Posts tagged "study"

It's a question pet owners have argued over since we began domesticating our furry friends: Which animal is smarter, the dog or the cat? A study last year said that dogs were the clear winners due to their problem solving ability -- dogs figured out how to pull a string to get a treat, even when faced with two strings, while cats didn't quite understand the concept, according to Live Science. And now, a new study on brain size and social behavior appears to confirm those findings, reports the (U.K.) Telegraph.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and led by Dr. Susanne Shultz of Oxford University, looked at the history of the brain in different groups of mammals, and the results showed that the more social an animal is, the larger the brain.

Dr. Shultz, told the Telegraph: "Dogs have always been regarded as the more social animals while cats like to get on with their own thing alone. But it appears that interaction is good for the brain and extends to other species, like ourselves."

Monkeys' brains grew the most over time, reports the Telegraph, with horses, dolphins, camels and dogs rounding out the top five, while animals that tend to be more solitary had slower evolutionary brain grown. This suggests that animals living in stable groups need a greater thinking capacity.

Considering it's been shown that some dogs are smarter than human toddlers, we can't say we're terribly shocked at the results of this study. But cat owners shouldn't feel bad. Even if their pet isn't quite as sharp, the owners themselves tend to be more educated than folks with dogs.

What do you think? Are dogs smarter than cats? Tell us in the comments below.

For more interesting study results, check out this article about babies from AOL Health.

If you have a deep, dark secret, whom do you tell? According to a recent study in the U.K. by dog-food company Winalot, nearly 20 percent of women confide in their canines, reports The Daily Express. The findings don't stop there. The same study found that 14 percent of women and 10 percent of men believe their dogs can read their minds. (Maybe that's how they always know when it's time to eat!)

What about you, readers? Do you whisper your most important secrets into your pets' silky ears? Do you think they know what you're thinking before you utter a word? Tell us all about it in the comments!
Tweet

Have you been wondering if having animals in your house might make your kids more susceptible to asthma? Recent research suggests that the answer is yes -- but only with dogs and only in certain cases.

Results of a new study indicate that in families with a higher risk of developing asthma, a canine presence may elevate that risk in children, reports Reuters. The study, led by researcher Dr. Chris Carlsten of Vancouver General Hospital in British Columbia, Canada, showed a three-fold increase in the risk of asthma for children who were exposed to high levels of dog allergen. Interestingly, neither cat nor dust-mite exposure seemed to increase a child's asthma risk.

All of the subjects had an increased risk of asthma due to family history but half of the group was placed on a special intervention program that began when the mothers were pregnant. Those mothers had to breastfeed for at least four months and then limit exposure to dust mites, pets and tobacco smoke, according to Reuters. Carlsten believes that the reason why those exposed to dogs had a higher level of asthma may be due to the high levels of endotoxin on dogs, a microorganism known to cause inflammation in the lungs. The study did not look at families with an average risk of asthma so these findings may not apply to those subjects.

So should you avoid bringing home a puppy? Carlsten doesn't believe the study's findings, which were reported in Pediatric Allergy and Immunology, are definitive enough to make that recommendation. Instead, families should base the decision on their desire to have a pet.

What do you think? Is having a dog worth the possibility of increasing your child's risk of asthma? Even slightly?

Move over, James Bond. The latest secret agent is a cat -- actually, 50 of them.

Purina Friskies recently undertook a brilliant study to find out what cats do all day when they're home alone. They fitted 50 indoor cats with collar cameras to get a cat's eye view of the world.

The digital cat-cams snapped a still photo every 15 minutes. By combing through the piles of photos, Purina animal behavior scientist Dr. Jill Villarreal was able to draw some surprising new conclusions about how our kitties fare when they're left to their own devices.
(You can see the photos here.)

Before the study, most of the cat's owners expected lots of pictures of beds, Villarreal told Paw Nation. After all, cats sleep all day, right? Think again. "Although they do spend 8 to 16 hours [per day] asleep, when they're active and up, they're active and up -- and seeking out sensory stimuli within the home," Villarreal said.

That wasn't the only myth that the undercover kitties debunked. "There's still that belief out there that cats are asocial and prefer to be solitary," Villarreal said. "What the cat-cam study showed was they actually have active social lives."

All dressed up, and penguins do have a place to go.

For years, zoologists have been trying to figure out where these land-and-sea birds jet off to during their long spells away from home. And now, some French scientists think they've solved the penguin mystery. So where's the secret hideout? The southern Indian Ocean.

A team of scientists from the National Centre for Scientific Research attached tiny monitoring devices (weighing less than an ounce) to the legs of a dozen macaroni penguins just in time for their annual voyage, according to a story on Yahoo! News via the Agence France-Presse.

At the onset of winter, the unsuspecting penguins left the Kerguelen Islands with monitors in tow. The devices tracked location, ambient light and water temperature for six months until the birds returned to Kerguelen to breed.

The birds headed east to the southern Indian Ocean, clocking an average of 8,930 miles during their six months away. 80% of their time was spent between 47 and 49 degrees latitude south, where they gorged on lobsters, shrimps, crabs, and other crustaceans. Come rush hour (the final weeks of migration) the birds covered 1,108 miles in just one month.

This information is priceless to scientists. Macaroni penguins are the most numerous penguin species but their population is thought to be on the decline. Charles-Andre Bost, who led the study, says the findings pinpoint the penguins' key feeding grounds and will help in conservation efforts.

Source