Well its a rainy Tuesday afternoon, and Im actually up to date with everything, so I thought I would troll through the internet looking for some interesting and little known facts about dogs and cats. I found 99 interesting facts on a wonderful website, 99 Fun Facts about Dogs – Random Facts – Random History and really enjoyed reading through it. Some of it might be old, as the article was posted in 2009, but it still makes an interesting read. So, to credit the site, all info below is from facts.randomhistory.com.
Ive only listed 35 of them, but that’s enough. For more, visit their site
- All dogs can be traced back 40 million years ago to a weasel-like animal called the Miacis. It later evolved into the Tomarctus, a direct forbear of the genus Canis.
- Rock Star Ozzy Osborne saved his wife Sharon’s Pomeranian from a coyote by tackling and wrestling the coyote until it released the dog.
- In 2003, Dr Roger Mugford invented the “wagometer”, a device that claims to interpret a dog’s exact mood by measuring the wag of its tail.
- Dogs have 3 eyelids. The third lid, called a nictitating membrane or “haw”, keeps the eye lubricated and protected.
- A dog’s shoulder blades are unattached to the rest of the skeleton to allow greater flexibility for running.
- The phrase “raining cats and dogs” originated in 17th century England. During heavy rainstorms, many homeless animals would drown and float down the streets, giving the appearance that it had actually rained cats and dogs.
- The shape of a dog’s face determines how long it will live. Dogs with sharp, pointed faces live longer than dogs with flat faces.
- The most popular male dog names (at the time of this post) are Max & Jake. The most popular female dog names (at the time of this post) are Maggie & Molly. (We beg to differ, in our estimate, the most popular female dog name is Bella).
- French poodles did not originate in France, but in Germany. “Poodle” comes from the German “pudel” or “pudelhund”, meaning “splashing dog”.
- Dachshunds were bred to fight badgers in their dens.
- Laika, a Russian stray, was the first living mammal to orbit the earth, in the Soviet Sputnik spacecraft in 1957. Although she died in space, her daughter Pushnika had 4 puppies with President John F Kennedy’s terrier, Charlie.
- Dalmatians are completely white at birth.
- Puppies are born blind, deaf and toothless.
- The Basenji is the world’s only barkless dog
- A dog most likely interprets a smiling person as baring their teeth, which is an act of aggression.
- The origin of docking a dog’s tail may go back to the Roman writer Lucius Columella’s (AD 4-70) assertion that tail docking prevented rabies.
- President Franklin Roosevelt created a minor international incident when he claimed he sent a destroyer to the Aleutian Islands just to pick up his Scottish Terrier, Fala, who had been left behind.
- At the end of WW1, the German government trained the first guide dogs for war-blinded soldiers.
- A dog can locate the source of a sound in 1/600 of a second, and can hear sounds 4 times farther away than a human can.
- Touch is the first sense a dog develops. The entire body, including the paws, is covered with touch-sensitive nerve endings.
- Eighteen muscles or more can move a dog’s ear.
- Dog nose prints are as unique as human fingerprints, and can be used to identify them.
- Petting dogs is proven to lower the blood pressure of dog owners.
- Dogs can smell 1000 times better than humans, they have 220 million smell detecting cells, compared to a human’s 5000.
- Dogs have a wet nose to collect more of the tiny droplets of smelling chemicals in the air.
- Different smells in a dog’s urine can tell other dogs whether the dog leaving the message is male or female, old or young, sick or healthy, happy or angry. Male dogs will raise their legs while urinating to aim higher on a tree or lamppost because they want to leave a message that they are tall and intimidating. Some wild dogs in Africa try to run up tree trunks while they are urinating, to appear to be very large.
- In Croatia, scientists discovered that lampposts were falling down because a chemical in the urine of male dogs was eroding the metal.
- A lost Dachshund was found swallowed whole in the belly of a giant catfish in Berlin in July 2003.
- The best dog to attract a date is a Golden Retriever.
- The noisiest dogs are the Beagle and Collie.
- One survery reports that 33% of dog owners admit they talk to their dogs on the phone or leave messages on the answering machine while they are away.
- The grief suffered after a dog dies can be the same as that experienced after the death of a person.
- Hollywood’s first and arguably best canine superstar was Rin Tin Tin, a 5 day old German Shepherd found wounded in battle in WW1 France, and adopted by an American soldier, Lee Duncan. He would sign his own contracts with his paw print.
- Dogs have lived with humans for over 14 000 years. Cats have lived with people for only 7000 years.
- A person standing still 300 yards away is almost invisible to a dog. But a dog can easily identify its owner standing more than 1.5 kilometers away if the owner is waving his arms.
Look out for the interesting cat facts tomorrow. Or, if you’re cat, you’re probably indifferent.
Stay warm and indoors with your furry friends if you’re in the Western Cape tonight.
medipetsa 