Have I ever told you about the time a dog nearly attacked me? What happened? Oh well. it was a few years ago. I was still at school, actually, so I guess I was sixteen or seventeen. It was the weekend and it was summer - the sun was shining, and I was with some friends in the garden. We werw paying football. Well, we weren't exactly playing football, because there were only three of us. but we were playing with a ball...
The domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris[3] and Canis lupus dingo[1][2]) is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in human history. The word "dog" may also mean the male of a canine species,[4] as opposed to the word "bitch" for the female of the species.[5]
Dogs were domesticated from gray wolves about 15,000 years ago.[6] Their value to early human settlements led to them quickly becoming ubiquitous across world cultures. Dogs perform many roles for people, such as hunting, herding, pulling loads, protection, assisting police and military, companionship, and, more recently, aiding handicapped individuals. This impact on human society has given them the nickname "Man's Best Friend" in the Western world. In 2001, there were estimated to be 400 million dogs in the world.[7]
Over the 15,000-year span in which the dog has been domesticated, it has diverged into only a handful of landraces, groups of similar animals whose morphology and behavior have been shaped by environmental factors and functional roles. Through selective breeding by humans, the dog has developed into hundreds of varied breeds, and shows more behavioral and morphological variation than any other land mammal.[8] For example, height measured to the withers ranges from a few inches in the Chihuahua to a few feet in the Irish Wolfhound; color varies from white through grays (usually called "blue") to black, and browns from light (tan) to dark ("red" or "chocolate") in a wide variation of patterns; coats can be short or long, coarse-haired to wool-like, straight, curly, or smooth.[9] It is common for most breeds to shed this coat. While the human brain is dominated by a large visual cortex, the dog brain is dominated by an olfactory cortex.[96] The olfactory bulb in dogs is roughly forty times bigger than the olfactory bulb in humans, relative to total brain size, with 125 to 220 million smell-sensitive receptors. The bloodhound exceeds this standard with nearly 300 million receptors. Subsequently, it has been estimated that dogs, in general, have an olfactory sense ranging from one hundred thousand to one million times more sensitive than a human's. In some dog breeds, such as bloodhounds, the olfactory sense may be up to 100 million times greater than a human's. The wet nose is essential for determining the direction of the air current containing the smell. Cold receptors in the skin are sensitive to the cooling of the skin by evaporation of the moisture by air currents. Although wild dogs, like wolves, are apex predators, they can be killed in territory disputes with wild animals. Furthermore, in areas where both dogs and other large predators live, dogs can be a major food source for big cats or canines. Reports from Croatia indicate wolves kill more dogs more frequently than they kill sheep. Wolves in Russia apparently limit feral dog populations. In Wisconsin, more compensation has been paid for dog losses than livestock. Some wolf pairs have been reported to prey on dogs by having one wolf lure the dog out into heavy brush where the second animal waits in ambush. In some instances, wolves have displayed an uncharacteristic fearlessness of humans and buildings when attacking dogs, to the extent that they have to be beaten off or killed. Coyotes and big cats have also been known to attack dogs. Leopards in particular are known to have a predilection for dogs, and have been recorded to kill and consume them regardless of the dog's size or ferocity. Tigers in Manchuria, Indochina, Indonesia, and Malaysia, are reputed to kill dogs with the same vigor as leopards. Striped Hyenas are major predators of village dogs in Turkmenistan, India, and the Caucasus. Reptiles such as alligators and pythons have been known to kill and eat dogs. In domestic dogs, sexual maturity begins to happen around age six to twelve months for both males and females,
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barking boxer puppyby defnijohanna307 views
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