Animals
467- Cute Little Monstrosities of Nature
467- Cute Little Monstrosities of Nature
11/23/21 by Tove Danovich, Lasha Madan
Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/131692649
Episode: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/stitcher.simplecastaudio.com/3bb687b0-04af-4257-90f1-39eef4e631b6/episodes/5f14d72c-7b2e-4634-abb6-d6573753af30/audio/128/default.mp3?
The French bulldog is now the second most popular breed in America. Their cute features, portable size, and physical features make for a dog that can easily travel and doesn’t require a lot of exercise. But these characteristics sometimes have a detrimental effect on the dog’s health. Tove K. Danovich writes “Rather than requiring human owners to change their lives to accommodate a new dog, the French bulldog is a breed that’s been broken to accommodate us.” Historically, dogs were bred for functional reasons, not aesthetics. But evaluating a breed based on how they accomplish a task is tricky, leading to the rise of visual standards more easily judged. As breed standards were formalized, purebred dogs grew in popularity and became a luxury of sorts; but with a limited genetic pool, this popularity naturally led to a lot of inbreeding to maintain breed consistency. Cute Little Monstrosities of Nature
Why Adopting a Rescue Dog Is So Hard Right Now
There is something odd about rescue dogs, or a market that values used and often damaged products over new products in form of bred dogs. Some of it has to be marketing -- the idea of your rescuing a cute dog from certain death at a kill shelter. As if dogs had emotions beyond what their natural biology tells them to do to meet their needs like food and shelter.
You have to wonder how much of the rescue business is a fraud -- if the value of rescue dog, especially boutique breeds, continues to rise, there is going to be unscrupulous breeders that are going to be selling dogs to rescue businesses as "rescued" even if the only place the dog was rescued from was on paper.
How to Teach a Dog to Fetch Beer
"Here's how to teach your dog to fetch you a beer."
Watching ‘The Most Dangerous Animals In The World’ – The Bronx Zoo in 1963 – Flashbak
On June 8, 1963, the Illustrated London News ran the following story about an exhibition at the gorilla house at The Bronx Zoo in New York City. The exhibit told visitors:
“You are looking at the most dangerous animal in the world. It alone of all the animals that ever lived can exterminate (and has) entire species of animals. Now it has the power to wipe out all life on earth.”
‘Super mom’ spotted on a Minnesota lake — with 56 ducklings in tow | MNN – Mother Nature Network
Dog Brains Reveal How Much Human Language They Actually Understand
We love to tell dogs what to do, but we rarely consider whether they understand what we’re saying. Pet owners assume their dogs comprehend commands like sit, stay, or heel — even play dead and make me Instagram famous, for that matter — but without the ability to read their minds, no one can know for sure. An ingenious new study in Frontiers in Neuroscience, however, finds a way to determine which of our commands they actually understand.