All posts tagged: dogs

Dogs identified as spreaders of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella

Dogs identified as spreaders of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella

Published by skeptic

Antibiotic-resistant Salmonella is a serious public health concern that has increased recently as the bacteria has developed ways to survive drugs. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people can get Salmonella from eating contaminated food products or from infected people or animals — typically via unintentional contact. A team of Penn State researchers has now discovered that household dogs are an overlooked transmission point for zoonotic pathogens that cause Salmonella. This can cause diarrhoea, fever, and abdominal cramps, and some infections can potentially have life-threatening complications. The researchers reported that, given dogs’ proximity to humans and the use of critically important antibiotics in companion animal medicine, household dogs represent a risk for the spread of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella. They found that better awareness of the risk and proper hygiene could potentially help mitigate cross-species infections. How dogs spread antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella Salmonella infections in dogs can be clinical — showing signs or symptoms — or asymptomatic, with numerous studies reporting Salmonella isolation from clinically healthy dogs, according to team leader Erika Ganda. She …

Yves Saint- Laurent, a life of dogs

Yves Saint- Laurent, a life of dogs

Published by Sam

Yves Saint Laurent and Hazel, Paris, 1973. ROGER GAIN/MUSÉE YVES SAINT LAURENT PARIS In Bertrand Bonello’s 2014 film Saint Laurent, the couturier’s dog, French bulldog Moujik, dies of an overdose after ingesting his master’s drugs. The anecdote is apocryphal, but it speaks to Moujik’s importance in the legend surrounding Yves Saint Laurent. In Yves Saint Laurent and his dogs, published by Norma, Martin Bethenod, independent curator and former deputy director of the Bourse de Commerce-Pinault Collection, describes the fashion genius, who died in 2008 aged 71, and his passion for dogs. The book is the second in the Amigos Forever series, offering a look at the lives of great artists from the perspective of their relationship with dogs. In addition to the famous Moujik, and his three successors bearing his name, there were other dogs. Particularly the Hazel chihuahuas, “the great forgotten ones,” writes Bethenod, who adds that they “gave rise to brilliant iconography.” The richly illustrated book shows the tiny dogs in the arms of friends (François-Marie Banier, Talitha Getty), photographed by Martine Franck …

New Yorkers Won’t Stop Complaining About Dogs

New Yorkers Won’t Stop Complaining About Dogs

Published by José

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here. “Dogs are so numerous in New York, indeed, that they have already become a nuisance,” the journalist Charles Dawson Shanly wrote in The Atlantic in 1872. He was annoyed by “all the barking … and there is a good deal of it.” Other New Yorkers feared that the dogs roaming the streets were “deleterious to health” (a reasonable concern, given the risk of rabies at the time). Eventually, Shanly wrote, anxieties escalated to the point that “weakminded people began to look upon Ponto’s kennel in the back yard as a very Pandora’s box of maladies too numerous and appalling to be contemplated without terror.” Some 150 years later, the city’s canine population is rabies free, and you’re unlikely to see any feral dogs running around. But New Yorkers haven’t stopped complaining. “I’m sorry, dog lovers. There are too many of you,” Chloë Sevigny told Rolling Stone in January. “Why Does Everyone …

Dogs really are communicating via button boards, new research suggests

Dogs really are communicating via button boards, new research suggests

Published by skeptic

Bunny the dog and her button soundboard became a viral hit on TikTok amid 2020 pandemic lockdowns. In videos, the adorable, if neurotic, sheepadoodle taps buttons related to play, outside, or poop, and her enthusiastic human owner and trainer fulfills requests while engaging in something that resembles back and forth conversation. Sometimes Bunny’s button taps are straightforward: demands for attention or a walk. Yet other times, they seem to veer towards the abstract and unsettling, as in one instance where the dog appears to interrogate her own reflection.  It’s undoubtedly entertaining, engaging content. But is it legit? Are Bunny and dogs like her pawing at buttons to communicate with their humans? Or is it another example of the stomping horse at the center of  the Clever Hans fallacy–where people project what they want to be true over an animal’s actions?  @whataboutbunny Bunny: Bringing you existential content since dogs could talk #bunnythedog #talkingdog #fypシ #aac #WeekendVibes #doggos ♬ original sound – I am Bunny Early scientific assessment may disappoint the skeptics. Dogs are using button boards …

How a unique puppy kindergarten lab put the science into dog training

How a unique puppy kindergarten lab put the science into dog training

Published by skeptic

“Oreo was my best friend growing up,” says Brian Hare. If Hare wanted to hone his baseball pitching skills, his Labrador enthusiastically took on fielding duties. If he decided to explore the nearby woods, Oreo was an ever-willing companion. But there was one place where boy and dog always parted company. “Oreo never set foot in our house. Not one time,” says Hare. Today, the front door is no longer closed to most dogs in higher-income countries – and many spend their days relaxing on sofas and watching TV. You would think they would be in doggy heaven. But Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, thinks the development has left them in the doghouse. For millennia, he says, we expected dogs to guard our property and protect our family at nighttime. Now, we have a different set of expectations. Not only do we want our indoor dogs to be friendly around strangers and rest quietly through the night, they should also respond to potty training, refrain from chasing other animals …

Real Dogs’ Reaction to Robodogs is Terrifying

Real Dogs’ Reaction to Robodogs is Terrifying

Published by José

It’s the pupper singularity. Dog Days The internet is flooded with videos of AI-powered robot dogs meeting real furry puppies, who often seem horrified to have come across what they seem to perceive as a canine abomination.  In one clip recently posted to X-formerly-Twitter, a large unlucky dog encounters what seems to be Unitree’s Go2 robot. It walks around using LiDAR, and it can flip, stretch, and roll partly thanks to AI-fueled simulation training. Adding up all this technology, we get a creature that looks like a tin can, but moves with a natural spontaneity.  But the big dog wasn’t impressed by science. It began barking at Go2, which made a freakish pounce in reply, causing the real hound to skitter backwards.  This tense interaction is pretty much replicated in every viral robodog clip online — real dogs growl, bark, and lunge at their impersonator while their human companions film on their phones and smile. Animals don’t find the whole robot thing amusing at all — though it’s possible that soon, they won’t have a choice.  …

What Do Dogs Do When Family Members Quarrel?

What Do Dogs Do When Family Members Quarrel?

Published by skeptic

Source: SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd. A husband and wife are having a heated argument in the kitchen. It is not surprising that this has an emotional effect on children in the family who happened to be watching. This is the kind of issue that is studied by psychologists working in the field of Family Dynamics. In our modern society dogs are often counted as family members and data has shown that dogs read our emotional states and respond accordingly. However, few researchers in family dynamics have considered what effects familial quarrels might have on a pet dog who is also observing this interaction. Dogs Are Part of the Family Dynamic Research has shown that 94% of people consider their pet dog to be part of the family, and 72% of childless millennial women explicitly state that they prefer the company of their pet over the company of children. We do not know what percentage of dogs consider their human owners to be their family, but it would not be surprising to find that the vast …

The Download: Parkour for robot dogs, and Africa’s AI ambitions

The Download: Parkour for robot dogs, and Africa’s AI ambitions

Published by skeptic

Teaching robots to navigate new environments is tough. You can train them on physical, real-world data taken from recordings made by humans, but that’s scarce, and expensive to collect. Digital simulations are a rapid, scalable way to teach them to do new things, but the robots often fail when they’re pulled out of virtual worlds and asked to do the same tasks in the real one.  Now, there’s potentially a better option: a new system that uses generative AI models in conjunction with a physics simulator to develop virtual training grounds that more accurately mirror the physical world. Robots trained using this method worked with a higher success rate than those trained using more traditional techniques during real-world tests. Researchers used the system, called LucidSim, to train a robot dog in parkour, getting it to scramble over a box and climb stairs, despite never seeing any real world data. The approach demonstrates how helpful generative AI could be when it comes to teaching robots to do challenging tasks. It also raises the possibility that we …

Dogs Are Entering a New Wave of Domestication

Dogs Are Entering a New Wave of Domestication

Published by José

Not so long ago, dogs were valued primarily for the jobs they performed. They hunted, herded livestock, and guarded property, which required them to have an active prey drive, boundless energy, and a wariness toward strangers. Even a few decades ago, many dogs were expected to guard the house and the people in it. Prey drive kept squirrels off the bird feeders and used up some of that boundless energy. In just a generation, we humans have abruptly changed the rules on our dogs. With urbanization increasing and space at a premium, the wild, abandoned places where children and dogs used to roam have disappeared from many American communities. Dogs have gone from working all day and sleeping outside to relaxing on the couch and sleeping in our beds. They are more a part of our families than ever—which means they share our indoor, sedentary lifestyle. Americans once wanted a dog that barked at every noise, but modern life best suits a pet that will settle nicely under the desk during remote work, politely greet …