Fake laughter is the worst. When you notice it, fake laughter is a reminder that something, socially, is off. Contrast that with the way you laugh when you are with your dog.* It’s spontaneous, raw and honest. You don’t mean for a laugh to pop out when Sampson is waiting for you to throw a [...]

I was probably 12 years old (fine, 13) the last time I played with Barbies. School was closed for a snow day, and one of my best friends trudged over to my house for mac and cheese and Barbies. But after choosing our dolls and clothing, we stopped. We couldn’t remember what came next. All [...]

Taste-testing. © Julie Hecht Dogs don’t write. At least not in a way easily understood by people, and certainly not with a pen or pencil. You could argue that dogs “write” with their urine. Some dogs seem quite familiar with Morse code — evident by a trail of little plops left behind — while others [...]

They work with us, play with us and comfort us when we’re down. Archaeological evidence indicates that dogs have had a close bond with humans for millennia. But exactly why and how they evolved from their wolf ancestors into our loyal companions has been something of a mystery. Now a new genetic analysis indicates that [...]

Anyone who’s ever seen a dog move around on three limbs knows that canines are remarkably resilient creatures. Scientists are now wondering whether such adaptability could likewise be programmed into robots, in the event they experience damage or malfunction far from a repair shop (look no further than NASA’s Mars Spirit rover to see why [...]

If I told you that a tennis ball could kill, would you roll your eyes or laugh in my face? What if I showed you this? Like a cork in a bottle, a fumbled tennis ball in an innocent game of fetch can lodge in a dog’s esophagus with the unfortunate consequence of asphyxiating your [...]

While second nature to many of us, driving a car is actually a fairly complex process. At its most stripped down version, first you sit in the driver’s seat, then you start the engine, then you shift into gear, and then you must simultaneously steer while keeping your foot on the gas pedal. That doesn’t [...]

In 1988, a three-year-old child is led into a brightly colored testing room in a psychology department in Bloomington, Indiana. A small toy is brought out and put onto a table in front of the child. The toy was wooden, blue, about two inches square, and U-shaped. “This is a dax.” The researchers picked a [...]

Just a quick announcement that I’ll be on a short segment of The Aaron Rand Show, on Montreal’s CJAD 800 radio station this afternoon tomorrow afternoon, June 6, around 3:45pm eastern (12:45pm pacific). The topic will be dog guilt. If you’re in or around Montreal, I expect you can simply tune into AM 800. For [...]

“I walked into the house, and he was acting strange. I could tell he had done something wrong,” she told me. I pressed for further details. “His head was down, and he wasn’t making eye contact,” she explained. “Then, I found it. Under the bed.” She had spent weeks training her dog, Henry, not to [...]

When is a yawn just a yawn? When is a yawn more than a yawn? Contagious yawning – the increase in likelihood that you will yawn after watching or hearing someone else yawn – has been of particular interest to researchers in fields as varied as primatology, developmental psychology, and psychopathology. At first, scientists thought [...]

Sometime between fifteen and thirty thousand years ago, probably in the Middle East, the long, protracted process of domestication began to alter the genetic code of the wolf, eventually leaving us with the animals we know and love as domestic dogs. While there are several different theories as to exactly how dog domestication began, what [...]

Each morning, a nametag would turn up missing. They went missing at some point during the nights, when nobody was around to notice. Each time one went missing, of course, it would be replaced. Nametags were essential in Bradley Philip Smith’s place of business. Every time he replaced a lost nametag with a new one, [...]

Happy Halloween! I decided to revise and repost this piece from November 1, 2010, on dog bites, full moons, and confirmation bias. Click the archives icon to see the original post. Our story begins in March 2000, when Dr. Simon Chapman and colleagues from the University of Sydney published a paper in which they assessed [...]

Can dogs pretend? This is the question I asked yesterday, prompted by Sheril’s story: …this afternoon Happy did something unusual. She carried a toy frog over to her water bowl, and gently put it down as pictured. Given its orientation, I’m skeptical that her placement was an accident. The frog continues to sit like this [...]

Earlier today, friend-of-the-blog Sheril Kirshenbaum (blog, twitter) asked a question on her blog, Culture of Science: Do Dogs Play “Make Believe?”: …this afternoon Happy did something unusual. She carried a toy frog over to her water bowl, and gently put it down as pictured. Given its orientation, I’m skeptical that her placement was an accident. [...]