Anyone who rises to the 5:00 a.m. wake-up call of a hungry cat knows that this early morning meow has a clear meaning—Feed Me Now! But can meows alone carry clear messages in different contexts? Nicholas Nicastro and Michael Owren, both formerly in the psychology department at Cornell University, have an interesting answer. While Nicastro was a graduate student at Cornell, he recorded the meows of 12 cats in five different contexts—food related (prior to regular feeding), agonistic (when being petted too vigorously), affiliative (when the cat solicited affection from the owners), obstacle (when the cat wanted in or out),

My suspicions were confirmed the day after Christmas at the Metreon Theater downtown. As the youngest in the family, my job was to wait in line and knowing this, I went prepared—with a scientific article called, “Do dogs respond to play signals given by humans?”  The research, lead by Nicola Rooney at the Anthrozoology Institute in Southhampton, U.K., starred 21 owners who were videotaped playing with their dogs. In what surely would have been billed as a comedy, owners patted, the floor, barked, bowed, shuffled their feet, slapped their thighs, crawled on all fours, anything to get their Rovers to

If you’re one of the millions of people who have seen this video, you either laughed or you were appalled. The video received instant fame when it was on America’s Funniest Home Videos many years ago, garnering many audience chuckles; however, from a veterinarian’s perspective, this dog’s behavior raises some serious red flags. Based on just this small clip with no history or other information, I recently showed this video to three neurologists and all three felt that the number one rule out for the twitching of the hind leg was that it was caused by a mis-firing of neurons in the brain, in

With 72 million dogs in the U.S. and 400 million dogs worldwide, humans have established many different relationships with dogs. An estimated 3/4 of the world’s population eats dogs and most of the world’s dogs roam the unpaved roads of developing nations, scavenging through human trash and waste like rats. They choose to live and breed near humans because they’re better adapted to scavenging than to hunting. This is a far cry from our pampered pets who subsist on food formulated by large companies to meet their specific nutritional needs. We’ve not only brought dogs into our house, we’ve developed

When a child is bitten by a four-legged family member, it can turn the household upside-down. Owners feel puzzled and confused. “They sleep together all the time,” they might say, or, “He’s always been really good. He even lets Timmy sit on him.” In a majority of cases, the bite seems out of the blue. The humans can’t fathom why their once-trusted companion would bite an innocent child. But anyone who reads “dog” or can see life from the pet’s point of view would most likely say, “I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.” The fact is, a quick perusal of

Question: We have a five month old kitten who can’t seem to get the hang of using the cat door. Our other cats use the door and I’m sure he sees them, but he doesn’t seem to learn by imitation. Any suggestions? Answer: A kitty door is a simple contraption that many cats learn to use right off the bat, but others don’t know what to make of the flappy barrier. While some cats are actually afraid of the odd swinging contraption, others are just too polite to shove their way through. In either case, the solution is straight forward.