Well, firstly, I need to apologize for being so quiet on the blogger world. I had SO much to absorb on arrival in Europe, and France was a little bit of a culture shock for me. I am now settled in, and will resume a fairly regular blog of - as I write in my introduction in May 2013, "thoughts about all things dog, biological, microbiological, daily sniffs
that seem unusual and needing some extra attention or investigation". See, in France, or where we were from October to December, Banyuls-sur-Mer, the dogs roam the streets, come up to you and sniff your butt while you are on a leash, and then if you offer to play, very few have any concept of what that means. Then, you can also poop and pee anywhere and everywhere. Much to ALRs disappointment, I have now got into the habit of squatting to pee in the middle of a walkway, not problem. Privacy, whats that?! When in France do as the French do, right?! ALR still picks up my poo, but people think it funny, as there is a full time employee, who drives around on his motorcycle, vacuuming up poop.
Now talking about poo, did you know that dogs align themselves to the Earths magnetic field when its stable, and they are free to poo off leash?! When the magnetic field is unstable, such as during a solar flare,
dogs may become confused
(Hart et al., 2013). How about peeing?...it seems there is now a "Law of Urination", which demonstrates that regardless of their size, all mammals pee for about 21 seconds (
Yang et al., 2013).
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| The first author hanging out with me |
And now I am thinking about sniffing, and the French gastronomy. There was a recent interesting paper (Antony-Babu et al., 2013,
Environ Microbiol. 2013 doi: 10.1111/1462-2920.12294) on the microbiology of
truffles that showed that the microbial diversity differs inside and on the outside of truffles, and changes over time. Its not clear whether the microbes are specifically selected by the truffles, or whether the microbes are just enjoying the truffle environment. One day, maybe I can sniff out some truffles for ALR as I have an acute sense of smell for apples, but also other goodies.
While trying to figure out the French dog culture, I have been watching how the French dogs wag their tails, and found this general explanation for dog wagging (
Siniscalchi et al., 2013). Turns out, a wag to the left suggest negative emotion with increased anxiety such as higher heart rate, while a wag to the right it more positive, and calming. Seems most dogs dont use this for communication, but can be explained as a result of the asymmetry of the brain, much like right-handed and left-handedness are.
