Pets / Animals

Whether youre planning to bring your dog up to the cottage, taking him/her for his/her annual check-up at the vet, or simply heading to the off-leash dog park, there is a good chance that youll need a car to get there. For some owners, a car trip with their dog is no big deal; its a simple as popping their pooch in the back seat and hitting the road.
For others, even a fifteen minute drive can be a total disaster. Whichever might be the case for you and your dog, its important to be aware of all the potential hazards that exist on the road, and to be prepared. Not all dogs will be perfect passengers, but by taking a few simple steps and precautions, you can ensure that your next road trip goes as smoothly as possible.

There is a wide variety of dog training books on the market, and this great variety can become very confusing when you are shopping for the perfect book for you and your dog. Luckily, there are some tips that can help you choose the right book for training your particular dog. Here are some suggestions to aid you in selecting the best program for you.

Destructive behavior is one of the most common complaints from dog owners, and hence necessitates the most in-depth discussion. A dog quickly ceases to be mans best friend when he/she scratches up a prized rug, chews up a favourite sweater, or eats an expensive pair of shoes. Destructive behavior is due to many causes, including separation anxiety. Many owners are gone from the house for many hours during the day, and the result is that the dog has more opportunity to develop destructive behavior The problem with this is that owners come home and see the chewed object and will punish the dog at that time.
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A new pup is always a pleasure to welcome into your household. These cute little scamps are friendly, funny, curious and mischievous, but just like kids, they've got to be taught the ground rules right away.
Training your dog may sound like an overwhelming prospect - where do you begin? Don't worry - training your dog can actually be a lot of fun. Your pup comes complete with his own attitude and his own simple dog-brain, for the most part, he'll be pretty predictable, once you know how to communicate with him, and read his signals when he tries to communicate with you.

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2010) The evolutionary mystery of menopause is a step closer to being solved thanks to research on killer whales.

A study by the Universities of Exeter and Cambridge has found a link between killer whales, pilot whales and humans -- the only three known species where females stop breeding relatively early in their lifespan.

ScienceDaily (June 20, 2010) When zebra finches learn their songs from their father early in life, their brain is active during sleep.

That is what biologists at Utrecht University conclude in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Their findings are a further demonstration that birdsong learning is very similar to the way that children learn how to speak.

ScienceDaily (May 31, 2010) Whales are remarkably diverse, with 84 living species of dramatically different sizes and more than 400 other species that have gone extinct, including some that lived partly on land. Why are there so many whale species, with so much diversity in body size?


To answer that, UCLA evolutionary biologists and a colleague used molecular and computational techniques to look back 35 million years, when the ancestor of all living whales appeared, to analyze the evolutionary tempo of modern whale species and probe how fast whales changed their shape and body size. They have provided the first test of an old idea about why whales show such rich diversity.

ScienceDaily (May 25, 2010) Was Tyrannosaurus rex cold-blooded? Did birds regulate their body temperatures before or after they began to grow feathers? Why would evolution favor warm-bloodedness when it has such a high energy cost?

Questions like these -- about when, why, and how vertebrates stopped relying on external factors to regulate their body temperatures and began heating themselves internally -- have long intrigued scientists.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 11, 2010) Underwater canyons have long been considered important habitats for marine life, but until recently, only canyons on continental margins had been intensively studied. Researchers from Hawaii Pacific University (HPU) and the Universtiy of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) have now conducted the first extensive study of canyons in the oceanic Hawaiian Archipelago and found that these submarine canyons support especially abundant and unique communities of megafauna (large animals such as fish, shrimp, crabs, sea cucumbers, and sea urchins) including 41 species not observed in other habitats in the Hawaiian Islands.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 13, 2010) A genetic study has found that small domestic dogs probably originated in the Middle East more than 12,000 years ago. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology traced the evolutionary history of the IGF1 gene, finding that the version of the gene that is a major determinant of small size probably originated as a result of the domestication of the Middle Eastern gray wolf.