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Champis the dwarf rabbit has decided that dogs aren't the only animals that can herd sheep. It turns out that the little guy isn't half bad at giving his farm's sheep the runaround. More »
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Even if you don't know a Golden Snitch from a frumious Bandersnatch, it's absolutely impossible to remain churlish at life when this duo is around. If anybody knows who could have done this, drop us a line and we'll credit Fluffy and 'Arry accordingly. On an unrelated note, Cerberus is the new vampires is the new zombies is the new selkies is the new tengu. More »
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For their latest X-Mas film, design firm 39 Degree Studios has put together a 5.5-minute homage to the buddy cop genre in the vein of Man's Best Friend. If you're going to run with a single insane visual gag, run with it until you see the whites of the audience's eyes. More »
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Looking back on all of humanity's successes in space, it can be easy to forget that many of our accomplishments have been built on the sacrifices of other creatures. Here are ten animals who played an indispensable role in paving the inter-planetary way to space. More »
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If man evolved in Africa, where did man's best friend come from? Scientists thought the first dogs came from the Middle East, but a new study of dog genetics suggests they actually come from one small region of modern China. More »
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Good morning, internet. As a prize for being up at such an ungodly hour, here is your Wampug (a.k.a. YouTuber StarWarsChick01's dog Chubbs). Now go seize that day, galvanized and emboldened by what you have witnessed here. More »
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You're looking at the most recent prototype of Japanese robotics manufacturer NSK's mechanical seeing-eye dog. This model uses Microsoft Kinect to navigate obstacles, and its creators are adding such features as voice recognition to prevent the robot from leading its master astray. Will future generations be dealing with these helper droids or the same trusty pup cloned ad infinitum? More »
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We've seen an AT-AT act like a dog, now check out a dog masquerading as an AT-AT. This is Katie Mello's dog Bones, who's dressed up as the biomimetic death-bringer of Hoth. Is he aware of the terror he depicts? Yes. I can see it in his eyes. More »
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At Incheon Airport, the Korean Custom Service has turned to seven cloned pooches to sniff out drug mules. These golden Labrador Retrievers are all the genetic duplicates of Chase, a retired drug-sniffing dog whose nose was among the most discerning Incheon had ever seen. More »
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A dog can accurately detect the early presence of lung cancer by sniffing patients' breath, doctors in Germany say. While researchers have known for some time that dogs can sniff out the telltale signs of other forms of cancer, this is the first study that proves dogs can reliably smell this particular kind. More »
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Battlepug is a revenge webcomic with an adorable twist. A barbarian warrior sees his entire village destroy by a deadly (but super cute) baby seal and sets off on a quest to find his true destiny: rider of the Battlepug. More »
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Identical twins don't share exactly the same genetics, but the difference is so small that many DNA tests have trouble distinguishing one twin from another. It turns out the world's most sophisticated genetic tests have nothing on Czech police dogs. More »
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No need to search the world over for your other puppy half. Doggelgänger uses facial recognition software to pair you up with the puppy that already shares your handsome features! More »
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Everything you knew about canine hydration was wrong! You will gasp in astonishment to discover the physical links between dog drinking and cat drinking! And learn the secrets behind messy dog slobber! All will be revealed! More »
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Man's best friend can be heroic. They can lead the blind, find explosives and rescue people. But as heroic as dogs can be, they're not superheroic. But some dogs go further, using amazing superpowers and rocking awesome capes. More »
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According to anecdotal reports, dog-like cryptids have been running rampant in Quang Ngai, Vietnam this month. Eyewitnesses claim that these strange and slender canines have been picking off pet dogs and roaring like the dickens. More »
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You helped Voldermort Cat find a good home — now it's Terminator Dog's turn. Hachi, the Chow Chow (mix) was severely burned, leaving him looking like a Terminator. Some folks are calling these marks "unsightly," but we beg to differ. More »
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Can owning a dog or cat be classed as a dangerous activity? Judy A. Stevens PhD. and colleagues at The Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention, of the US National Center for Injury Prevention and Control have completed their report – Dogs and cats as environmental fall hazards – which is published in the Journal of Safety Research,Volume 41, issue 1, February 2010, Pages 69-73. More »
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Dogs, sheep, pigs, cows, horses - all these animals and more have been fundamentally changed by humans to make our lives better. Domestication has fundamentally altered the course of human history, reshaping the land and other species to fit our new agricultural lifestyle. But how do you take a wild species and turn them into domesticated helpers? Why can animals like dogs or horses be domesticated while their close relatives like foxes and zebras remain stubbornly wild? More »
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Animals are faster than us, stronger than us, and now dogs, at least, are gaining the ability to understand speech. Want to keep the human race from being eaten alive? Reassert your dominance with hypnosis. More »
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To the casual observer, the skull of an average dog may look more or less left/right symmetrical. But are they really? More »
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Alien possession comes in many forms, as this clip from The Hidden 2 proves. There's Kyle MacLachlan, transferring his alien life essence into another man, in a wonderfully tender moment. And then there's the fluffy dog and the tentacle monster. More »
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Being sociable has its advantages, including giving you - or at least your species - a bigger brain. Across more than 500 mammal species, animals that lived in social groups had bigger brains than those that lived by themselves. More »
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Scenario: You are cradling a dog. Do you hold it on your left side or on your right side? More »
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Behold the basic physics of the wet dog shake, as explored by Andrew Dickerson, Grant Mills, Jay Bauman, Young-Hui Chang, David Hu of the Georgia Institute of Technology. More »
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Looking for really some really bad dogs? Check out these gonzo movies starring supernatural and post-canine horrors that make Cujo look like Spuds MacKenzie wearing a party hat. Here are the most malevolent mutts in moviedom. More »
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Twelve millennia of selective breeding have created hundreds of distinct dog breeds, yet they're still all one species - even a chihuahua and Great Dane could successfully interbreed. But all those physical changes have deeply altered how dogs' brains work. More »
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This is the most relaxed dog you're ever likely to see, because it's listening to the perfect canine mix-tape. Teikyo University of Science's Department of Animal Science spent 18 months researching the ultimate music for dogs to chill out to. More »
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Of course you are — and that's why this faux ad for a Make Your Dog Immortal kit hits our sweet spot. Our blasphemous, profane, incredibly wrong sweet spot. [Twitter] More »
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Soviet space dogs had their mugs plastered on stamps, cigarettes, matchbooks, and other baubles. Here's ephemera featuring Belka and Strelka, the first dogs to survive a space flight, and Laika, the first animal to live (and sadly die) in orbit. More »
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Rolling around in a pile of toxic waste generally doesn't give you superpowers so much as make you incredibly ill, but for dogs in one Russian town, exposure to chemical waste has had a curious side-effect: it's turning them green. More »
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Though many believe that domestic dogs originated in Eurasia, new research shows that the human-dog bond may have begun in the cradle of human evolution: Africa. A study published this week cites evidence from the DNA of African village dogs. More »
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The Korean Customs Service just got six new employees: a set of Labrador Retrievers cloned from a top drug-sniffing dog. Soon, they'll be rooting out heroin smugglers, and getting a good whiff of your dirty laundry. More »
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Ever since Barack Obama announced that he would be getting his daughters Malia and Sasha a puppy, dog-lovers have speculated on the breed of the future First Pooch. But we suspect the perfect dog for the Obamas is, in fact, a robot. A robotic pet won’t aggravate Malia’s allergies, and it would help solidify Obama’s position as the technology president. Here are ten real robotic pets that the Obamas should consider making a part of the First Family. More »
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When your dog dies, it's a tough loss. But now you can bring back Fido, and not in the "Pet Cemetery" evil-pet way, either. BioArts International, a biotech company in California announced this week that they're partnering with South Korean cloning expert (and fraudster) Hwang Woo-Suk to deliver dog copies to the five highest bidders in their pet-cloning auction. Bids start at $100,000 dollars. More »
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It's hard to find dogs that have just the right set of attributes to sniff for drugs, which is why South Korean Customs officials got their favorite drug-sniffing dog cloned. The seven clones (four are pictured here) have all grown up to be excellent sniffers — though only one in ten dogs usually passes drug-sniff training, all seven passed. All seven dogs are called Toppy, and each cost over $100,000 to clone, plus $40,000 extra to train. Over at Technovelgy, Bill Christensen points out that the cloned drug-sniffers have a precedent in a science fiction whose representation of cloning was so inaccurate that you'll be surprised it got anything right. More »
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It looks like something out of a James Thurber illustration, with its headless body and backward-dog legs, but the Big Dog is real and autonomous. This video, by the Big Dog development team at Boston Dynamics, shows just how lifelike the bot is. It can carry over 300 pounds, and its engines make an alien whining noise. It can also, apparently, recover its balance after being kicked by its owner, in a scene that that is disturbing on a number of levels. More »
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Dogs are slowly replacing human children. In Japan, there are already more households with dogs than there are households with kids, and the service industry is right up there to pamper them. Here we see a canine oxygen bar—just one of the many luxury services available to dogs in Japan, like haute couture and yoga. More »
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