Posted by Mike on April 30, 2009 under 1. Info Collection | 
Pet psychic finds blown away Chihuahua? [Respectful Insolence]: “
Well, the weird news just keeps coming in from my hometown. This time around, consider the case of Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell is a tiny Chihuahua weighing all of five pounds. This poor little creature met nature in a most unfortunate way on Saturday, when some rather heavy storms swept through southeast Michigan. It turns out that storms and Chihuahuas don’t mix very well (as you might expect), and poor Tinker Bell discovered that in a most harsh way:
Tinkerbelle was with her owners, Lavern and Dorothy Utley of Rochester, when a powerful storm swept into the Dixie Land Flea Market in Waterford.
The storm packed wind gusts of more 70 mph.
One of the gusts lifted up Tinkerbelle and carried the dog away.
‘They tried to catch her too but nobody could. The wind had her and she was just going on and her collar was found across the street,’ said Dorothy Utley. ‘She flew and she went over three lanes into the woods.’
Joe Goldberg is the manager of the flea market.
He said the storm came up suddenly and began sweeping away equipment from the more than 100 vendors at the site.
‘It was just like the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and Toto,’ Goldberg said.
The Utley family searched the area through the weekend.
I can feel for the Utleys. Really, I can. I may not be a big fan of Chihuahuas. (I prefer larger dogs.) I would never make fun of anyone who lost their dog. I can totally understand their going to radio stations for help, which apparently the Utleys did on Monday morning. Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. But how? Surely you must be able to guess.
That’s right. Enter…the Lorrie the Pet Psychic:
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(Via ScienceBlogs:Brain & Behavior.)
Posted by Mike on April 22, 2009 under 1. Info Collection |
What do children make of robot dogs?: “
Whether something is living or not is a crucial distinction, and it’s one that children already understand by the age of five. What then do children make of the latest generation of robot pets - toys designed to be as ‘alive’ as possible? It’s a surprisingly little researched area, but with the shuttle rate of technological advance in toy-land, it’s one that’s bound to become increasingly relevant.
Gail Melson and colleagues filmed 72 kids playing for 45 minutes with a Sony Aibo robot dog and for 45 minutes playing with a real-life pooch of the Australian Shepherd breed. The Sony 210 Aibo dog was the most advanced robot dog at the time this research was conducted. It was capable of walking after a pink ball, kicking and headbutting it. It could also shake itself, sit down, lie down, offer its paw, learn, and display positive and negative emotion via lights.
As well as filming the children, the researchers also asked them questions about the biological (e.g. does X eat?), mental (e.g. can X feel happy?), and social (e.g. does X like you?) properties of the two dogs, as well as their moral standing (e.g. is it OK or not OK to hit X?).
The picture that emerged was mixed. On the one hand, the children clearly saw the real dog as more real and alive than the robot dog. They also examined the robot dog as if it were an object rather than a creature - prodding it and picking it up. On the other hand, there were signs that the children saw the robot dog as more than a mere toy. For example, over 80 per cent of the children spoke and gave commands to the robot dog as often as they did to the real dog. Nearly half the children petted the robot dog gently at least once, despite its metallic surface. Moreover, the children were no more likely to say it was okay to hit the robot dog than they were to say it was okay to hit the real dog! In all cases there was a trend for older children to see the robot dog as less real.
‘These children were surprisingly willing to treat the robot dog as ‘dog like’,’ the researchers concluded. ‘…[S]uch findings may be evidence of the emergence of a new ontological category, neither artifact nor living being.’
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Melson, G., Kahn Jr., P., Beck, A., Friedman, B., Roberts, T., Garrett, E., & Gill, B. (2009). Children’s behavior toward and understanding of robotic and living dogs. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30 (2), 92-102 DOI: 10.1016/j.appdev.2008.10.011
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Melson, G., Kahn Jr., P., Beck, A., Friedman, B., Roberts, T., Garrett, E., & Gill, B. (2009) Children’s behavior toward and understanding of robotic and living dogs?. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(2), 92-102. DOI:’10.1016/j.appdev.2008.10.011
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(Via Research Blogging - Psychology - English.)
Posted by Mike on April 14, 2009 under 1. Info Collection |
Is Raw Food Better Than Commercial Food? Or is it Worse?: “
I want to start by setting guidelines for comments on this post. The subject of pet food in general, and raw in particular, has a knack for setting off emotions.
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(Via Vet Blog: Information and Advice from Dr. Eric Barchas, DVM.)
Posted by Mike on under 1. Info Collection |
What domestication changes [Gene Expression]: “
Over at Gene Expression Classic p-ter points to an interesting paper, Genetic Architecture of Tameness in a Rat Model of Animal Domestication:
A common feature of domestic animals is tameness - i.e. they tolerate and are unafraid of human presence and handling. To gain insight into the genetic basis of tameness and aggression, we studied an intercross between two lines of rats (Rattus norvegicus) selected over more than 60 generations for increased tameness and increased aggression against humans, respectively. We measured 45 traits, including tameness and aggression, anxiety-related traits, organ weights, and levels of serum components in more than 700 rats from an intercross population. Using 201 genetic markers, we identified two significant quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for tameness. These loci overlap with QTLs for adrenal gland weight and for anxiety-related traits, and are part of a five-locus epistatic network influencing tameness. An additional QTL influences the occurrence of white coat spots, but shows no significant effect on tameness. The loci described here are important starting points for finding the genes that cause tameness in these rats, and potentially in domestic animals in general.
Remember that domestication and agricultural research were critical in Charles Darwin’s own conception of evolutionary process.
Related: The G matrix, pleiotropy and quantitative traits.
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(Via ScienceBlogs: Life Science.)
Posted by Mike on April 13, 2009 under 1. Info Collection |
First Transgenic Dog: Adorable Puppy Glows in the Dark: “
A post on Reporter Gene describes how a team of Korean researchers has created the first transgenic dog. She expresses red fluorescent protein (RFP) in all of her cells, causing her to glow quite nicely under normal light, and even more strongly under the wavelength of light that excites RFP. The researchers named her ‘Ruppy,’ a contraction of ‘ruby puppy.’ And, I must say, she’s adorable.
Above: Ruppy, the first transgenic dog. In panels b and c, Ruppy’s paw is compared to the paw of a dog that does not express RFP.
As someone who has kept dogs as pets, it’s hard for me to think about using them as research animals. Beagles like Ruppy (and like my beloved pet, Teddy) are a common breed used for research because of their small size and gentle temperament (terriers are also small, for example, but they are more aggressive). While I recognize the importance of research that’s been conducted in dogs, I’m not sure that I could personally work in a lab that studies them, due to my emotional involvement with the species. Happily, the use of dogs and cats in research has been declining (down by over 50% since 1979, according to the CDC), as scientists have found ways to conduct their experiments in rodents or in non-animal models. Transgenic dogs like Ruppy will help those who still must use companion animals for their experiments develop less invasive techniques for studying these model organisms.
Hong, S., Kim, M., Jang, G., Oh, H., Park, J., Kang, J., Koo, O., Kim, T., Kwon, M., Koo, B., Ra, J., Kim, D., Ko, C., & Lee, B. (2009). Generation of red fluorescent protein transgenic dogs. Genesis DOI: 10.1002/dvg.20504
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Hong, S., Kim, M., Jang, G., Oh, H., Park, J., Kang, J., Koo, O., Kim, T., Kwon, M., Koo, B…. (2009) Generation of red fluorescent protein transgenic dogs. genesis. DOI:’10.1002/dvg.20504
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(Via Research Blogging - Biology - English.)
Posted by Mike on April 4, 2009 under 1. Info Collection |
Why do Puppies Get Hiccups?: “
Why do puppies get hiccups more than adult dogs?
Patty
Brooksville, Florida
I will start with a disclaimer: I don’t know why animals hiccup.
It turns out that I am not alone in that regard. Consultation with the ultimate reserve of human knowledge, Wikipedia, confirms that nobody knows the cause of hiccups.
What I do know is that younger animals, especially puppies, are prone to hiccups. (Human infants purportedly hiccup much more often than adults; however, since humans weren’t covered in vet school, I cannot claim to be an expert on the matter of hiccups in our species.) Hiccups occur less frequently in mature individuals. In almost every case, hiccups are harmless.
The intuitively named phylogeneic hypothesis theorizes that hiccups are ‘an evolutionary remnant of earlier amphibian respiration’. If that’s true, then hiccups may be linked to neurological pathways that are prevalent in young animals. The pathways are replaced as individuals mature, leading to decreased hiccuping.
It’s just a theory, but it’s as good as anything I’ve heard. Regardless of why it happens, most puppies outgrow their hiccups. Enjoy them while they last.
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(Via Vet Blog: Information and Advice from Dr. Eric Barchas, DVM.)
Posted by Mike on April 3, 2009 under 1. Info Collection |
Can simulations replace animal testing? Alas, no. [Good Math, Bad Math]: “
My good friend and blogfather, Orac, posted something yesterday about animal testing
in medical laboratories. I’ve been meaning to write something about that for a while; now
seems like a good time.
I’m not someone who thinks that being cruel to animals is no big deal. I have known
some people like that, but thankfully they’re very rare, and none of them
were scientists whose work involves doing animal testing in real laboratories.
But animal testing isn’t about pointless cruelty. It’s about understanding things that we
simply cannot learn about in any other way. It’s extremely important to minimize the
cruelty we inflict on the subjects of animal tests: there’s no benefit in torturing an animal;
there’s no good reason to inflict unnecessary pain on any living thing. When we
can study something without using animals, we should. When we must use animals
in scientific study, we should be as kind to them as we possibly can. But the fact remains that in many cases, animal studies are necessary.
I don’t want to get into a long discussion of the ethics of it here; that’s a discussion
which has been had hundreds of times in plenty of other places, and there’s really no sense
repeating it yet again. But there is one thing I can contribute to this discussion. One of the
constant refrains of animal-rights protesters arguing against animal testing is: ‘Animal
testing isn’t necessary. We can use computer simulations instead.’
As a computer scientist who’s spent some time studying simulation, I feel qualified
to comment on that aspect of this argument.
The simplest answer to that is the old programmers mantra: ‘Garbage in, Garbage out’.
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(Via ScienceBlogs: Life Science.)
Posted by Mike on April 1, 2009 under 1. Info Collection |
Fascinating example of learning and adjusting.
YouTube - Smart Crows in Japan: “”
(Via .)
