Archive for the Audio Updates Category

Genetic Trade-Offs Studies of the canine genome remind me of the concept of unintended consequences or in more philosophical terms, the old saying that if we tug on a corner, the whole universe moves. For sure when I read about what the canine genome tells us about diseases in ourselves, I couldn’t help but look [...]

The Ick and Wow Factors This is one of those podcasts that I think of as belonging to my “Can of Worm” Series. I so categorized it because the more I thought about this particular subject, the more I realized that as usual this wasn’t just about science. In addition to science, it was  about [...]

Barking Up the Wrong Tree I edited this podcast this podcast the day after the 2012 SuperBowl and noticed yet another negative effect of a simplistic winner-loser system. The Boston team lost so there were people in the area who were very upset this morning, probably for three reasons: they felt like losers, they probably [...]

Keeping in Touch In keeping with the theme of this podcast, I’d like to add that one of the reasons that our dogs and cats may be attracted to our expensive leather shoes, purses, jackets or briefcases  isn’t because they know how much we value those items and want to punish us for not paying [...]

Dead Zones and the Subconscious Mind Young human and nonhuman animals possess less experience and, as a result, possess less data in their subconscious data bases. Or nonhuman animals do if you believe they have a subconscious mind which means believing that they also posses conscious one. Some people do, some don’t. But regardless which [...]

 Animal Laughter You can see what I consider a likely example of a laughing dog here and read an article about the increased scientific interest in ticklish animals here. As always when it comes to the subject of animal emotion, some of us are more open to the idea than others. Naturally I felt obligated [...]

 Dognapping Baboons Dognapping baboons? If you don’t believe me, check out this  video clip. Aside from being fascinating, this is the kind of clip that makes me glad I’m an independent scholar in the realm of the human-animal bond. That way I have access to academics like bond scholar Hal Herzog who pointed me to [...]

Meditation on Animal Play When you listen to this podcast, you’ll notice that there’s no mention of Bamboo the cat’s behavior during these intervals. This is because from the first instant that he made the connection between the woodstove, and warmth, and my clawably comfortable yoga mats, he decided that no interactive toy could compel [...]

Rewriting the Rules Even though I recognize the need for rules in order for a society to function (regardless of species) I also recognize that, like all behavior their meaning depends on their context. In spite of what we may like to believe, nothing is written in stone. This doesn’t mean that I’m one of [...]

Behavioral Webs Sometimes when I listen to these podcasts after I’ve recorded and edited them, it strikes me that I may have meandered a little bit more off the path than I usually do. This time, I could say that I detected an annoying clunk in the recording, the origin of which I couldn’t determine [...]