pets - io9

posts about #pets more →
Foot-Long Spider-Man Lizard Wants To Join The Legion Of Super-Pets
Were Africans The First People To Domesticate Dogs?
Keep Your Pets Frozen for Cryogenic Travel
10 Robotic Pets That Deserve to Live in the White House

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Bill-Lee
09/22/09

In reply to Foot-Long Spider-Man Lizard Wants To Join The Legion Of Super-Pets
I hate it when pets get trendy. It almost never ends well, usually with a huge spike in overcrowded animal shelters and unnecessary euthanasia.
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it must be bunnies
09/22/09

@Bill-Lee: So true. It happened with 'Eddie' on Frasier. So many people bought Jack Russell Terriers without researching the breed. They can be hyper and destructive if their needs aren't met. I wonder how many Nemos ended up in the toilet bowl?
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it must be bunnies was starred

e30 guy
09/22/09

In reply to Foot-Long Spider-Man Lizard Wants To Join The Legion Of Super-Pets
Are you just saying it's Kenyan lizard because you don't believe it's Hawaiian lizard birth certificate is valid?
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Discodave: R.O.A.C.H. M.O.T.E.L.
09/22/09

In reply to Foot-Long Spider-Man Lizard Wants To Join The Legion Of Super-Pets
I want a Venom lizard.
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RandomFrequentFlierDent
09/22/09

In reply to Foot-Long Spider-Man Lizard Wants To Join The Legion Of Super-Pets

So cute! Although it comes in second on my list of favourite pretty lizards. The flat lizard is still first.
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Meirelle
09/22/09

@RandomFrequentFlierDent: I agree. That lizard is the most badass. It has a color combination that only the best shrooms can dream up.
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ManchuCandidate
09/22/09

In reply to Foot-Long Spider-Man Lizard Wants To Join The Legion Of Super-Pets
With great fanboy-dom comes great idiocy.

I can't wait for the inevitable stories about these things overwhelming existing wildlife because 'tarded Spidey fans can't take care or get bored of them.
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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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alphanumeric1971 promoted this comment

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; NationalScienceFoundationGrant...;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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Torley
11/20/08

In reply to Keep Your Pets Frozen for Cryogenic Travel
It's eternity in there...
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♥AntiSocialSocialite♥
11/20/08

In reply to Keep Your Pets Frozen for Cryogenic Travel
my cat of 6 years died last month.... we had to put him to sleep and i suggested at the vet, while in tears, that we cryogenically freeze him just in case they figure out a way to save him...

and the doctor and his assistant starting CRACKING UP... while I was in tears.... insensitive bastards.
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mad love for Astrid
11/21/08

@BeccaThePromoMami: What an asshole. If you get another cat, you may want to consider changing vets.
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♥AntiSocialSocialite♥
11/21/08

@mad love for Astrid: yeeeaaa.... I'm not taking my dog there anymore.

ALSO - LOVE your name. Astrid definitely needs more face time on Fringe!
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cljohnston108
11/20/08

In reply to Keep Your Pets Frozen for Cryogenic Travel
Well, ever since I started reading Larry Niven, with his Stasis Fields, I can't even think about Cryogenics.

[en.wikipedia.org]
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AmishJohn
11/20/08

@cljohnston108: Corpsicles!
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Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.
11/20/08

In reply to Keep Your Pets Frozen for Cryogenic Travel
Amen.

But didn't the fine folks of Eureka, WA already do this?
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