Posted in wildlife, tagged shark, Shark Week, xoc on July 31, 2011| 1 Comment »
Yep. Shark Week starts tonight on the Discovery Channel.
And if you think I’m going to miss it, you don’t know me too well :).
So my contribution for Shark Week this year is this wonderful paper on the possible etymology of the English word “shark.”
So is shark derived from a Mayan loan word?
Posted in wildlife, tagged raccoon on July 31, 2011| 4 Comments »
Posted in animal welfare, dog breeding, dog breeds, tagged bulldog, English bulldog, panting on July 30, 2011| 8 Comments »
The above image is of a bulldog in Northeastern Ohio who is suffering from the recent series of heat waves.
It is supposed to be a funny image. It’s cute, isn’t it?
Well, I don’t think it’s so much cute as it is a tragedy.
I live in a state adjacent to Ohio, where it also gets hot and muggy during the summer.
I have always had dogs that didn’t much like the heat at all. The golden retrievers, for example, always suffered a bit whenever the mercury rises above 75 degrees. If they were outside, they always solved this problem by diving in deep mud puddles or ponds.
Even though the golden boxer hated to swim, she would submerge herself in mud puddles to keep cool.
However, I do remember trying to get the dogs to lie down on some ice in the same way as this bulldog.
They refused.
It may have kept them cool, but they weren’t about to sit on ice like some Atlantic salmon at a fish market.
Even in the most extreme heat, I don’t think most normal dogs like the texture of ice cubes, and they would avoid sitting on it at all costs.
This poor bulldog, however, has a very hard time keeping itself cool. Bulldogs– and all brachycephalic breeds– have issues dissipating heat. Dogs pant to cool themselves. Panting passes air over the mucous membranes in the back of the mouth, throat, and trachea, which causes the moisture on those membranes to evaporate. This evaporation cools the animal. Bulldogs and other dogs of this type have a harder time passing air over these membranes when panting. They have a lot of issues with their soft palates, and most bulldogs never have fully open airways at all.
So even though a bulldog is a single-coated dog, it suffers much more in the heat than a double-coated golden retriever, which has a relatively long muzzle and open airways.
That’s why this bulldog has plowed headlong into this pile of ice.
To some it may be cute.
But for those of us who understand dog anatomy a bit, it is something quite sad.
We have bred bulldogs to have such extremely flatten faces that they really can’t function in the heat. Now, it is true that dogs are less tolerant of heat than humans are, and it is silly and quite dangerous to expect even a normal dog to be happy in 95 degree heat. However, through very silly breeding practices, we have further hampered the bulldog’s ability to cool itself.
And I don’t find it all that funny.
Posted in Uncategorized on July 29, 2011| 3 Comments »
When I first started this blog exactly three years and three weeks ago today, I had no idea what sort of response it would receive.
But I just checked my Stat Counter, and it turns out that this blog has cross the 2 million hit mark.
2 million? I thought I would have been lucky to get 2,000 hits by this time.
But you’ve proven me wrong.
Thank you all for reading.
Thank you all for sharing my blog posts.
And thank you for all the support.
Here’s to the next 2 million!
Posted in birds, dog breeds, working dogs, tagged capercaillie, Finnish spitz on July 29, 2011| 16 Comments »
Is this a Finnish spitz?
Do they come in liver?
If not, what kind of dog is this?
It’s a hunting spitz or laika-type dog. One that is used to hunt capercaillie in Scandinavia.
Posted in dog breeds, tagged Komondor on July 29, 2011| 5 Comments »
Posted in birds, wildlife, tagged ruffed grouse on July 29, 2011| 2 Comments »
The ruffed grouse in this part of the world– and throughout the Appalachians–tend to be red in color, but those in the Great Lakes states and New England tend to be gray.
Posted in birds, wildlife, tagged grouse, ruffed grouse on July 28, 2011| 8 Comments »
Better known as the ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus).
Other aliases include “partridge” or “paatridge” (as it is known in New England), and in some regions, it is called a pheasant.
It is neither a partridge nor a pheasant.
It’s a woodland grouse that is most closely related to the hazel grouse (Bonasa bonasia) of Northern Eurasia and the Severtzov’s grouse (Bonasa sewerzowi) of the mountains of Central China.
My grandpa always told me that this was the bird they ate for Thanksgiving every year.
Market turkeys weren’t available during the Depression.
But shot was cheap, and the grouse were quite common.
So that’s what they ate.
Posted in Absolute Piffle, dog breeds, wildlife, tagged boxer, harbor seal, harbour seal, white boxer on July 28, 2011| 1 Comment »
The boxer was playing fetch with a tennis ball on a beach in Scotland, when a seal came swimming by.
The boxer decided to investigate the seal:
The seal decided to play. Boxer was severely vexed:
"What a strange looking Labrador!"
Natural History 