Ada Obst

19/10/2023

Muslim women pray at dawn inside the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Israel. The shrine dates back to the 7th century and is considered one of the holiest sites in Islam.

16/10/2023

Basalt formations stand over the Sound of Raasay on Scotland's Isle of Skye. The pinnacles are the result of an ancient landslide that created the dramatic landscape you see now.

"When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on."

16/10/2023

A yak herd returns to camp in the evening in the Wakhan Corridor, Afghanistan.

13/10/2023

Salt crystals grow on boulders in the Dead Sea, bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and Palestine to the west.

11/10/2023

Two rats at Karni Mata Temple box to determine which is dominant. Rats are social animals that take good care of their offspring. Studies show they will free a fellow rat from a small cage—even if it means giving up a treat.

08/09/2023

The roughly 2,000 rhinos at the Platinum Rhino Conservation Project represent a significant portion of the world's population.

10/08/2023

‘Puppy dog eyes’ evolved so dogs could communicate with us

There’s a reason we call them “puppy dog eyes”—those soulful, innocent expressions can sway even the most hardened human.

That’s no accident, a new study says. Centuries of domestication have radically reshaped a dog’s eyebrow anatomy, making their faces—and emotions—easily readable to people.

When meeting a person’s gaze, dogs often raise their inner eyebrow muscle to make their eyes look larger and more appealing. (See dog-evolution pictures.)

“There’s no evidence that dogs move this [eyebrow] muscle intentionally, but it creates an exaggerated movement that for us means ‘dog,’” says study leader Juliane Kaminski, a psychologist at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K.

Eyebrow movement plays a major role in human communication, Kaminiski says: “I’m doing it now when I’m speaking to you, even though I know you can’t see me."

The study is the latest example of how 20,000 years of cohabitation has made our pets finely tuned interpreters of human emotion—possibly more so than any other species. (See 19 ways dogs tell us what they want.)

Eyebrow raising
In her past research, Kaminiski has found dogs are uniquely skilled at understanding gestures, outperforming even non-human primates such as chimps.

Several years ago, Kaminski began investigating the flip side of this relationship, looking at how people decipher dog behavior. In one experiment, published in 2013, she filmed shelter dogs to see if any of their behaviors were linked to how quickly the animal was adopted.

Of all the factors Kaminski examined, only one stood out as significant: the movement of the dog’s eyebrows upward and inward.

Initially, “it was a very surprising result. We didn’t expect something as small as eyebrow movement to have a big effect,” Kaminski says.

But a question remained: Whether this eyebrow movement was unique to dogs, or if it could be found in their ancestor, the gray wolf.

The new study, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Kaminski and colleagues dissected and analyzed the facial muscles of six dogs—including a mongrel, a Labrador retriever, a bloodhound, a Siberian husky, a Chihuahua, and a German shepherd—as well as four wild gray wolves. The animals had all died natural deaths, and their bodies were donated to science.

The team discovered the levator anguli oculi medialis, a large and prominent muscle, in all six dog specimens—but it was almost completely absent in wolves.

Kaminski and colleagues also found that the retractor anguli oculi lateralis muscle was smaller and more variable in size and presence in wolves than it was in dogs, with the exception of the Siberian husky, a more ancient dog breed that's closely related to the wolf.

This muscle, which runs along the eye’s outer edge, exposes more of the white of the eye—making the dogs appear human-like.

“Small shifts can have perceivable impacts when it comes to changes in anatomy," says Molly Selba, a Ph.D. student who studies evolution and dog domestication at the University of Florida. "The muscles of facial expression are relatively tiny muscles, but they can make a big impact on the way we perceive a face," says Selba, who wasn't involved in the research.

Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, notes that dogs are wolves are very similar anatomically—with the exception of these eye muscles.

“This new study shows that these morphological changes evolved as dogs and humans have interacted over the past 20,000 years,” Hare, who also wasn’t part of the new study, says by email. (See "Dog and human genomes evolved together.")

“They almost certainly did not evolve due to intentional selection, but instead gave dogs an advantage in their interactions with humans.” (Read why dogs are so friendly.)

Next, Kaminski hopes to examine a wider variety of dog breeds, including more ancient breeds and street dogs, to understand precisely how these muscular changes evolved.

She also wants to investigate more about our reactions to puppy dog eyes—and why we can’t resist being taken in.

08/08/2023

Inside the growing U.S. movement to breed healthier, friendlier dogs

All dogs are good boys—but not all dogs are good for families. That’s why these breeders are focusing on health and temperament.

Laura Sharkey breeds mixed-breed dogs, but they’re not goldendoodles, chiweenies, pomskys, or any other designer crosses. She doesn’t even aim for a specific build, size, or coat. “I’m not concerned with what they look like,” she says of her puppies. “I don’t want any genetic pressure other than health and temperament.”

Sharkey and Erica Pytlovany, both dog trainers, founded Bosun Dogs in 2019 after witnessing clients continually face severe behavioral challenges in adopted dogs. They regularly see owners face rehoming or even euthanizing their pets due to aggression issues.

“I would really love for all families who want a nice dog to be able to get a nice dog—and we don’t have that right now,” says Sharkey, who also owns WOOFS! dog-training centers in Arlington, Virginia. “I decided that the best way I could do that was to breed them.”

Sharkey is part of the growing functional-breeding movement, which raises dogs in small-scale settings to be friendly and healthy pets, with less focus on purebred status.

“I want to breed dogs for what I think is the actual highest function a dog has, especially in this country, which is as a companion animal,” says Sharkey. Her puppies, sold between eight and ten weeks old, average about $2,000 each, she says. (This is the age when puppies are the cutest.)

In particular, Sharkey hopes to offer an alternative to purebred puppies, around a third of which are bred in high-volume kennels. And while some of these facilities are regulated by the USDA and meet standards such as Purdue University’s Canine Care Certified, many don’t pay as much attention to selecting healthy breeding dogs and providing adequate puppy enrichment as do small-scale breeders, says Sara Reusche, owner of Paws Abilities Dog Training in Rochester, Minnesota.

Some concerned with the health and welfare of purebred puppies choose to adopt shelter animals as an alternative. But this route may not be feasible for everyone—especially in high-demand areas, such as the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and West Coast. Twenty years ago, many U.S. shelters euthanized dogs to provide space for new intakes, explains Reusche.

But today, there aren’t enough dogs in some places, adds Reusche.

“The biggest thing that I wish people knew is that it’s becoming harder to find a dog in the U.S.,” says Reusche. “The messaging has just not caught up.”

Breeding dogs to be good pets
Apart from toy breeds bred specifically as lap dogs, many breeds have backgrounds as working dogs: herding, guarding, hunting, and so on. But today, the primary purpose of dogs, especially in western countries, is as pets.

Yet few people breed dogs for this purpose, according to Joyce Briggs, treasurer of the Functional Dog Collaborative, a New Hampshire-based nonprofit. “The profile of the successful, really well-balanced family dog is not being looked at as a category,” says Briggs.

During the pandemic, when interest in pets spiked, many people saw an opportunity to breed dogs, says Carolyn Kelly, president of the Companion Dog Project, a nonprofit national breeder network. Yet these less-experienced breeders may lack the knowledge needed to carefully choose mates and socialize puppies, which can predispose them to health and behavior issues, Kelly says.

In fact, one of the main reasons Americans relinquish their dogs is due to behavior problems, which can be challenging and time-consuming. To address canine separation anxiety, for example, an owner might need to dramatically change their schedule to stay home with their animal while it’s gradually desensitized to longer periods left alone. (Learn how centuries of breeding has reshaped dogs’ brains.)

Hobby or preservation purebred breeders tend to pay more attention to health tests and puppy care, says Briggs; the American Kennel Club registered about 800,000 dogs from such breeders in 2021. But these operations can only offer so much supply; already, it’s common for these small-scale breeders to have one- or two-year waitlists.

Even if all the estimated 3.1 million dogs entering U.S. shelters annually were adopted out, that would only meet about a third of dog demand, says Reusche. She calculates that since there are between 83 and 108 million dogs in the country and the average dog life expectancy is just over 11 years, to maintain current dog ownership rates, 7.4 to 9.6 million new dogs are needed every year.

Bosun Dogs, which has fostered over 300 rescue and shelter dogs over the years, also offers a service to match people with shelter dogs. Sharkey meets with families looking to adopt to discuss what they are looking for in a dog and then, for a fee, accompanies them to shelters and adoption events to evaluate potential pets.

“We share the goal with responsible breeders that we want people to know the joys of having a dog as part of their family,” Pamela Reid, vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA)’s behavior team, says in an email.

“These breeders reject the practices of commercial breeders, brokers, pet stores, auctions, and others who profit from cruelty and instead plan breeding carefully, place dogs thoughtfully, and take a lifetime responsibility for the animals they have bred.”

A collaborative of friendly pups
To help address the issues in the U.S. puppy industry, canine geneticist and veterinarian Jessica Hekman founded the Functional Dog Collaborative in 2020. The goal of the international organization is to “build this new culture of dog breeding, in which we do things in a somewhat different way, to produce dogs that are more reliably healthy and behaviorally suited” for lives as pets.

22/06/2023

Sea otters can be seen swimming in the waters north of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, alongside humpbacks, dolphins and orcas.

05/06/2023

Snowcapped mountains serve as a backdrop to verdant landscapes at Gran Paradiso National Park in Valle d'Aosta, Italy. When does each new season start? Some measure seasonal shifts by Earth’s position relative to the sun, while others use annual temperature cycles.