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Study: dogs love music—and their favorite genre is classical
There’s no doubt that dogs are putting their paws in the music world. Laurie Anderson famously held a concert specifically for dogs in Times Square, and hundreds of music videos contain dogs. (I personally think every music video should have doggos in, but we’ll save that debate for another day.) You might’ve heard the urban legend that classical music helps dogs to relax. But is it really true? Do dogs like listening to music–and more importantly, can it help stressed pups to calm down? Does classical music really calm dogs? The short answer: Yes! A 2012 study published in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior monitored how a kenneled dogs react…
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Science agrees: train your pooch with love, not punishment
Researchers from the University of Porto have found that negative dog training — methods like shouting, pushing, or pulling the dog — can lead to long-term adverse effects on your dog’s mental health. They followed ninety-two companion dogs being trained with two very different kinds of schools of dog training: aversive (negative reinforcement) and reward-based. Dogs being exposed to the aversive training methods were observed to have more stress-related behaviors and also showed increased levels of cortisol than those in the reward-based group. Being a proud parent of two Labrador Retrievers, I know that living with pets is not always all fun and games. No matter how cute they are,…
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Turns out birds can speak in sentences like people
More and more it seems that birds deserve a place among other higher animals for their intellect. A new paper in the journal Current Biology suggests that one species — the Japanese tit — can use grammar when tweeting at one another. That’s important because grammar is one of the most complex mechanisms of language — and something we generally only see in humans. It’s what gives our sentences structure. When off grammar is, Yoda sound alike, you can. But, depending upon context, words and the meaning they hold can be indecipherable without the right grammar. It does allow us to convey complex ideas, though. Cats, for example, are pretty…
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Yes, cats do purr even when you’re not around, study shows
When a cat purrs as it snuggles up against you, it’s totally one of the greatest feelings in the world. But have you ever wondered if cats do the same thing when you’re not around? Do they purr on their own? According to Phys.org, purring isn’t relegated to just when Mr. Whiskers deems you worthy of his affection. It’s a habit that cats form very early in their lives, as early as when they’re drinking their mother’s milk. Purring doesn’t always have to mean a cat is happy, either. There are different purrs cats make depending on their mood and what’s going on, just like when dogs bark or whine.…
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Study: we probably bred dogs to forgive unfairness
A study published in the journal Current Biology tells us something we already know: dogs have basically been bred to accept raw deals from people. It’s a really depressing conclusion if you stop to think about it, but it makes a lot of sense. Time and again research shows that dogs operate in hierarchies with humans at the top. We take what we want and give the dogs the rest — and they are all too happy to work with us. To be clear, dogs (as well as wolves, their wild cousins) definitely know when we’re giving them short shrift. If you have a steak and you don’t give them…
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Scientists discover world’s most adorable (and tiny) salamanders
It’s official. We’ve found the cutest things ever. Earlier this week, researchers named three new salamanders as the smallest four-legged creatures known to science. They can easily fit on a dime, and that’s had some really strange effects on their physiology. Animals aren’t built to be small, and things can get kinda cramped when you’ve got to pack in a spine, a brain, sex organs, etc. These three new species in the genus Thorius, have some bizarre anatomy as a result of their tiny size. These creatures, like most amphibians, have extremely long tongues that they launch at tiny insects. Their tongues can stretch half the length of the body.…
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Pigs can be optimists or pessimists, depending on personality and mood, study finds
Do you know anyone who always seems to see the glass half empty or half full? Then you know pessimists and optimists. It makes sense because you interact with humans. But did you know that pigs are capable of being either optimists or pessimists as well? A new study, with the results published in the journal Biology Letters, notes that humans definitely aren’t the only species to demonstrate these kinds of complex personality traits. “This finding demonstrates that humans are not unique in combining longer-term personality biases with shorter-term mood biases in judging stimuli,” says the study, explaining that pessimism and optimism stem from the way humans process information depending…
