Why Do Dogs Tilt Their Heads? New Study Offers Clues

The adorable behavior may be a sign of concentration and memory recall

Corryn Wetzel

Daily Correspondent, Smithsonian

Dogs have a seemingly endless list of endearing traits and behaviors, and their curious head tilt at the sound of human voices is no exception. Despite our close relationship with canines, little research has been done into their head-cocking behavior. While conducting a study on dogs’ ability to learn words, scientists stumbled upon a potential link between dogs’ memory and their head tilt, according to a new paper published in Animal Cognition.

“We investigated the frequency and direction of this behavior in response to a specific human verbal vocalization,” says study author Andrea Sommese, an animal science researcher at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. “We did so after realizing that it often happened when the dogs were listening to their owners.”

In the study, the Hungarian researchers looked at the head tilt patterns of both “gifted” and “typical” dogs. Owners asked their pups to fetch a specific toy from another room after being prompted with the toy's name—a command like, “Bring rope!” for example. While most dogs struggle to memorize the name of just two toys, the seven “gifted” dogs—all of which were border collies—could remember at least ten different toy names they’d be taught by researchers.

The team found that dogs that were particularly good at toy recall tilted their heads when hearing a command more often than dogs who weren’t as skilled. When they compared the pooch’s response to a command from their owner, gifted dogs cocked their heads 43 percent of the time, while typical dogs did so just 2 percent of the time. It's possible, scientists concluded, that a pup’s endearing head tilt may be a sign of paying attention or even matching a name to a visual image in their head.

Researchers also discovered that dogs usually cock their head in the same direction regardless of where the owner was standing. The so-called “right-tilters” and “left-tilters” may be a matter of individual preference—something scientists say they want to investigate further. Earlier studies have found the right side of dogs’ brains to be more active in processing positive words and praise, reports Alexis Nedd for Mashable, which could play a role in tilt direction.

“The next step is asking more questions to get at what the head tilt really means,” says Monique Udell, a human-animal interaction researcher at Oregon State University who wasn't involved in the work, to Rachel Fritts of Science. “Can we use head tilting to predict word-learning aptitude, or attention, or memory?”

The recent work offers important clues about the connection between animal cognition and behavior, but the study authors agree research is still in the early stages. For now, dog owners can take comfort in knowing their pup’s head tilt may be an adorable attempt to better understand us.

Sea Turtle Surgery

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle—a species on the brink of extinction—saving one life can make a big difference. This species takes about 15 years to mature to the point that they can lay eggs, and a mature female can lay two to three clutches of about 100 eggs each nesting season. But less than one percent of hatchlings survive to adulthood, so every adult turtle is important to the overall population—especially a breeding female. Two veterinarians dive into why every emergency surgery is vital, and explain how you might help.

A critically endangered species

Kemp’s ridleys can weigh as much as 100 pounds as adults—though they are still the smallest species of sea turtle— and can live for decades. It takes about 15 years for turtles to mature to the point that they can lay eggs, and a mature female can lay two to three clutches of about 100 eggs each nesting season. But less than one percent of hatchlings survive to adulthood, so every adult turtle is important to the overall population—especially a breeding female.

Kemp’s ridley turtles live primarily in coastal environments in the Gulf of Mexico. Over the past century, these gentle creatures have faced increases in pollution, oil spills, and accidental catch risk from commercial fishing, as well as coastal development and crowded beaches in their nesting areas. And as Toni’s situation exemplifies, recreational fishing also poses a major threat.

 

It’s hard to count how many individual Kemp’s ridley sea turtles live in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, so biologists count nests to track the health of the population. In the early 1940s, biologists estimated there were 40,000 nests in the Gulf of Mexico. By the mid-1980s, that number had fallen to fewer than 750. Through intensive conservation efforts, nests increased to 19,000 by 2009, but the number has dropped back down to 11,000 nests in 2014, the last year biologists published a nesting survey.

Read more here

Bathing Your Pups - Some Advice

Honest Paws offers some good advice about how often to bathe your dog.

Did you know that 56% of dog parents aren't bathing their pups as often as they should? This visual highlights how often Americans think they should be bathing their dogs, compelling facts on dog hygiene and some helpful grooming tips for puppy parents.

 

56% of Pet Parents Don't Bathe Their Dogs as Frequently As They Should [Survey]

 

 

According to Petco’s Manager of Pet Services Grooming Education, Wendy Weinand, you should wash your dog once every four weeks. This ensures that their skin and coat are clean, free from harmful microorganisms and debris.

Giving your dog a bath once a month will help to keep skin, fur, paws, and ears free of filth and infection. But how can you tell if your doggo needs a bath before the estimated four weeks mark?

60% Pet Parents Use the Sniff Test When Deciding to Bathe Their Dog

 

 

You can see the full visual and other survey findings here.

 

 

 

Honest Paws Reports that 66% of Dog Owners Would Consider Quitting If ...

Axios reports: Two in three dog owners would consider leaving their jobs if their companies no longer offered remote work, according to a survey of 400 dog owners by the pet care company Honest Paws.

A whopping one-third of the dog owners surveyed by Honest Paws got their pets during the pandemic. That means many of these puppies (including mine!) have gotten used to a certain kind of lifestyle and won't be too happy about a full return to work.

https://www.honestpaws.com/blog/work-from-home/

 

Animals That Laugh

According to Smithsonian Magazine,

Dogs Do It, Birds Do It, and Dolphins Do It, Too. Here Are 65 Animals That Laugh, According to Science

Researchers suggest that laughter in the animal kingdom may help creatures let each other know when it’s playtime, so that play fights don’t escalate.

Most of the 65 species identified by the study, which was published last month in the journal Bioacoustics, were mammals, such as primates, foxes, killer whales and seals, but three bird species also made the list, according to the statement.

For animals, the researchers suggest, a laughing noise may help signal that roughhousing, or other behavior that might seem threatening, is all in good fun.

“[Some actions] could be interpreted as aggression. The vocalization kind of helps to signal during that interaction that 'I'm not actually going to bite you in the neck. This is just going to be a mock bite,'” Sarah Winkler, an anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles and the paper’s lead author, tells Doug Johnson of Ars Technica. “It helps the interaction not escalate into real aggression.”

Winkler witnessed firsthand that vocalizations often accompany animals playing during past work with rhesus macaques, which pant while they play, according to Live Science. To find out how widespread such play vocalizations might be in the animal kingdom, Winkler and Bryant scoured the scientific literature for descriptions of play activity in various animals. In particular, the study authors looked for mentions of vocalizations accompanying playtime.

Per Ars Technica, many of the animal laughs identified by the study sound nothing like a human chuckle. For example, Rocky Mountain elk emit a kind of squeal and, per Live Science, New Zealand’s kea parrot whines and squeaks when it’s time to have some fun.

Back in 2017, another study found that playing a recording of kea laughter around the parrots in the wild would cause the birds to spontaneously break into playful tussles.

Another key difference between human and animal laughter could be its volume and thus its intended audience, according to Live Science. Human laughs are pretty loud, so the whole group can hear, but most animals, by contrast, have laughs that are quiet and may only be audible to the play partner. (By the study's definition, cats hissing during playtime qualified as laughter.)

 

Winkler tells Ars Technica that though the study aimed to be comprehensive, that there may be even more laughing animals out there. “There could be more that, we think, are out there. Part of the reason they probably aren't documented is because they're probably really quiet, or just [appear] in species that aren't well-studied for now,” she says. “But hopefully there could be more research in the future.”

 

 

Carolina Raptor Center

Carolina Raptor Center

Latta Nature Preserve

Huntersville, North Carolina

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Atlas Obscura -

From golden eagles to peregrine falcons, this rehabilitation and education center is a haven for birds of prey. 

In 1975, an injured broad-winged hawk found its way to Dr. Richard Brown, an ornithologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Along with several biology students, Brown helped the bird back to health and released it into the wild—it would be the first of many rehabilitations.

Over the years that followed, more and more birds were brought into the makeshift clinic in the basement of the university’s biology building. In 1980, Brown and Deb Sue Griffin, one of his students, decided to make things more official. Together they founded Carolina Raptor Center, which has admitted some 20,000 birds over the last four decades.

In 1984, the center moved into a new home inside Latta Nature Preserve, which spans more than 1,400 acres. The preserve offers opportunities for hiking, horseback riding, and paddling in the waters of Gar Creek and Mountain Island Lake.

Around 60 percent of the raptors admitted are rehabilitated and then released back into the wild. The birds that cannot be released become permanent residents at Carolina Raptor Center or another facility that can care for them.

Over the years the center has grown in size and complexity—helped along the way by the 300+ Boy Scouts who have completed Eagle Scout projects on its grounds. Today the center is home to 85 permanent resident birds from all over the world, many of which can be seen from the Raptor Trail that encircles the center. One of the highlights of the trail is the eagle aviary, where visitors can take in the impressive sight of golden and bald eagles. Other species on display include a peregrine falcon, red-shouldered hawk, spectacled owl, and turkey vulture. 

In 2016, the center began a project that will expand its educational offerings and ability to care for injured birds of prey. This includes Quest, a newly-built facility that will house both the Latta Nature Center and Carolina Raptor Center along with exhibit space, indoor classrooms, and an amphitheater.

Know Before You Go

Carolina Raptor Center is open Wednesday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets are $12 for adults and $8 for children. Check the website for more information.

Note: Erosion prevention measures make the trail inaccessible for most powered wheelchairs, but the Visitor Center is wheelchair accessible. 

 

 

 

 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/carolina-raptor-center?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=2cd7c186e8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_04_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-2cd7c186e8-63315921&mc_cid=2cd7c186e8&mc_eid=11ee67816a

San Diego Zoo’s Great Apes Receive First Experimental Covid-19 Vaccine for Animals

Smithsonian reports that five bonobos and four orangutans were treated with a synthetic form of the virus.

Elizabeth Gamillo reports that the San Diego Zoo Safari Park has vaccinated several apes with an experimental Covid-19 vaccine intended for pets, making the animals the first non-human primates to be vaccinated, reports Rachael Rettner for Live Science.

The vaccine, developed by the veterinary pharmaceutical company Zoetis, was provided to the San Diego Zoo after they requested help in vaccinating other apes when several gorillas tested positive for Covid-19 in January, reports James Gorman for the New York Times. The gorillas were the first known great apes in the world to test positive for coronavirus.

At San Diego zoo facilities, there are 14 gorillas, eight bonobos, and four orangutans living indoors, which leaves them more prone to the spread of Covid-19 infection, reports National Geographic. To help prevent disease spread among the apes, veterinarians with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance selected five bonobos and four orangutans to receive the experimental vaccine, reports Stella Chan and Scottie Andrew for CNN. The selected apes were deemed the most at risk. One of the vaccinated orangutans was Karen, an ape that first made headlines in 1994 for being the first orangutan to have open-heart surgery, the New York Times reports.

Zoetis's vaccine works similarly to the Novavax vaccine for humans by giving recipients of the vaccine a synthetic form of the Covid-19's spike protein that will prime and alert immune systems to fight infection, reports Live Science. To confirm if the vaccine was effective, blood will be drawn from the apes to look for the presence of antibodies. By February, the apes had received two doses of the vaccine, and no adverse reactions occurred within the apes, reports National Geographic. The gorillas previously infected with coronavirus will eventually receive the vaccine but are not a priority because they have since recovered, reports the New York Times.

Himalayan Songbirds Adapted to the Cold with Thicker Down Jackets

The old adage “free as a bird” doesn’t quite apply in the world’s tallest mountain ranges. Instead, songbird species are confined to specific elevations, where they have evolved to fit that particular climate.

The crimson sunbird, for instance, lives from the foot of the Himalayas up to about 1,600 feet. The green-tailed sunbird, its evolutionary cousin, lives between about 5,000 feet to 10,000 feet of elevation, while another close relative, the fire-tailed sunbird, rules the roost from about 11,000 feet to 13,000 feet.

Scientists who study birds are still unraveling the factors that keep each bird in its elevational niche. Research published this week in the journal Ecography adds a new piece to the puzzle: the higher a songbird species lives in the Himalayas—and the colder temperatures it faces, because of the altitude—the thicker its downy feather layer. The finding could help researchers predict how songbirds will adapt to a changing climate.

Insulation is pretty important,” says vertebrate zoologist Sahas Barve, a Peter Buck fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the first author on the new study. Temperatures in the Himalayas regularly drop below freezing at night. Birds, however, need to keep their bodies at about 104 degrees Fahrenheit. “The straight-line distance between the outside air and the bird's heart is less than an inch. So, it has to maintain that temperature difference across that little barrier,” says Barve.

Feathers provide key insulation. To investigate the ways that feathers evolved to keep birds warm, Barve measured the downy feathers of more than 200 species of Himalayan songbird specimens held in the museum’s vast collections, where rows and rows of file-like cabinets hold taxidermied examples of the world’s avian species.

“Irrespective of body size, birds that live at the bottom of the mountain have less downy feathers than birds that live at the top of the mountain,” says Barve.

Birds are warm-blooded, like humans, so they use a familiar strategy to heat themselves up when the temperature falls—shivering. But at an elevation of 12,000 feet, nighttime temperatures can drop to between 0- and 20-degrees Fahrenheit. Birds in the Himalayas have to shiver so much to stay warm that they can lose a fifth of their body weight in one night. Birds sometimes starve to death because they burn so many calories simply because they are shivering.

As climate change continues to alter weather patterns, extreme cold events could occur more often and last longer each time. That could put a lot of stress on mountain-dwelling bird populations. “To fully understand how birds will deal with changing temperatures, we need to understand this basic, fundamental concept of how birds use their feathers to stay warm,” says Barve.

Barve analyzed 1,715 specimens from the museum’s collections representing 249 Himalayan songbird species. The species were gathered from a 1,000-mile span of the Himalayas, and at elevations from 246 feet to 16,150 feet. The species were as small as the black-face warbler, which weighs just a fraction of an ounce, to the half-pound blue whistling thrush. The oldest specimen included in the study was a blue rock thrush collected in 1876.

Read the full article here.

 

Watch Rescued Tigers Swim for the First Time

This is an inspiring video of rescued tigers swim for the first time in their new sanctuary.

How to Love Your Pet on a Budget

How can you love your pets without spending a lot? Possible Finance has some suggestions --