Single gene causes stubby legs in dogs

17.7.09 AFP/Reuters The stubby legs appear to be the result of a wolf gene that got spliced back into the dog genome, say researchers (Source: iStockphoto) The stubby, curved legs of dog breeds such as dachshunds, corgis and basset hounds stem from the mutation of a single gene early in the evolution of dogs, a [...]

Dogs Really Do Look Like Their Owners

2.4.04 Anna Salleh ABC Does Fido’s owner look like this? (Image: Natl Human Genome Research Inst) It’s official. Dogs look like their owners, a U.S. study suggests. Researchers from the University of California, San Diego showed that people choose purebred dogs that resemble them. But they weren’t so fussy when it came to choosing a [...]

It’s Official: Dogs Do Have Personalities

15.12.03 Jennifer Viegas Discovery News Spot the personality (Los Alamos National Laboratory) Confirming dog owner suspicions, a new U.S. study reveals that dogs have personalities, and that these character traits can be identified as accurately as similar personality attributes in humans. A team led by psychologist Professor Samuel Gosling of the University of Texas at [...]

Small dogs originated in the Middle East

26.2.10 Jennifer Viegas Discovery News These miniature mutts were the descendants of gray wolves, which also happen to be smaller than many other wolves (Source: iStockphoto) Small dogs the world over can all trace their ancestry back to the Middle East, where the first diminutive canines emerged more than 12,000 years ago. A new study, [...]