If you think you’re clever because you taught your dog to sit, try teaching it to climb into an MRI machine and lie perfectly still for a while.

Callie, a two-year-old Feist, or southern squirrel-hunting dog, in an MRI machine mockup.

Researchers at Emory University trained two dogs to do just that so they could scan the dogs’ brains while the dogs were awake and responsive.

The fMRI scans are intended to help decode the mental processes of dogs. Results so far show part of the brain lighting up when the dog expects a treat.

The dogs are also trained to wear earmuffs to protect against the noise of the scanner.

The dogs were trained to wear earmuffs, to protect them from the noise of the scanner. They were also taught to hold their heads perfectly still on a chin rest during the scanning process, to prevent blurring of the images.

We know the dogs are happy by their body language, says Mark Spivak, the professional trainer involved in the project. Callie, in particular, seems to revel in the attention of breaking new ground in science.

She enters the scanner on her own, without a command, sometimes when it’s not her turn, Spivak says. She’s eager to participate.

Source: What is your dog thinking? Brain scans unleash canine secrets.

Yesterday I watched a fascinating 1 hour BBC TV documentary, thanks to this article, The Silver Fox Experiment: How Dogs Became Dogs:

Half a century of Siberian science, or why your furry best friend is really a developmentally stunted wolf.

The programme, The Secret Life of the Dog, had a lot of information about how intelligent dogs are, how they may have been domesticated, whether we understand them and whether they can tell what we’re thinking or feeling.

It mentioned various experiments to domesticate foxes and wolves, with varying degrees of success.

If you’re at all interested in dogs, I strongly recommend the article and the linked TV programme.

Research into dogs is gaining momentum, and … dogs are fast turning into the new chimps as a window into understanding ourselves.

Where does this relationship come from? …

Why are dogs so good at reading our emotions? …

[Via BBC Two - Horizon, 2009-2010, The Secret Life of the Dog.]

Also watch Betsy the dog retrieve dozens of items by name or after seeing a scale model or looking at a photo of the item. Remarkable!

33,000 year-old dog remains in Siberia and Belgium suggest modern dogs may have originated from more than one ancestor:

At 33,000 years old, the Siberian skull predates a period known as the Last Glacial Maximum, or LGM, which occurred between about 26,000 and 19,000 years ago when the ice sheets of Earth’s last ice age reached their greatest extent and severely disrupted the living patterns of humans and animals alive during that time. Neither the Belgian nor the Siberian domesticated lineages appear to have survived the LGM.

However, the two skulls indicate that the domestication of dogs by humans occurred repeatedly throughout early human history at different geographical locations, which could mean that modern dogs have multiple ancestors rather than a single common ancestor.

[Via Ancient Domesticated Dog Skull Found in Siberian Cave | UANews.org.]

Dogs are widely used in all kinds of search and rescue activities, including finding people under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

One research team is looking for ways to enhance what dogs can offer, by fitting them with Canine Augmentation Technology (CAT) — cameras, video, wifi and other tech:

The primary goal of the project is to improve the performance of trained Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) dogs in finding and facilitating the rescue of live people who are trapped in the rubble of buildings that suffer a structural Collapse. Our goal is to create assistive technology so that others might live.

… At the moment, the project consists of 5 separate subcomponents that are based on the theme of finding trapped people faster in order to save lives.

We all know the image of the Saint Bernard dog delivering a small barrel of brandy to those trapped in the snow. How much more useful it would be if rescue dogs could deliver food, medicine, water and communications:

The Canine Remote Deployment System (CRDS) is a remotely operated release mechanism worn by the dog and triggered by the handler using a wireless handset. When the handler hears the bark indication of the dog, they can release a bag (called the “underdog”) that can contain medical supplies, a radio, food, water or other sensors very close to where the trapped person is located. The technology has been awarded a provisional U.S. Patent.

The team are working on 5 areas:

1. Canine Augmentation Technology (CAT)
2. Canine Remote Deployment System (CRDS)
3. Canine Pose (CP) (sensors indicate what the dog’s doing)
4. Canine Work Apparel (CWA)
5. Canine Brain Function (CBF)

Let’s hope they gain enough funding to continue this important work.

Imagine a dog in a special jacket that carries a video camera and tiny screen, and a basic keyboard built into the fabric. After a disaster that dog could allow people to record short messages for friends and family members currently separated from their loved ones.

Disaster dog in special jacket.

That what’s a couple of students at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) are working on with their Messenger Dog project:

In those very first hours of fear and displacement, people may just want to send a message to their beloved ones only saying that they are alive and safe, hoping the same for them as well.

Messanger Dogs can help in recording those messages as video message and delivering them to the refugee camp they are assigned to.

Messanger Dogs wear a particular uniform to identify them, equipped with a device that can record messages, store geolocation of where each message was taken and the time as well. Messanger dogs are trained to sit when in front of a person, so as soon as one of them meets a person, it sits, allowing the accelerometer inside the recording device to trigger the interface software to start.

… At the end of their work, they can come back to the camp, where volunteers will download the video and make them available to the people to browse among and watch.

The video explains more.

Messenger Dog from laura boffi on Vimeo.

I would think this could be easily modified so the dog could also carry a standard recorded message informing people about where to turn for help or of survival measures they should take.

This is an interesting idea. I hope the students explore it further.

Dr Stanley Coren writes in Personality Differences Between Dog and Cat Owners about a couple of research projects.

Olive.

In one project at the University of Texas 4,500 people were given a 44-item personality assessment.

In Coren’s own research, he measured the characteristics of 6,000 people to find:

The general pattern that comes out of both studies is that dog owners are more social, interactive and accepting and cat owners (who own cats exclusively) are more introverted, self-contained and less sociable.

It’s a very interesting article, with some findings I found surprising. But then, I live with both cats and dogs, and am drawn equally to both.

Take a look at his article, then let us know in the Comments here what you think of his findings.

The University of New South Wales, Australia, reports some new research about the history and diversity of dogs:

Australia’s dingo and the New Guinea Singing Dog may be the world’s oldest dog breeds, according to a major new genetic study into the domestication of the animal dubbed man’s best friend.

Dingo.

The international study published in the journal Nature suggests that those two breeds are the most closely related to wolves and may be most like the original domesticated dog as it was across Asia and the Middle East thousands of years ago, according to one of the 37 authors of the study, Dr Alan Wilton, of the UNSW School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences.

“This paper examines the domestication of the dog from the wild wolf using genetic differences,” Dr Wilton says. “48,000 sites in the dog genome were examined in hundreds of wolves, almost a thousand dogs from 85 modern breeds of dog and several ancient dog breeds.

“The data suggest most dogs were domesticated in the Middle East, which was the cradle of agriculture 10,000 of years ago, rather than in Asia as had been suggested previously.

“It also shows dingoes, which have been separated from other breeds of dog in Australia for the past 5,000 years, are the most distinct dog group with most similarity to wolves.”

The dingo and New Guinea Singing Dog stand out as being most different from all other breeds of dogs and closer to wolves than other breeds.

Other ancient breeds include Chow — Chow, Basenji, Akita, Chinese Shar — Pei, Siberian husky and Alaskan malamute. They could possibly have arisen from a separate domestication event to modern domestic dogs, which were mainly developed in the early 19th Century in Europe.

“They can be divided into mastiffs (for example, bulldogs), gun dogs, spaniels, herding breeds, sight hounds, scent hounds, retrievers, small terriers, toy dogs and flock guard breeds,” says Dr Wilton.

To gather all of the results from many dog breeds and wolves from many locations, a worldwide effort was mounted.

Dr Wilton and Jeremy Shearman — from the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences and the Ramaciotti Centre for Gene Function Analysis at UNSW — have been working on dingoes and methods to differentiate between pure dingoes and crosses between domestic dogs and dingoes. They contributed the genetic data from seven dingoes, which is a small amount of data but makes a large contribution to the paper. The data from all samples was analysed together at Cornell University and UCLA.

[Article and photo from: Dingo may be world's oldest dog - News - UNSW - Science.]

There’s evidence that shows small dogs can be traced back to the Middle East:

Small dog Sasha.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 13, 2010) — A genetic study has found that small domestic dogs probably originated in the Middle East more than 12,000 years ago. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology traced the evolutionary history of the IGF1 gene, finding that the version of the gene that is a major determinant of small size probably originated as a result of the domestication of the Middle Eastern gray wolf. …

Previous archeological work in the Middle East has unearthed the remains of small domestic dogs dating to 12,000 years ago. Sites in Belgium, Germany and Western Russia contain older remains (13,000-31,000 years ago), but these are of larger dogs. These findings support the hypothesis put forward by Gray and colleagues that small body size evolved in the Middle East.

[Via : Small dogs originated in the Middle East, genetic study finds.]

If you’ve ever lived with dogs you’ll be in no doubt that their barks and growls differ according to context. Now scientists have started measuring the differences in growling. They have also demonstrated that dogs can distinguish between types of growl, even when the context is changed:

Dog with Cow Femur. Photo by hynkle.

For the first part of the study, Pongracz and his colleagues recorded 20 adult dogs of various breeds growling during the following situations: when a threatening stranger approached, during a tug-of-war game and while guarding a large, meaty bone.

The scientists electronically analyzed the recorded sounds and found that play growls stand out from the other two types because they are, in part, shorter and higher pitched. The computer analysis didn’t show any major differences between the other two growls, but dogs picked out the specific meanings immediately during the second part of the study.

For this experiment, 41 adult pet dogs of various breeds were recruited … as the test subject dogs approached the bone, the researchers played back the previously recorded growls through a hidden speaker. The hungry canines only jumped when the bone-guarding growl was played, even though the threatening stranger-associated growl sounded just as menacing to human ears.

[Via : Dog Growls Contain Specific Information : Discovery News.]

Dog bites are a problem everywhere:

The Blue Dog.

Each year as many as 4.5 million Americans are bitten by dogs. Nearly one in five – about 885,000 people – suffer injuries severe enough to require medical attention, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among children, the rate of dog-bite related injuries is highest for those ages 5-9.

[Via : Dog Bites Research: UAB Testing Software to Teach Kids, Dogs to Interact Safely.]

I’ve seen kids rush up to dogs, reach over them, thrust their hands straight into a dog’s face. When I help kids get to know our two small dogs I try to teach the child to let the dog sniff their hand first, then pat the dog on the back. They don’t always learn this in the few seconds of our meeting on the street or in the park though.

Now researchers are testing whether a computer game can help teach kids:

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham are hoping to save some little fingers by testing an educational computer game geared toward preventing dog bites in children. Called “The Blue Dog,” the game uses visual cues to teach young ones to recognize the warning signs associated with annoyed or aggressive dogs.

Schwebel and graduate student Aaron Davis have been meeting with kids ages 3 1/2 to 6 for the past several weeks, evaluating the risks they’re willing to take with a real dog after using the program. “It’s obvious the ones who’ve played the game because they make better choices,” Davis explains. “They’re more likely to tell their parents about what’s happening, or leave the room.”

[Via : Can a Computer Game Prevent Dog Bites? | Amazing | News | PEOPLE Pets.]

The software itself comes from The Blue Dog Trust in the UK. The goals of the project are to help teach the principles of dog bite prevention to 3 to 6 year old children and their parents.

In my opinion, any education programme that can help prevent dog bites is a good thing.