Free The Book of Animal Ignorance by Ted Dewan

species: Canis familiaris . In theory, a 2-pound Chihuahua only a couple of inches high can mate with a Great Dane more than 3 feet tall or a 150-pound St Bernard. The vast diversity of dogs is down to humans carefully selecting valuable inherited traits but often encouraging unusual ones such as dwarfism or lack of a tail that, in the wild, might prevent a dog surviving long enough to reproduce. Specialised hunting skills were especially sought after. Springer spaniels have the ability to ‘spring’, or startle, game. The dachshund’s sausage-like body enables it to pursue badgers into their burrows (‘badger’ is Dachs in German). Labrador retrievers were bred to retrieve fishing nets in Newfoundland. There are Harehounds, Elkhounds and Coonhounds; Leopard Dogs, Kangaroo Dogs and Bear Dogs;there is even a Sheep Poodle. Poodles were originally used for duck hunting: the word comes from the German for ‘to splash in water’. But dogs are bred for all sorts of reasons. Louis Dobermann, a German night watchman, produced his namesake for watchdog purposes in the late 1800s. Toy varieties, such as the Pekingese, were raised in ancient China as ‘sleeve dogs’ – kept inside the gowns of noblewomen to keep them warm.
    A DOG’S LIFE
    There’s no question about it: unlike cats, dogs are useful. A dog’s nose has 220 million olfactory cells, humans a mere five million. A dog’s sense of smell is not only hundreds of times better than a human’s: it’s four times better than the best man-made odour-detecting machines. Dogs can be trained to find almost anything by smell: explosives, drugs, smuggled animals, plants and food, landmines under the ground, drowned bodies under the surface of lakes. They can even smell cancer. Doctors in California have found that both Labradors and Portuguese water dogs can detect lung and breast cancer with greater accuracy than state-of-the-art screening equipment such as mammograms and CT scans. The dogs correctly identified 99 per cent of lung cancer sufferers and 88 per cent of breast cancer patients simply by smelling their breath. Dogs wag their tails when sad as well as when happy. Cheerful dogs wag their tails more to the right side of their rumps. Morose dogs wag to the left. Help them wag to the right: they deserve it.

Dolphin
    Leave us alone
    W e haven’t done dolphins any favours. The wilder shores of hippy speculation they have inspired – their brains are more complex than ours; their language is more sophisticated; they have a society dedicated to peace and free love; they are extraterrestrials with fins – reveal more about us than them. This is not to undermine their utter fabulousness, just to remind us that they are wild animals, with their own agendas and priorities. They can do things we can only dream of (and – just maybe – they feel the same about us).
    A dolphin’s skin is shed and replaced every two hours to maximise streamlining .
    Take echo-location, their system of marine navigation. Dribble a teaspoon of water into a pool and they will locate the sound with pinpoint accuracy. They can discriminate between objects made from wax, rubber or plastic. They can even tell the difference between identical-looking brass and copper discs. Fish, not noted for their quietness (herrings fart non-stop), don’t stand a chance.
    Their ‘language’ skills are more difficult to assess. Dolphins are famously talkative – despite having no vocal chords. The clicks, whistles, groans, squeals and barks all come from sacs in their nasal passages – as many as 1,200 per second. Each dolphin has a unique ‘signal whistle’, an ‘I’m Flipper’ tag, which it repeats constantly. They also imitate other dolphins as a way of gaining their attention, rather in the same way as doing an exaggerated impression of a friend in a crowded bar means they are more likely to turn round.