Educational Science

Here's When Puppies Are Most Adorable, According to Science

There's no debating it: Puppies are adorable. But is there an age when they reach peak cuteness? A new study may have an answer. The study, which aimed to determine the optimal age of puppy cuteness, found that puppies are most appealing to humans at around 6 to 8 weeks...

Your Dog Might Be Licking Its Mouth Because It Thinks You’re a Jerk

When your best friend catches you in a bad mood, does she try to console you, give you space to cool off or lick her own face in an uncontrollable slobber? If your best friend is a dog, this third reaction may be familiar to you. Dogs lick their own...

Two dogs at a Wisconsin animal shelter recently tested positive for strep zoo, a potentially lethal respiratory infection in animals that, in rare cases, can spread to humans. The dogs, which were housed at the Wisconsin Human Society (WHS) campus in Ozaukee, did not respond to treatment for the infection,...

A Woman Needed a New Hip Replacement Because of … a Dog Scratch

Dog owners may occasionally get scratched by their pet — but for one woman in the United Kingdom who got scratched on the back of the hand by her dog, the incident turned into a much bigger ordeal than she could've expected. Namely, the unremarkable scratch was the source of...

Dog-Mauling Death: Why Dogs Turn on Their Owners

After a woman in Virginia was reportedly mauled to death by her own dogs, some of her friends had trouble believing the story, because the woman had a strong bond with her dogs. But what could cause a dog to turn on its owner? The 22-year-old woman, Bethany Lynn Stephens,...

Poor Pups: Chocolate Poisonings in Dogs Spike During Christmastime

'Tis the season … in which chocolate treats poison pet dogs, according to a new study from England. The research found that pups are four times more likely to go to the veterinarian for chocolate poisoning during Christmastime than any non-holiday time of the year. The findings may help raise...

Attack of the (Adorable) Clones: Puppies Are 'Reclones' of First Cloned Dog

Purebred puppies from the same litter tend to look pretty much the same. But a trio of littermates born recently in Korea don't just closely resemble each other — they're clones that share nuclear DNA from the same cells. In fact, those cells originated in a dog that was also...

If Dogs Can Smell Cancer, Why Don't They Screen People?

Dogs can be trained to be cancer-sniffing wizards, using their sensitive noses to detect cancerous fumes wafting from diseased cells. This sniffing is noninvasive and could help diagnose countless people, which begs the question: If these pups are so olfactorily astute, why aren't they screening people for cancer right now?...

Are Dogs More Likely To Bite You If You're Anxious?

If you regularly feel anxious, you might be the perfect candidate for a dog bite. According to a new study published today (Feb. 1) in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, dog bites in the United Kingdom may be three times more common than official records indicate. One surprising...

New 3D-printed Mask Helps Heal Puppy's Fractured Skull

A new 3D-printed mask helped a puppy in California heal after its face was severely wounded in an attack by another dog. The puppy, a 4-month-old female Staffordshire bull terrier named Loca, arrived at the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine with a fractured cheekbone and jawbone —...