Dog Database Set Up To Help Quantify Health, Illness, and Care of Dogs

A database for dogs was set up to help veterinarians study patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions of dogs in a defined population.

One obstacle in the research and advancements in treating dog conditions and diseases is the lack of studies and data regarding these. Most dog owners call on veterinary doctors only when their pets are already sick.

Having a database of dogs would extremely help in quantifying and keep track of dogs and their health conditions within a geographic and time based period.

Also for pet owners, a reliable dog database can allow owners to compare their pet's development to other pets within the project. For researchers and veterinarians, a database would help them improve the lives of all dogs the world over.

Study Suggest Cats Can Cause Suicidal Behavior and Mental Illness In Women

Toxoplasmosis is an infection due to a single cell parasite, Toxoplasma gondii.

The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention consider toxoplasmosis to be a leading cause of death attributed to foodborne illness in the United States. They estimate that more than 60 million people in the U.S. carry the Toxoplasma parasite. Few manifest symptoms since the body's immune system prevents the parasite from causing illness but a person with a compromised immune system or a newly infected pregnant woman is at high risk in acquiring the disease.

Severe toxoplasmosis can cause damage to the brain, eyes, and other organs. It can develop from an acute Toxoplasma infection or reactivated from a prior infection. Severe cases are more likely in individuals who have weak immune systems, though occasionally, even persons with healthy immune systems may experience eye damage from toxoplasmosis.

The CDC considers toxoplasmosis as one of the Neglected Parasitic Infections, a group of five parasitic diseases that have been targeted by CDC for public health action.

Study: Women infected with common parasite have increased risk of attempting suicide

Women infected with the Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) parasite, which is spread through contact with cat feces or eating undercooked meat or unwashed vegetables, are at increased risk of attempting suicide, according to a new study of more than 45,000 women in Denmark. A University of Maryland School of Medicine psychiatrist with expertise in suicide neuroimmunology is the senior author of the study, which is being published online today in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

"We can't say with certainty that T. gondii caused the women to try to kill themselves, but we did find a predictive association between the infection and suicide attempts later in life that warrants additional studies. We plan to continue our research into this possible connection," says Teodor T. Postolache, M.D., the senior author and an associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Mood and Anxiety Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He also serves as research faculty at the University of Maryland Child and Adolescent Mental Health Innovations Center and is a senior consultant on suicide prevention for the Baltimore VA Medical Center.

About one-third of the world's population is infected with the parasite, which hides in cells in the brain and muscles, often without producing symptoms. The infection, which is called toxoplasmosis, has been linked to mental illness, such as schizophrenia, and changes in behavior.

Spring Conditions Influences Gender of Bats

Golden crowned fruit bat
(Acerodon jubatus)

Bats are mammals that have forelimbs that form wings which allows them to fly. Although there are other mammals that are believed to fly, these, such as the flying squirrels, merely glide through the air. Bats are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight.

Bats are part of the order Chiroptera and are subdivided into two orders, Megachiroptera and Microchiroptera. These represent how bats are ordered; by size. Megachiroptera means large bat while microchiroptera means small bat. The largest bats have wingspans that reach six feet while there are bats that are just one inch long.

There are about 1,240 species of bat. In fact, they make up about 20% of all classified mammal species worldwide.

70% of bats live on a diet of insects. Some consume fruit and nectar. The most popular bat due to pop culture is the vampire bat. These bats hunt living prey and suck its blood.

Bats are known for their radar like ability to hunt. This is called echolocation. As they have poor eyesight, bats emit sound that bounces off of objects in their path, the resulting echo that that the bats picks up determines the size, location, distance, speed and even texture of the object in an instant. Another behavior, albeit less popular is torpor. Torpor is regulated hypothermia that allows the bat to survive the winter. Other species migrate or hibernate to get through the cold.

Bats are slow reproducers. Gestation of a bat is about 40 days for small bats and up to six months for bigger bats. An average litter is just one pup. The pups are taken care of by the colony (females congregate to bear and raise young).

Early spring means more bat girls

There must be something in the warm breeze. A study on bats by a University of Calgary researcher suggests that bats produce twice as many female babies as male ones in years when spring comes early.

The earlier in the spring the births occur, the more likely the females are to survive and then reproduce a year later, as one-year olds, compared to later-born pups, according to Dr. Robert Barclay's research published in PLoS ONE.

24 Species of Lizards Called Skinks Newly Discovered On Caribbean Islands Face Extinction

Anguilla Bank skink
Photo Credit: Karl Questel, courtesy of Penn State University

Lizards are part of a group of squamate reptiles. Squamate reptiles are distinguished by their skins, which bear horny scales or shields.

Lizards, part of the Lacertilia suborder, is defined as all extant members of the Lepidosauria (reptiles with overlapping scales), which are neither sphenodonts (i.e., tuatara) nor snakes. Because of this, the lizard group form an evolutionary grade.

Sphenodonts are the sister group to the Squamates, the larger monophyletic group, which includes both the lizards and the snakes. An evolutionary grade is defined as a group of species united by traits that are either morphological or physiological, that has given rise to another group that differs markedly from the ancestral condition, and is not considered part of that ancestral group.

These reptiles typically have feet and external ears. Snakes do not have these features. Since lizards are excluded from the snake family, the group does not have any unique distinguishing characteristic as a group. Lizards and snakes share a movable quadrate bone, distinguishing them from the sphenodonts, which have a more primitive and solid diapsid skull.

Most lizards can detach their tails to escape from predators, an act called autotomy. Vision, including color vision, is particularly well developed in most lizards, and most communicate with body language or bright colors on their bodies as well as with pheromones.

24 new species of lizards discovered on Caribbean islands are close to extinction

In a single new scientific publication, 24 new species of lizards known as skinks, all from islands in the Caribbean, have been discovered and scientifically named. According to Blair Hedges, a professor of biology at Penn State University and the leader of the research team, half of the newly added skink species already may be extinct or close to extinction, and all of the others on the Caribbean islands are threatened with extinction. The researchers found that the loss of many skink species can be attributed primarily to predation by the mongoose -- an invasive predatory mammal that was introduced by farmers to control rats in sugarcane fields during the late nineteenth century. The research team reports on the newly discovered skinks in a 245-page article to be published on 30 April 2012 in the journal Zootaxa.

About 130 species of reptiles from all over the world are added to the global species count each year in dozens of scientific articles. However, not since the 1800s have more than 20 reptile species been added at one time. Primarily through examination of museum specimens, the team identified a total of 39 species of skinks from the Caribbean islands, including 6 species currently recognized, and another 9 named long ago but considered invalid until now. Hedges and his team also used DNA sequences, but most of the taxonomic information, such as counts and shapes of scales, came from examination of the animals themselves. "Now, one of the smallest groups of lizards in this region of the world has become one of the largest groups," Hedges said. "We were completely surprised to find what amounts to a new fauna, with co-occurring species and different ecological types." He added that some of the new species are 6 times larger in body size than other species in the new fauna.

Dogs Can Be Manipulated Through Human Cues

There are two ways to communicate with a dog; a command and a cue.

A command is a simple word or expression that the dog is trained to understand. It generally tells the dog to perform a specific action.

A cue is more subtle. It is a prompt, hint or suggestion that affects the dogs behavior in a given situation. Pointing, looking at something or even a sound can be interpreted by the dog as a cue from the owner. A cue is a signal to which the dog interprets in his or her own way. Dogs sometimes communicates to the owner through verbal cues such as wimpering, wagging its tail, and scratching.

Dogs communicate in many ways with each other, using verbal cues, body language and facial expressions. They also try to communicate with humans using these methods. Humans, of course, communicate with dogs with commands and phrases. Dogs can learn hundreds of human sounds but they can't string them together.

Dogs turn down extra food if a human provides the right cues

Dogs can be manipulated to choose against their preference by human cues, opting to turn down extra food in order to follow the human's choice, according to results published Apr. 25 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The work was led by Sarah Marshall-Pescini of the University of Milan.

Dogs Understand Better Than Chimpanzees When Humans Point To Something

A study published in the online journal PLoS One reveals that dogs are better then chimpanzees at interpreting pointing gestures. When someone points at an object, the dog knows what it means better than a chimp.

Research has shown that dogs understand pointing gestures in the same capacity as that of a two year old child. It is likeley that dogs' skills with human communication are part of their evolutionary adaptation to life with humans. This is also supported by the fact that untrained wolves perform poorly. Dogs develop this skill earlier and need no specific training in order to follow pointing

Chimpanzees on the other hand failed in the object-task experiments of the study.

The problem is not that chimpanzees do not follow the gaze direction of humans to outside targets; they do do this. If that target is food, then they may go and fetch it. However, in the socalled object choice task in which the food is hidden, the situation is different. Here the human points to one of several opaque containers. In this situation the subject must not only locate the target but also infer why the pointer is directing attention to the container, which in itself is uninteresting. Human infants as young as 14 months are successful in this task

Dogs Know When We Want To Talk To Them

Dogs can read our intent. They not only pick up on the words we say but also when we want to communicate with them. This is according to József Topál of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in Budapest, Hungary and his team.

The findings might help to explain why so many people treat dogs like their children. Dogs seem to understand us when we talk to them. And as the study suggests, a dog's receptivity to human communication is similar to that of a young child, researchers say. They published their report online in the Cell Press journal Current Biology.

"Increasing evidence supports the notion that humans and dogs share some social skills, with dogs' social-cognitive functioning resembling that of a 6-month to 2-year-old child in many respects," said Topál. "The utilization of ostensive cues is one of these features: dogs, as well as human infants, are sensitive to cues that signal communicative intent." It is said that a dog can understand an average of 140 words which is the same as that of a 2 year old child.

Those cues include verbal addressing and eye contact, he explained. Whether or not dogs rely on similar pathways in the brain for processing those cues isn't yet clear.