Bipedalism in the earliest hominid specimens is always accompanied by the reduction of projecting canine teeth. Body size is smaller than chimpanzees or humans, but molar teeth are markedly larger. Use of a pointed stick for defensive purposes on the one hand, and digging for USOs on the other, may be why bipedalism was selected for. Passing such learned behavior to the next generation may have played a role in selecting for language.

Sheldrake’s work on canine cognition is examined from more than one standpoint. His use of the terms “social field” and “morphic field” is delineated, and in addition recent work on ethology and cognition, done by Allen and Bekoff, is set out and contrasted with Sheldrake’s theorizing. The importance of the allusion to a number of comparatively unexamined concepts, including some borrowed from research on extrasensory perception, is analyzed and it is concluded that Sheldrake has yet to establish his case (...) in acceptable terms. (shrink)

A prominent view in contemporary political theory, the ‘associative view’, says that duties of justice are triggered by particular cooperative relations between morally significant agents, and that ‘therefore’ principles of justice apply only among fellow citizens. This view has been challenged by advocates of global justice, who point to the existence of a world-wide cooperative network to which principles of justice apply. Call this the challenge from geographical extension. In this paper, I pose a structurally similar challenge to the associative (...) view: the challenge from species extension. This says that the existing network of cooperation extends beyond the human species, to encompass some non-human animals, particularly domesticated dogs. In light of this, if one believes that (i) certain non-human animals are morally significant (i.e. objects of moral concern), and that (ii) justice applies to fellow cooperators, one should also hold that domesticated dogs are owed justice in much the same way our human fellow citizens are. I conclude by considering the implications of this argument for the associative view, and animal-rights theory. (shrink)

Dans Shameless, Cristiana Franco étudie les représentations du chien dans la Grèce ancienne et son rapport avec le féminin. Au cœur de cette enquête, deux questions principales : pourquoi les textes tracent-ils un portrait ambivalent du chien, entre fidélité et trahison? Pourquoi des traits canins sont-ils souvent associés à des figures féminines négatives? Le livre en anglais est une réédition de l’essai en italien Senza ritegno (Bologna, 2003), dans la traduction de Matthew Fox, complétée...

Breeders of purebred dogs usually have several goals they want to accomplish, of which canine wellbeing is one. The purpose of this article is to investigate what we ought to do given this goal. Breeders typically think that they fulfil their wellbeing-related duties by doing the best they can within their breed of choice. However, it is true of most breeders that they could produce physically and mentally healthier dogs if they switched to a healthier breed. There are a (...) few breeds that are healthier than other breeds as well as mutts; we could maximize wellbeing for the next generations by focusing all our breeding resources on those. However, in the long run such a strategy would severely deplete the canine gene pool. If we are to breed for wellbeing in the long run, we must thus weigh the benefits of selection against physical and mental problems against the benefits of genetic diversity. The optimal breeding strategy for canine wellbeing is to preserve many breeds, though not all of them. Furthermore, we ought to combine strict health programs with looser barriers between breeds. Such a policy conflicts with the goal of breed preservation, at least if we think of breeds as populations registered within kennel clubs rather than types of dogs, but not with the goal of producing good working dogs capable of performing various tasks. (shrink)

Sexual size dimorphism is generally associated with sexual selection via agonistic male competition in nonhuman primates. These primate models play an important role in understanding the origins and evolution of human behavior. Human size dimorphism is often hypothesized to be associated with high rates of male violence and polygyny. This raises the question of whether human dimorphism and patterns of male violence are inherited from a common ancestor with chimpanzees or are uniquely derived. Here I review patterns of, and causal (...) models for, dimorphism in humans and other primates. While dimorphism in primates is associated with agonistic male mate competition, a variety of factors can affect male and female size, and thereby dimorphism. The causes of human sexual size dimorphism are uncertain, and could involve several non-mutually-exclusive mechanisms, such as mate competition, resource competition, intergroup violence, and female choice. A phylogenetic reconstruction of the evolution of dimorphism, including fossil hominins, indicates that the modern human condition is derived. This suggests that at least some behavioral similarities with Pan associated with dimorphism may have arisen independently, and not directly from a common ancestor. (shrink)

(2013). What to Think of Canine Obesity? Emerging Challenges to Our Understanding of Human–Animal Health Relationships. Social Epistemology: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 90-104. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2012.760662.

This article examines the dog-like aspects and associations of two marine monsters of Graeco-Roman antiquity: Scylla and the κῆτος. Both harbour recognizably canine features in their depictions in ancient art, as well as being referenced as dogs or possessing dog-like attributes in ancient texts. The article argues that such distinctly canine elements are related to, and probably an extension of, the conceptualization of certain marine animals, most prominently sharks, as ‘sea dogs’. Accordingly, we should understand these two sea (...) monsters and the sea dogs as being interrelated in the ancient imagination. Such a canine resonance to certain sea creatures offers a valuable insight into the Graeco-Roman imagination of the marine element as being the abode of creatures reminiscent of terrestrial dogs. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 1-2, Page 112-134, June 2022.

Le chien, dit-on, est le meilleur ami de l’homme. En est-il de même de la femme? Que fait le chien dans la construction sociale du genre? Le livre d’Aaron Skabelund aborde cette question à travers une étude des rôles joués par le chien symbolique et les chiens réels dans le Japon contemporain depuis l’ère Meiji, notamment dans le contexte impérial. S’il ne traite pas de la question du genre de façon systématique, le problème de l’identité nationale, intimement lié à celui (...) de la masculinité,... (shrink)

In this article I analyze the academic reception of Jonathan Haidt’s seminal article _The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment_. My thesis is that in the spheres of philosophy and psychology, this article was initially studied within the neurocentric paradigm, which dominated the field of scientific reflection in the fifteen years following its publication. This neurocentric reading established a specific interpretation of the text with several limitations. However, more recently a digital paradigm has (...) emerged and come to prevail in academia, providing a new perspective from which to return to Haidt’s text. Indeed, this approach makes it possible to unravel elements of the famous article that in the neurocentric paradigm went unnoticed by researchers. Moreover, the digital paradigm manages to better integrate Haidt’s seminal article into his later work as a whole. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 196 Pages: 229-242.

I argue that the standard paradigm for understanding cognition—namely, that thoughts are representational, internal, and propositional—does not account for a large number of genuinely cognitive processes. Instead, if we adopt a more radical approach, one that treats cognition as a cooperative, dynamic, and interactive process, accounting for shared meaning making and embodied thought becomes much more plausible. To support this thesis, rather than turn to the debate as it has been ongoing among philosophers of mind pertaining solely to human thought, (...) I examine our interactions with other animals, and thus, I take a more biological approach to how thought evolves and emerges. Chiefly, I look at the ways in which human-canine interaction ought to count as producing genuinely cognitive phenomena that cannot be properly explicated under a standard model of cognition, and that these sorts of interactive and dynamic pairings between us and our dogs can serve as models for human minds, which I argue are much more shared and cooperative than competing accounts of cognition would have us believe. (shrink)

Drawing on posthumanist theories from geography, anthropology, and science and technology studies , this article argues that agency is shared unevenly between humans and nonhumans. It proposes that conceptualizing animals as agents allows them to enter history as active beings rather than static objects. Agency has become a key concept within history, especially since the rise of the “new” social history. But many historians treat agency as a uniquely human attribute, arguing that animals lack the cognitive abilities, self-awareness, and intentionality (...) to be agents. This article argues that human levels of intentionality are not a precondition of agency. Furthermore, it draws on research into canine psychology to propose that dogs display some degree of intentionality and self-directed action. The aim is not to turn dogs, or any other animals, into human-style agents nor to suggest that they display the same levels of skill, intentionality, and intelligence as humans. Instead, the objective is to show how dogs are purposeful and capable agents in their own way and to explore how they interact with human agents. The article particularly considers the agency of militarized dogs, especially those on the Western Front , to suggest how historians can use primary sources to uncover how individuals in the past have treated dogs as capable creatures and to capture some sense of dogs’embodied and purposeful agency. (shrink)

Cancer is generally defined as uncontrollable growth of cells caused by genetic aberrations and/or environmental factors. Yet contagious cancers also occur. The recent emergence of a contagious cancer in Tasmanian devils has reignited interest in transmissible cancers. Two naturally occurring transmissible cancers are known: devil facial tumour disease and canine transmissible venereal tumour. Both cancers evolved once and have then been transmitted from one individual to another as clonal cell lines. The dog cancer is ancient; having evolved more than (...) 6,000 years ago, while the devil disease was first seen in 1996. In this review I will compare and contrast the two diseases focusing on the life histories of the clonal cell lines, their evolutionary trajectories and the mechanisms by which they have achieved immune tolerance. A greater understanding of these contagious cancers will provide unique insights into the role of the immune system in shaping tumour evolution and may uncover novel approaches for treating human cancer. (shrink)

Cancer is an evolutionary and ecological process in which complex interactions between tumour cells and their environment share many similarities with organismal evolution. Tumour cells with highest adaptive potential have a selective advantage over less fit cells. Naturally occurring transmissible cancers provide an ideal model system for investigating the evolutionary arms race between cancer cells and their surrounding micro‐environment and macro‐environment. However, the evolutionary landscapes in which contagious cancers reside have not been subjected to comprehensive investigation. Here, we provide a (...) multifocal analysis of transmissible tumour progression and discuss the selection forces that shape it. We demonstrate that transmissible cancers adapt to both their micro‐environment and macro‐environment, and evolutionary theories applied to organisms are also relevant to these unique diseases. The three naturally occurring transmissible cancers, canine transmissible venereal tumour (CTVT) and Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) and the recently discovered clam leukaemia, exhibit different evolutionary phases: (i) CTVT, the oldest naturally occurring cell line is remarkably stable; (ii) DFTD exhibits the signs of stepwise cancer evolution; and (iii) clam leukaemia shows genetic instability. While all three contagious cancers carry the signature of ongoing and fairly recent adaptations to selective forces, CTVT appears to have reached an evolutionary stalemate with its host, while DFTD and the clam leukaemia appear to be still at a more dynamic phase of their evolution. Parallel investigation of contagious cancer genomes and transcriptomes and of their micro‐environment and macro‐environment could shed light on the selective forces shaping tumour development at different time points: during the progressive phase and at the endpoint. A greater understanding of transmissible cancers from an evolutionary ecology perspective will provide novel avenues for the prevention and treatment of both contagious and non‐communicable cancers. (shrink)

The live-action comedies Hotel for Dogs and Marley and Me illustrate the prominent American stereotypes of canines as surrogate children and models of human behavior. Both adopt a human perspective on nonhuman animals, particularly dogs. An ethic of caring goes awry, to become pampering and permissiveness, and precludes empathetic training that would help dogs to prosper as canines in a human world.

Although canine identification of body odor (BO) has been widely used as forensic evidence, the concept of nosewitness identification by human observers was only recently put to the test. The results indicated that BOs associated with male characters in authentic crime videos could later be identified in BO lineup tests well above chance. To further evaluate nosewitness memory, we assessed the effects of lineup size (Experiment 1) and retention interval (Experiment 2), using a forced-choice memory test. The results showed (...) that nosewitness identification works for all lineup sizes (3, 5, and 8 BOs), but that larger lineups compromise identification performance in similarity to observations from eye- and earwitness studies. Also in line with previous eye- and earwitness studies, but in disagreement with some studies on odor memory, Experiment 2 showed significant forgetting between shorter retention intervals (15 min) and longer retention intervals (1-week) using lineups of five BOs. Altogether this study shows that identification of BO in a forensic setting is possible and has limits and characteristics in line with witness identification through other sensory modalities. (shrink)

The canine photographs, videos, and photographic narratives of artist William Wegman frame questions of animal aesthetic agency. Over the past 30 years, Wegman's dog images shift in form and content in ways that reflect the artist's increasing anxiety over his control of the art-making process once he becomes identified, in his own words, as "the dog photographer". Wegman's dog images claim unique cultural prominence, appearing regularly in fine art museums as well as on broadcast television. But, as Wegman comes (...) to use these images to document his own transition from dog photographer to dog breeder, these texts also reflect increasing restrictions on what I term the "pack aesthetics," or collaborative production of art and artistic agency, that distinguish some of the early pieces. Accounting for the correlations between multiple and mongrel dogs in Wegman's experimental video work and exclusively Weimaraner-breed dogs with human bodies in his recent work in large-format Polaroid photography, this article explores how Wegman's work with his "video dog star," his first Weimaraner dog Man Ray, troubles the erasure of the animal in contemporary conceptions of artistic authority. (shrink)

Recent studies in canine communication are reviewed using Deacon’s framework of iconic, indexical, and symbolic reference. The presented analysis examines these studies using Deacon’s notion of interpretant, taking into account the evolutionary and perceptual capacities of the dog. By taking these dispositions and capacities into account, the conclusions that have been drawn in current studies of canine communication with respect to Deacon’s framework are critically evaluated. The analysis proceeds by investigating clusters of studies that align with symbolic, indexical, (...) or iconic reference. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle wrote that "Meaning-theory expanded just when and just in so far as it was released from that 'Fido'-Fido box, the lid of which was never even lifted by Meinong". This paper sets out to relieve Ryle's oversimplification about Meinong and the role of meaning theory in his thought. One step away from canine simplicity about meaning is the recognition of a distinction between sense and reference, such as we find in Frege, Husserl, and the early Russell. In (...) Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit (1915) Meinong seems to corroborate Ryle when he writes, "Word-meanings are objects", but immediately after this, he qualifies it: "Word-meanings are very often auxiliary objects". The distinction between auxiliary and target objects in Meinong's later work allows us to attribute to him a theory of sense and reference which shows him to have indeed lifted the box-lid. (shrink)

David DeGrazia's article provides a careful and fair rendition of my position on the possibility of post-persons. However, I am unconvinced that he has shown that such beings are possible. My view is based on two assumptions: (1) the concept of moral status is a threshold concept; and (2) the most plausible understanding of moral status as a threshold concept is a Kantian respect-based view, according to which all and only those beings who have the capacity to be accountable for (...) reasons have the high status we associate with persons. I argue that the superior beings DeGrazia describes would be more morally admirable than us, but would not have a higher moral status. I also argue that, contrary to DeGrazia, even the most intelligent of canines do not have the capacity for accountability for reasons, even in an attenuated form. I then argue that DeGrazia faces a painful dilemma: either he must give up the assumption that moral status (so far as persons are concerned) is a threshold concept and say that for any two beings with the capacity for accountability for reasons, the one with the greater capacity has a higher moral status; or he must retain the view that moral status is a threshold concept but concede that he has not account of where the threshold lies. (shrink)

It is shown that the evolution of physics canin several regards be described by elements of``regression'', i.e., that within a certaintradition of ideas one begins with theconstruction of most ``plausible'' statements(axioms) at hand, and then ``works onselfbackwards'' with respect to developmental terms.As a consequence of this strategy, the furtherwork proceeds along such a ``regressive'' path,the more one arrives at concepts andrelationships which are unexpected or evencounter-intuitive in terms of our everydayexperiences. However, a comparable phenomenology is wellknown from studies on states (...) of consciousness.In particular, the evolutionary logic of theconstructions of major ``cognitive invariances''in physics, which is in part due to everincreasing rates of data processing, ismirrored in a logic of states of consciousnesswhich deviate from a ``normal'' state of dailyroutine along increasing levels of centralnervous arousal. Examples are given from the evolution ofphysics, and future perspectives are brieflyoutlined on the basis thereof. (shrink)

Understanding how animals might make sense of the interfaces they interact with is important to inform the design of animal-centered interactions. In this regard, biosemiotics provides a useful lens through which to examine animals’ interactions with interfaces and the sensemaking mechanisms that might underpin such interactions. This paper leverages Uexküll’s Umwelt theory, Peirce’s logic of sign relations and Gibson’s theory of affordances to analyze examples of dogs’ interactions with interfaces, particularly the role of the semiotic mechanisms of indexicality and isomorphism. (...) Based on these analyses, the paper derives design implications, and proposes a semiotic framework to support the analysis and design of canine-centered interactions. The framework could be subsequently extended to support the analysis and design of interactive systems for other species. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 551 Human Embryo Research: Yes or No?. By CIBA FOUNDATION. London: Tavistock: 1987. Pp. xv + 232. $39.95 (cloth). In 1984 a governmental commission formed under the directorship of Dame Mary Warnock studied proposed legislation for experimentation on human embryos for research purposes. It concluded that such experimentation should not be permitted ·after the fourteenth day of gestation. This book records a symposium conducted under the sponsorship (...) of the CIBA foundation, an international scientific and educational organization which promotes research into biomedical and chemical research. The purpose of the symposium was to determine whether the guidelines set forth by the Warnock commission were legitimate and whether new criteria for allowing embryo r.esearch should be established. The book consists of eleven papers presented at a symposium on the ethics of embryo research along with panel discussions about the papers. Technically, embryo research only concerns experimentation with human products of conception after the fourteenth gestational day. The first seven papers describe contemporary embryo research dealing with the diagnosis and mechanisms of infertility, its ti;eatment by in vitro fertilization, the diagnosis of genetic disease, the causes and avoidance of congenital malformations, and the improvement of contraception. The final four papers deal with the issues of the status of the human embryo in d:ffierent world religions, the moral arguments against human embryo research, and public attitudes on human embryo research. The scientific papers are quite detailed, and they provided a good deal of information about the contemporary state of embryo research. But the papers on the ethics of human embryo research are rather partisan, and they do not adequately approach the difficult human and ethical issues involved in embryo research. One gains the impression from this book that the conference was heavily weighted in favor of those who sought virtually unqualified and unrestricted moral and legal permission for human.embryo research. The scientific papers seemed to go out of their way to argue that there was an unbreakable continuum in the process of transmitting life such that it could not be determined when human life began. For example, Professor Teresa Iglesias's suggestion that a new and distinct human life began when the process of fertilization began, and when the newly formed genetic material came to govern the development of the organism, rceeived little acknowledgment. No papers were presented rejecting nontherapeutic research on human embryos, and.the papers presented by J. W. Bowker and by Bernard Williams argued in behalf of the moral licitness of unspecified forms of embryo research. Bowker claimed that there was no consensus to be found 55~ BOOK REVIEWS among the various world religions on the moral status of the human embryo. He surveyed various religions such as Buddhism and concluded that the arguments in favor of the humanity or personhood of the embryo were not strong or persuasive. His point should not be accepted without caution, however, for he did not consider the claims made by western traditions such as Catholicism in behalf of the personhood of the embryo. 'F:or the claims of an oriental religion such as Buddhism are not as persuasive with Western, rationalist, liberal minds as they are with orientals. Bowker argues that religious claims about the personhood of the unborn ';are weak since we do not claim that larvae are full grown fish or that acorns are oak trees. This is true, but on the other hand, we do not say that horse embryos are vegteables or pigs. Implied in Bowker's claim that the embryo is not a human being or a human person is the assumption that at some point in the gestation process the embryo undergoes a "species-transfer" or "class-transfer" from the biological category of non-human or non-personal to human and personal. This is difficult to accept as there is no precedent in other mammals for such a species or class transfer. Equine, bovine, and canine embryos are not considered to be anything than other than of the species of horse, pig, or dog, and there is no reason to believe that they engage in some sort of species transfer. And he does not explain why the human case alone exhibits this... (shrink)

Do dogs live in the same world as humans? Is it wrong to think dogs have personalities and emotions? What are dogs thinking and what’s the nature of canine wisdom? This is a book for thoughtful dog-lovers who want to explore the deeper issues raised by dogs and their relationships with humans. Twenty philosophers and dog-lovers reveal their experiences with dogs and give their insights on dog-related themes of metaphysics and ethics.

This paper explains how recent changes in the ways we study other animals to better understand the human faculty of language are indicative of changing narratives concerning the intelligence of other animals. Uexküll’s concept of Umwelt as a species-specific model of the world is essential to understanding the semiotic abilities of all organisms, including humans. From this follows the view that human language is primarily a cognitive tool for making models of the world. This view is consistent with the basic (...) premises of cognitive linguistics. The rejection of behaviorism in linguistics represents a turning point in the history of animal studies. The resulting criticism of long-term studies with primates illustrates this shift concerning the study of wild animals within the language sciences and beyond. New insights in dog cognition and research on the processing of human language in canines are reflective of a change in focus away from anthropocentrism towards the species-specific semiotic abilities of animals in the twenty-first century. This new orientation away from comparing animal sign-systems to human language and the importance of studying intelligent wild animals in the wild instead of in captivity have lead to an important re-evaluation of our relationship with other animals and our views of their cognitive and semiotic profiles. This leads to questions such as what role non-human organisms can play in the language sciences, and what our limitations are of studying the sign systems of other animals. Recent research on the signifying abilities of wild dolphins, for instance, has identified a new set of characteristics by which to study intelligence in other species. (shrink)

The study investigates the possibility of applying texture analysis (TA) for testing Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) therapies. The work is based on the Golden Retriever Muscular Dystrophy (GRMD) canine model, in which 3 phases of canine growth and/or dystrophy development are identified: the first phase (0–4 months of age), the second phase (from over 4 to 6 months), and the third phase (from over 6 months to death). Two differentiation problems are posed: (i) the first phase vs. the (...) second phase and (ii) the second phase vs. the third phase. Textural features are derived from T2-weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) images. In total, 37 features provided by 8 different TA methods (statistical, filter-based, and model-based) have been tested. The work focuses on finding such textural features that evolve along with the dog’s growth. These features are indicated by means of statistical analyses and eliminated from further investigation, as they may disturb the correct assessment of response to treatment in dystrophy. The relative importance of each remaining feature is then assessed with the use of the Monte Carlo (MC) procedure. Furthermore, feature selection based on the MC procedure is employed to find the optimal subset of age-independent features. Finally, three classifiers are used for evaluating different sets of textural features: Adaptive Boosting (AB), back-propagation Neural Network (NN), and nonlinear Support Vector Machines (SVM). The best subsets of age-independent features ensure 80.0% and 78.5% of correctly identified phases of dystrophy progression, for the first (i) and second (ii) differentiation problem respectively. (shrink)

Information-seeking behaviour of sniffer dogs during match-to-sample training in the scent lineup Qualitative and quantitative changes in dogs' information-seeking behaviours during the subsequent phases of operant conditioning training using a scent lineup, were investigated. Particular interest was paid to behaviours which may have an impact on errors committed by dogs at work in a scent lineup and thus on the reliability of the canine identification of humans on the base of scent. Significant individual differences were found in dogs' performance (...) in operant conditioning during match-to-sample trials. The style and time of sniffing the pattern scent sample as well as the searching time and number of stations sniffed in the lineup were found to influence the percentage of errors made by dogs. The effects of the dogs' routine e.g. omitting stations, using other cues than olfactory ones and effects of the non-verbal communications between handler and dog have been discussed. (shrink)

Bred to provide human companionship, dogs eclipse all other species when it comes to reading the body language of people. Dog owners hunger for a complete rapport with their pets; in the dog the fantasy of empathetic resonance finds its ideal. But cross-species communication is never easy. Dog love can be a precious but melancholy thing. An attempt to understand human attachment to the _canis familiaris_ in terms of reciprocity and empathy, _Melancholia’s_ _Dog_ tackles such difficult concepts as intimacy and (...) kinship with dogs, the shame associated with identification with their suffering, and the reasons for the profound mourning over their deaths. In addition to philosophy and psychoanalysis, Alice A. Kuzniar turns to the insights and images offered by the literary and visual arts—the short stories of Ivan Turgenev and Franz Kafka, the novels of J. M. Coetzee and Rebecca Brown, the photography of Sally Mann and William Wegman, and the artwork of David Hockney and Sue Coe. Without falling into sentimentality or anthropomorphization, Kuzniar honors and learns from our canine companions, above all attending to the silences and sadness brought on by the effort to represent the dog as perfectly and faithfully as it is said to love. (shrink)

It's a familiar image: a line of dogs surging through snow along the Iditarod trail. It can be easy to forget that each team is made up of individual dogs, each one bred and trained to perform at the pinnacle of canine ability. Albert Lewis, a professional photographer and dog lover, was skeptical of the race when he first moved to Alaska, but after seeing the dogs' excitement at the Iditarod starting line and experiencing the mushers' deep connection with (...) these athletes, his perception of the race was forever changed. Determined to show the world the heart and soul of these animal athletes that run thousands of miles, he took his camera and set out to revolutionize our image of sled dogs. In Born to Run, Lewis stops the dogs long enough to spotlight them as individuals, letting their personalities shine through. Lewis draws on his experience as a fashion photographer, capturing unique moments of stunning beauty and stoic grace, emphasizing their athleticism even as they're standing still. Additional photos show the dogs interacting with their mushers during care and training. The full-page photos are finely detailed, and readers will find themselves nearly reaching out to stroke the dogs on the pages. Accompanied by just enough text to provide each dog's name, age, and trail miles, the photos are left to speak for themselves. The hundreds of thousands of Iditarod fans across the globe have made the race a historic event, and race fans and dog lovers alike will be drawn to this book. (shrink)

Michael Brandow provides a unique analysis of the rise of the “dog fancy” in the United States and the United Kingdom. He attributes much of the motivation to acquire, breed, and show prestigious pure-bred dogs to a human need for status at the cost of serious detriment to the health and welfare of the many breeds developed to meet these needs. Although the many problems associated with the production of such dogs have been increasingly recognized by the veterinary and animal (...) welfare communities, such concerns have had relatively little impact on the popularity of these dogs. It is hoped that greater awareness of the harm to dogs caused by human vanity and greed may help foster a more humane human-canine relationship. (shrink)

This article concerns the related ideas of "presentation" and "representation" with regard to animals and suggests that the prefix "re" indicates a directing agent with its own concerns about the nature and status of animal presence. It further suggests that the representation of animals is perhaps always an expression of human concerns, desires, and imaginings. As with other domesticated nonhuman animals, foxhounds are not present in the world to fulfill their own purposes but there to fulfill these human desires and (...) imaginings and are celebrated as the realization of a complex engagement of humans with the world of animals. The foxhound is central to English foxhunting and is given cultural meaning because of this context.The article offers a close anthropological interpretation of the production of this animal - a complex, cultural creation based on a canine form. (shrink)

Monty was just like any other dog. A scruffy and irascible Maltese terrier, he enjoyed barking at pugs and sniffing at trees. But after yet another dramatic confrontation with the local Rottweiler, Anthony McGowan realizes it's high time he and Monty had a chat about what makes him a good or a bad dog. Taking his lead from Monty's canine antics, McGowan takes us on a hilarious and enlightening jaunt through the major debates of philosophy. Will Kant convince Monty (...) to stop stealing cheesecake? How long will they put up with Socrates poking holes in every argument? In this uniquely entertaining take on morality and ethics, the dutiful duo set out to uncover who--if anyone--has the right end of the ethical stick and can tell us how best to live one's life."--GoogleBooks. (shrink)

Eugene 'Gene' Vernier worked as a fashion photographer for British Vogue from 1954 to 1967, during one of the most exciting periods in fashion history. Shooting of-the-moment looks from the likes of Christian Dior and Emilio Pucci and top models including Celia Hammond, Jean Shrimpton, and current Vogue creative director Grace Coddington, Vernier worked with some of the biggest names in the industry. Yet he was relatively unconcerned with celebrity. Interested only in bringing out the very best in each frame, (...) Vernier was a true craftsman in the fashion photography trade. Featuring more than one hundred of Vernier's own favorite photographs drawn from Vogue's extensive photo archive, this lavishly illustrated volume reveals remarkable innovation in the use of props, backdrops, and location. Whether he was photographing his subjects by the sea, with a canine companion, or perfectly positioned atop a pale pink convertible, Vernier's careful composition enhanced the essence of his subject. Vernier shot mostly in black-and-white, and his trademark “look” is one of classic femininity. He sought to capture models when they were relaxed, enjoying the clothing, and confident that their photographer would show both only at their best. Providing commentary on the photographs are fashion history expert Becky Conekin and Vogue historian Robin Muir. This is first book to focus on Vernier's work at Vogue and it allows readers a rare glimpse of his inimitable blend of technical excellence and an eye for experimentation. (shrink)

In the summer of 1922 Franz Kafka wrote a short story entitled Investigations of a Dog wherein the investigating dog reflects:“Consider us dogs, on the other hand! One can safely say that we all live together in a literal heap, all of us, different as we are from one another on account of numberless and profound modifications which have arisen in the course of history. All in one heap! But now consider the other side of this picture. No creatures to (...) my knowledge live in such wide dispersion as we dogs, none have so many distinctions of class, of kind, of occupation, distinctions too numerous to review at a glance; we, whose one desire is to stick together — and again and again we succeed at transcendent moments in spite of everything — we above all others live so widely separated from one another, engaged in strange vocations that are often incomprehensible even to our canine neighbours, holding firmly to laws that are not those of the dog world, but are actually directed against it. How baffling these questions are, questions on which one would prefer not to touch — I understand that standpoint too, even better than my own — and yet questions to which I have completely capitulated.”Today in 1996 the questions we humans harbour about ourselves, about our living together, and whatever sense there might be to “human solidarity,” may not be alltogether so different from those of Kafka’s dog who was investigating the dog world. (shrink)

Human personality influences the way people interact with dogs. This study investigated the associations between the personality of animal shelter volunteers and behavior during on-leash walks with shelter dogs. Video recording and a canine leash tension meter were used to monitor the on-leash walking. Personality was measured in five dimensions with the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. Neurotic volunteers pulled the leash harder and tended to interact with dogs using more body language; dogs being walked by neurotic volunteers in turn displayed (...) more lip-licking and body shaking and were more likely to be rated as well-behaved. Extroverted volunteers were associated with stronger maximal leash tension at both the human and dog ends of the leash, and they praised the dog more, often in a high pitched voice. These volunteers eliciting more tail-wagging and body shaking by the dog. Extroverted volunteers were also more tolerant of different dog behaviors. Volunteers with personalities characterized by “openness to experiences” were less likely to verbally attract the attention of dogs, praise dogs and talk to them in a high-pitched voice; however, dogs walked by these volunteers were more likely to pull on the leash, and engaged in more lip-licking but less sniffing. “Agreeable” volunteers liked to verbally attract the attention of the dogs and more commonly initiated hand gestures and physical contact, causing the dogs to pull less frequently; dogs in these dyads displayed more gazing and lip-licking behaviors. Conscientious volunteers were less likely to pull the leash and tended to have more physical contact with the dogs but did not favor verbal communication and did not use a high pitched voice. (shrink)

Human sleeping arrangements have evolved over time and differ across cultures. The majority of adults share their bed at one time or another with a partner or child, and many also sleep with pets. In fact, around half of dog and cat owners report sharing a bed or bedroom with their pet. However, interspecies co-sleeping has been trivialized in the literature relative to interpersonal or human-human co-sleeping, receiving little attention from an interdisciplinary psychological perspective. In this paper, we provide a (...) historical outline of the “civilizing process” that has led to current sociocultural conceptions of sleep as an individual, private function crucial for the functioning of society and the health of individuals. We identify similar historical processes at work in the formation of contemporary constructions of socially normative sleeping arrangements for humans and animals. Importantly, since previous examinations of co-sleeping practices have anthropocentrically framed this topic, the result is an incomplete understanding of co-sleeping practices. By using dogs as an exemplar of human-animal co-sleeping, and comparing human-canine sleeping with adult-child co-sleeping, we determine that both forms of co-sleeping share common factors for establishment and maintenance, and often result in similar benefits and drawbacks. We propose that human-animal and adult-child co-sleeping should be approached as legitimate and socially relevant forms of co-sleeping, and we recommend that co-sleeping be approached broadly as a social practice involving relations with humans and other animals. Because our proposition is speculative and derived from canine-centric data, we recommend ongoing theoretical refinement grounded in empirical research addressing co-sleeping between humans and multiple animal species. (shrink)

In this chapter we outline the need to develop ethical frameworks to guide research on the role of animal-orientated health, therapeutic, and service interventions. We discuss findings from our research on uses of animals in therapeutic settings and benefits of human–canine interactions for human health. These stories from the field reveal that current ethics review processes do not recognise the animal as an equal partner in the potential reciprocal benefits and risks of therapeutic human–animal relationships. We explore how these (...) review processes frame research on the relationships between humans and non-human animals and use the ethical review system of Aotearoa/New Zealand as an example. We propose an ethical framework that goes beyond animal welfare legislation and recognises a range of non-human animal capacities. (shrink)

Building upon her work in Livestock, Erin McKenna's Living with Animals delivers eight chapters about animals with which human beings share their lives: chimpanzees and other primates, horses and cattle, pigs and poultry, whales and fishes, pests, and cats and canines. This new work is carefully and beautifully constructed, consistent with her long effort of developing pragmatic ecofeminism. McKenna raises our attention to the use of pragmatism to name and address compelling problems of community—which, from this perspective, is construed in (...) its broadest sense to include non-human animals. The focus in this text is on animals with which humans have evolved and upon whose welfare we continue to depend for our... (shrink)