July 22nd: Dog Days

We are currently in the middle of the dog days. So here are some facts about man's best friend you may not have been aware of:

1. Nobody really knows how dogs came to be "man's best friend" (a phrase first coined by Frederick the Great and popularised by Ogden Nash). It's generally believed that dogs were descended from the Wolves which were attracted to human habitation. There is archaeological evidence that people were buried with their dogs 14,000 years ago and there is a dog cemetery in Utah which is 11,000 years old. The first identifiable breed was a type of greyhound used for hunting around 9,000 BC.
2. There are over 400 breeds of dog today, and that's not counting cross-breeds and mutts! Many of the breeds we are familiar with today originated as recently as the Victorian era, when a lot of selective breeding went on. Thanks to the Victorians, at least in part, dogs show more variation within one species than any other land mammal.
3. The Great Dane is the tallest dog in the world, while the St. Bernard is the heaviest. The biggest dog ever was an English Mastiff which weighed 155.6 kg (343 lb) and measured 250 cm (98 in) from nose to tail. The smallest breed is the Chihuahua, but the record for the smallest adult dog ever goes to a Yorkshire Terrier, which was only 6.3 cm (2.5 in) at the shoulder, 9.5 cm (3.7 in) long, and weighed 113 grams (4.0 oz). Other extremes: the fastest breed is the greyhound, which can run up to 45 mph, whereas a pug can only run at 3-5mph. Border collies, poodles, German shepherds, golden retrievers and dobermans are thought to be the most intelligent breeds and Afghan hounds the dumbest. Dogs in general are as intelligent as a two year old human child. Beagles and border collies bark the most while a basenji doesn't bark at all - it yodels instead! Most dogs can swim apart from Bassett hounds. Newfoundlands are particularly good at swimming because they have webbed feet and are used as maritime rescue dogs. One breed, the Norwegian Lundehund, has six toes on each foot. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, the most popular breed of dog is the Labrador.
4. One last thing about breeds. Great Danes don't come from Denmark. They come from Germany and are Germany's national dog. Poodles, despite being the national dog of France, also originated in Germany.
5. Dogs have an excellent sense of smell. A human has 5 million scent glands - a dog has 125 million to 300 million depending on the breed. The area of a dog's brain that processes smell is 40 times larger than the equivalent area of the human brain. The fact dogs have wet noses helps them absorb scents as well, and a dog will also lick its nose to get the scent in its mouth as well. Plus when they exhale, they do so through the side of their nose so they can hold on to the scent chemicals they are breathing in. That's why dogs are used to sniff things out, from explosives to drugs to people buried in avalanches. It's true they can smell fear, and other human emotions, too. They've also been known to detect health problems, like the onset of a seizure or low insulin levels in diabetics and can be trained as assistance dogs to people who suffer from these conditions. It might even be possible to use dogs to diagnose cancer in humans. A dog's nose is as unique as a human fingerprint.
6. A dog has at least 18 muscles in its ear. Humans can hear sounds ranging from 64 to 23,000 hertz, whereas a dog can hear in the range of 67 to 45,000 hertz. So they can hear things we can't. If your dog acts strangely when you listen to the Beatles song A Day in the Life it might be because the Beatles included a dog whistle in the song which is inaudible to humans.
7. It's a myth that dogs can only see in Black and White. They don't see colour as well as we do, but they can see blues and yellows as well as shades of Grey. Their eyes differ from ours in that they have three eyelids, an upper one, a lower one, and a third, called a "haw" which helps keep their eyes moist.
8. When dogs poo, they tend to position themselves in alignment with the Earth's magnetic field. When they kick over their deposits, it's not to bury it but as an additional marker of their territory as there are scent glands on their paws. Dogs' wee can do a lot of damage - surveys in Derbyshire and Croatia have found that dogs relieving themselves against lampposts is a major cause of lampposts collapsing. Dog wee is also a major threat to Battersea Bridge in London as so many owners walk their dogs across the bridge to nearby Battersea Park.
9. Dogs curl up when they go to sleep because they evolved to do so - it protects their vital organs. Another dog behaviour we often observe is tail wagging. While dogs do wag their tails to show they are happy, you can't assume a tail wag means a dog is happy. They wag their tails when they are frightened, insecure or even aggressive.
10. There are around 900 million dogs on the planet, although not all of them are family pets. Especially in developing countries, many are feral dogs. They are the most popular type of pet, though, with 60% of households in the US owning a dog. The most common names given to dogs, in English speaking countries at least, are Max, Molly, Maggie or Jake.

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