other animals that are time-consuming to train.

- More Here 

E.O. Wilson would have been delighted to hear this progress!

How Wolf Became Dog

When modern humans arrived in Europe perhaps 45,000 years ago, they encountered the gray wolf and other types of wolves, including the megafaunal wolf, which pursued large game such as mammoths. By that time wolves had already proved themselves among the most successful and adaptable species in the canid family, having spread across Eurasia to Japan and into the Middle East and North America. They were not confined to a single habitat type but flourished in tundra, steppelands, deserts, forests, coastal regions and the high altitude of the Tibetan Plateau. And they competed with the newly arrived humans for the same prey—mammoths, deer, aurochs, woolly rhinoceroses, antelopes and horses. In spite of this competition, one type of wolf, perhaps a descendant of a megafaunal wolf, apparently began living close to people. For many years scientists concurred on the basis of small portions of the genome that this species was the modern gray wolf (Canis lupus) and that this canid alone gave rise to dogs.

But last January geneticists discovered that this long-held “fact” was wrong. Repeated interbreeding between gray wolves and dogs, which share 99.9 percent of their DNA, had produced misleading signals in the earlier studies. Such consorting between the two species continues today: wolves with black coats received the gene for that color from a dog; shepherd dogs in Georgia's Caucasus Mountains mate so often with the local wolves that hybrid ancestors are found in both species' populations, and between 2 and 3 percent of the sampled animals are first-generation hybrids. (Building on the admixture theme, in June researchers writing in Current Biology reported on the sequencing of DNA from a 35,000-year-old wolf fossil from Siberia. This species appears to have contributed DNA to high-latitude dogs such as huskies through ancient interbreeding.)

Analyzing whole genomes of living dogs and wolves, last January's study revealed that today's Fidos are not the descendants of modern gray wolves. Instead the two species are sister taxa, descended from an unknown ancestor that has since gone extinct. “It was such a long-standing view that the gray wolf we know today was around for hundreds of thousands of years and that dogs derived from them,” says Robert Wayne, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We're very surprised that they're not.” Wayne led the first genetic studies proposing the ancestor-descendant relationship between the two species and more recently was one of the 30 co-authors of the latest study, published in PLOS Genetics, that debunked that notion.

- More Here