By domesticating dogs, humans unwittingly initiated an artificial selection experiment on personality – the results of which may have implications for our own longevity. We know that dogs were breed to specific tasks and that individual dogs were selected for reproduction based on certain behavior traits – such as activity, aggressiveness, and docility – related [...]
A team of researchers, led by Melissa Gray and Robert Wayne from the University of California, Los Angeles, have traced the evolutionary history of the pint-sized pooch back to the Middle East. In a genetic study published in the open-access journal BMC Biology, the team surveyed a large sample of grey wolves, and discovered that [...]
According to a recent study by biologists Chris Klingenberg (University 0f Manchester) and Abby Drake (College of the Holy Cross in the US), the domesticated dog – aka man’s best friend – has managed to etch a unique evolutionary history that shows the cute side of Darwin‘s original theory. Published in The American Naturalist, the [...]
When Wally Conrad – now 81 – first coined the name for his canine-concoction, he didn’t realize that he was making the mistake of a lifetime. It was the year 1988, he was the manager of the puppy program at the Royal Institute of the Blind, and he’d just received a letter from a woman [...]
