Dogs - io9

posts about #dogs more →
Were Africans The First People To Domesticate Dogs?
Korean Dog Clones Start Sniffing Drugs, Underwear
10 Robotic Pets That Deserve to Live in the White House
Disgraced Human Cloning Scientist to Hawk Dog-Copies Instead
Clones Bred to Sniff Drugs
Dogoid Robot with No Head Moves in an Eerily Lifelike Manner
High-End Oxygen Bar Slows Down Canine Aging

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gorehound
08/06/09

In reply to Were Africans The First People To Domesticate Dogs?
Nearly every African I have run into in the last 10 or so years are deathly afraid of dogs.They will run away in terror from my little Welsh Corgi.I did ask an African man once why they do this and he said they believe the dog is an unclean animal.
I think the Africans who were or are offended by my dog are from Somalia.
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Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.
08/06/09

@gorehound: Muslims consider the dog unclean. It's a religious thing, not a country or continental thing.
Obviously your experience shows we need to fight the Somali pirates with aquatic attack Corgis. You could clear up the whole problem with just the contents of the Queen's household.
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Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.
08/06/09

@gorehound: Muslims consider the dog unclean. It's a religious thing, not a country or continental thing.
Obviously your experience shows we need to fight the Somali pirates with aquatic attack Corgis. You could clear up the whole problem with just the contents of the Queen's household.
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OW-Holmes:Bringer of Fear
08/06/09

In reply to Were Africans The First People To Domesticate Dogs?
So who do I ask about fixing the whole "digging out of my fraking yard every time it rains" thing?
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winshape
08/06/09

In reply to Were Africans The First People To Domesticate Dogs?
So....Eurasian Grey Wolf + 15-40K Years = Chihuahua?

Darwin's got some 'splaining to do.
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omgwtflolbbqbye promoted this comment Edited by winshape at 08/06/09 11:26 AM winshape was starred winshape was unstarred

Ruthless, If you let me
08/06/09

@winshape: I know some Chihuahua owners. They constantly bring up that Chihuahua's were bred from foxes, not wolves. (I am dubious of this claim despite their protestaion that they saw it on "National Geographic" or "Nature" or "Animal Planet" or something....)
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Edited by Ruthless, If you let me at 08/06/09 11:41 AM

winshape
08/06/09

@BullLifter: I guess that's better than my theory that they are actually rats that have been called "dogs" so they are more socially acceptable as pets.
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RandomFrequentFlierDent
08/06/09

@winshape: Well when you consider the fact that Chihuahua was arrived at through massive amounts of inbreeding, it’s not that hard to believe.
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solidbrassfasteners
08/06/09

In reply to Were Africans The First People To Domesticate Dogs?
Is there a reason why there has to be "the" place where humans started to domesticate dogs? I'm not getting why scientists believe they can pinpoint the one place where it happened. Couldn't it just be that domestication happened concurrently in different areas, because of changes in human lifestyle?
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phantom_K9
08/06/09

@solidbrassfasteners: Not only that, but much of the current thought is that dogs basically domesticated themselves. "Tamer" wolves figured out that there were easier meals if they just stuck around human camps. Humans had very little to do with it other than throw them some food every now and then in the hopes they would go away and not try to eat the children.
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I Think We're Property
08/06/09

@phantom_K9: Also, despite being primates, many humans seem to have an instinctual understanding of pack dynamics. That no doubt made the transition much easier.
Also, its believed that basically the same thing happened with cats, just with less pack dynamics, obviously. Instead of coming to view humans as pack leaders, they just stayed for the rodents we tended to attract and the shelter we provided.
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92BuickLeSabre
08/06/09

In reply to Were Africans The First People To Domesticate Dogs?
Chalk up one more in the "Theories on Things I Already Thought we Thought" column.
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Stanford Chiou
08/06/09

In reply to Were Africans The First People To Domesticate Dogs?
So he asked his brother and sister-in-law, on honeymoon in Egypt, Uganda and Namibia, to collect DNA samples from hundreds of village dogs.
Worst. Brother-in-law. Ever.
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92BuickLeSabre
08/06/09

@Stanford Chiou: So true that I found it hard to concentrate on the rest of the article.
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crashedpc - Haifisch
08/06/09

@Stanford Chiou: Red rocket! Red rocket!
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ManchuCandidate
08/06/09

@Stanford Chiou:
Yeah, cause taking dog blood samples is much better than sex.
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crashedpc - Haifisch
08/06/09

@ManchuCandidate: Blood? Why blood when you can get dog *censored for complete lack of taste*
*taste probably not the best word for this situation*
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RandomFrequentFlierDent
08/06/09

@Stanford Chiou: It reminds me of my Russian parasitology prof telling the class how when her husband got sick after being on sabbatical in Asia she was able to diagnose him with malaria.
Then, rather than take him to, you know, a hospital for treatment, she turned him over to some colleagues for research purposes.
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Annalee Newitz
08/06/09

@Stanford Chiou: My reaction was like, "Is it really a scientific study if you basically just asked your brother to gather data on his vacation?"
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92BuickLeSabre
08/06/09

@Annalee Newitz: If that was your problem with the request, than I hope that we are never in-laws.
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GreyHammer
08/06/09

@Annalee Newitz: he was probably able to write it off some how. these guys always write stuff off.
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acrobatic rabbit
08/06/09

@crashedpc : ゴキブリ and 蟑螂 division: dude. gross.
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artiofab
08/06/09

@GreyHammer: To once again copy and paste from the article, "This work supported by the Center for Vertebrate Genomics,Department of Clinical Sciences and Baker Institute of Animal Health, Cornell University; National Institutes of Health Center for Scientific Review and R24 researchgrantprogram; NationalScienceFoundationGrant0516310;andaSloan
Foundation research fellowship."
So yeah I'm sure that money for the travel and collecting was scooped from one of those grants and fellowships.
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capnrob
08/06/09

I hear the "Oh, those scientists, they get handed big truckloads of free money and they take vacations on OUR dime!" thing far, far too often. I tend to haul the people who say that and inform them in no uncertain terms how infrequently that happens - grant money is sufficiently hard to get (outside of NIH funding sources, the bastiches) and so limited that the scientists I know tend to buy everything they can out of pocket before touching their grant money. They have to *produce*, see, to get their next grant, and the more money they use on useless endeavors, the less they have to produce with. In this particular case, I'd put the odds at 50-50 that this was seen as a way to get a publication out of money they'd already spent on the vacation, as opposed to getting a vacation out of grant money. (Now, the *analysis*, I'm sure that was paid for out of grant money, in a sense, anyway, because the Big Machine That Goes "Pong!" they used to analyze it was paid for out of the grant, I betcha.)
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Boas_MC
09/07/09

@Stanford Chiou: Actually, knowing his brother and sister-in-law, I'd have to say it was probably a pretty sweet way for them to spend a honeymoon.

@Annalee Newitz: Also, knowing his brother and sister-in-law, who are PhD students in evolutionary anthropology, they're a pretty science-minded couple, rigorous and all that. So I'd say that yes, it's a scientific study.
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GreyHammer
07/20/09

In reply to Korean Dog Clones Start Sniffing Drugs, Underwear
its really nothing that radical. we have been modifying dogs for centuries now with eugenics to serve us better. this is just the next step.
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Tracy Ham and Eggs
07/20/09

In reply to Korean Dog Clones Start Sniffing Drugs, Underwear
SyFy is already working on the plot to its new Saturday night movie
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(Zombie) Goldwings - Zombie antidote. Attempt 24... somethings happening!
07/20/09

In reply to Korean Dog Clones Start Sniffing Drugs, Underwear
I wonder how this can work to make certain species "better." Of course that's where I draw the line in playing GOD.
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Dr Emilio Lizardo
07/20/09

In reply to Korean Dog Clones Start Sniffing Drugs, Underwear
this is an excellent use of the technology, especially if this is the dog that the cartels tried to have killed a few years back.

Is it still true that clones don't live as long as the original animal or has that problem been solved?
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ryno365
07/20/09

In reply to Korean Dog Clones Start Sniffing Drugs, Underwear
I really really dont like this. Attack of the Dog Clones anyone?
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(Zombie) Goldwings - Zombie antidote. Attempt 24... somethings happening!
07/20/09

@ryno365: We can always counter them with black bears.
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TemporalSword
07/20/09

@ryno365: Yes, but will one dog look to the other and say, "Sniff me like you did on Naboo"?
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Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H. promoted this comment Edited by TemporalSword at 07/20/09 10:34 AM TemporalSword was starred TemporalSword was unstarred

Pope John Peeps II
07/20/09

@ryno365: Order 66 is for a mass-peeing. Followed by an all-clone dump in the Jedi temple.
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