The return of Fido

Recently we've dealt with such deep topics as quantum mechanics, the origins of the universe, archaeology, and evolutionary biology, not to mention controversial (and worrying) stuff like climate change and the current political situation.  So I'm sure what you're all thinking is: "yes, Gordon, but what about pet reincarnation?"

I know the subject is on at least one person's mind, because a couple of days ago a friend and former student sent me a Facebook reel showing an advertisement from "Master Reincarnationist" E. David Scott containing a 1-900 number you can call, where for the low-low-low price of $1.95 per minute you can "answer a few simple questions" and he will tell you who your pet used to be in a previous life.  The two dogs in the advertisement apparently were once George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte, and the cat was Annie Oakley.

Which is wicked cool.  But it does leave me with a few questions:

1. What the actual fuck?
2. How do you become a "Master Reincarnationist?"  Do you have to get a Bachelors Degree in Reincarnation first, then go to graduate school?
3. He can do all of this over the phone?  I mean, he doesn't actually have to be near the pet, and sense the mystical quantum field frequency vibrations of their aura, or something?  It's pretty impressive if he can do all that remotely.
4. It's likely that the call would take at least ten minutes, so that'd cost me about twenty bucks.  I have better uses for twenty bucks, and that includes using it to start a fire in my wood stove.  (Okay, that one wasn't a question.)
5. Don't you think it's statistically unlikely that your pet was once a famous person?  Just by the law of averages, it's much more likely they were once Chinese peasants.
6. Speaking of statistics, why do you think your pet was once a person at all?  Given that they're now a pet, the contention is that it's possible to have a human reincarnate as an non-human animal, so other transmutations are probably allowed as well.  Since insects outnumber all other animals put together, wouldn't it be much more likely that Fido and Mr. Fluffums, not to mention you and I, were once bugs?  Odd that you often hear the past-life crowd saying things like, "I was once Cleopatra" and you rarely ever hear them say, "Life really was boring, when I was a bug."
7. At the risk of repeating myself, what the actual fuck?

I have to admit to wondering, however, what E. David Scott would tell me about our three dogs.  We have Guinness, who is headstrong, smart, temperamental, and a really natty dresser:

He might have been Oscar Wilde.

Then there's Rosie, who has the demeanor of an upper-crust lady and the judge-y attitude to match.  She even has her own throne:

I think Rosie was clearly Queen Victoria, who was also Not Amused.

Last, we have Jethro:

God alone knows who or what Jethro was.  In this incarnation he's basically an animated plush toy, and is very sweet but has the IQ of a peach pit.  Maybe he's a reincarnated Tribble, I dunno.

Anyhow, after watching the reel, I decided to look into the topic further, and almost immediately regretted that decision.  Pet reincarnation is a huge deal.  Apparently a lot of people, like the owner of this site, think that pets reincarnate so they can become your subsequent pets, which just considering the numbers involved seems even less likely than their having been bugs, or even people.  This individual tells us she "receives telepathic information directly from pets," and says you can ask your pet while they're still alive to be reincarnated as another of your pets in the future if you want.

Of course, she warns, the pet could say no.  Think about that the next time you sneakily buy the cheaper brand of cat food or say to your dog, "I've already given you three biscuits, you can't have any more."  Your pet might be keeping tally on all that, and when it comes time to decide where they want to reincarnate next time, they'll choose a better venue.

Then there's this site, which contradicts the first two -- it says that pets don't reincarnate as humans (or vice versa).  Once a dog, always a dog, apparently.  "We're on our own unique soul journey," she tells us.  In her opinion, going from dog or cat to human would be "taking a step backward in their soul's evolution."  Which, if I compare how my dogs act to how a great many people act, I have to admit actually makes a lot of sense.

Oh, and for only $447, you can take her "Soul Level Animal Communication" online course, and learn how to telepathically communicate with animals, too.  Tempting offer, but I'm declining that one as well, since my dogs' thoughts are easy enough to discern.  Respectively:

1. Play with me!  Play with me!  Now!
2. I disapprove of your refusal to serve me a second dinner.  And also the fact that you are sitting in my chair.
3. *gentle static noise*

So there you have it.  Maybe your pet, too, can be Born Again.  Anyhow, I have to wrap this up, because Oscar, Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, and Fluffy McTribble want their breakfast.  Can't keep them waiting, or once they've gone on to the Great Beyond they may say bad things to the other Spirit Animals and my next dog will be the reincarnation of Attila the Hun or something.

  

****************************************

Pet warp

In recent posts we have dealt with the Earth being invaded by giant alien bugs, the possibility that Bigfoot and other cryptids are actually ghosts, and a claim that some soldiers in World War I were saved by the appearance of either an angel or else St. George, depending on which version you go for.  So I'm sure that what you're all thinking is, "Yes, Gordon, but what about pet teleportation?"

At this point, I should stop being surprised at the things that show up on websites such as the one in the link above, from the site Mysterious Universe.  In this particular article, by Brent Swancer (this is not his first appearance here at Skeptophilia, as you might imagine), we hear about times that Fido and Mr. Fluffums evidently took advantage of nearby wormholes to leap instantaneously across spacetime.

In one such instance, Swancer tells us, a woman had been taking a nap with her kitty, and got up, leaving the cat sleeping in bed.  Ten minutes later, she went back into the bedroom, and the cat was gone.  At that point, the phone rang.  It was a friend who lived across town -- calling to tell her that the cat had just showed up on their doorstep.

Another person describes having his cat teleporting from one room in the house to another, after which the cat "seemed terrified:" 

All the fur on his back was standing up and he was crouched low to the ground. He looked like he had no idea what just happened, either.  That was about ten minutes ago.  He won’t leave my side now, which is strange in itself, because he likes independence, but he is still very unsettled and so am I.

And Swancer tells us that it's not just cats.  He recounts a tale by "the great biologist... Ivan T. Sanderson," wherein he was working with leafcutter ants and found sometimes the queen mysteriously disappears from the ant nest.  "Further digging in some sites within hours," Sanderson tells us, "brought to light, to the dumbfoundment of everybody, apparently the same queen, all duly dyed with intricate identifying marks, dozens of feet away in another super-concrete-hard cell, happily eating, excreting and producing eggs!"

However, in the interest of honesty it must be said that Sanderson might not be the most credible witness in the world.  He did a good bit of writing about nature and biology, but is best known for his work in cryptozoology.  According to the Wikipedia article on him (linked above), he gave "special attention to the search for lake monsters, sea serpents, Mokèlé-mbèmbé, giant penguins, Yeti, and Sasquatch."  And amongst his publications are Abominable Snowman: Legend Come to Life and the rather vaguely-named Things, which the cover tells us is about "monsters, mysteries, and marvels uncanny, strange, but true."

So I'm inclined to view Sanderson's teleporting ants with a bit of a wry eye.

What strikes me about all of this is the usual problem of believing anecdotal evidence.  It's not that I'm accusing anyone of lying (although that possibility does have to be admitted); it's easy enough, given our faulty sensory processing equipment and plastic, inaccurate memory, to be absolutely convinced of something that actually didn't happen that way.  A study by New York University psychological researcher Elizabeth Phelps showed that people's memories of 9/11 -- surely a big enough event to recall accurately -- only got 63% of the details right, despite study participants' certainty they were remembering what actually happened.  Worse, a study by Joyce W. Lacy (Azusa Pacific University) and Craig E. L. Stark (University of California-Irvine) showed that even how a question is asked by an interviewer can alter a person's memory -- and scariest of all, the person has no idea it's happened.  They remain convinced that what they "recall" is accurate.

Plus, there's the little problem of the lack of a mechanism.  How, exactly, could anything, much less your pet kitty, vanish from one place and simultaneously reappear somewhere else?  I have a hard time getting my dog Rosie even to move at sub-light speeds sometimes, especially when she's walking in front of me at a pace we call "the Rosie Mosey." In fact, most days her favorite speed seems to be "motionless," especially if she has her favorite plush toy to snuggle with:

Given all that, it's hard to imagine she'd have the motivation to accomplish going anywhere at superluminal velocity.

As intriguing as those stories are, I'm inclined to be a bit dubious.  Which I'm sure you predicted.  So you don't need to spend time worrying about how you'll deal with it when Rex and Tigger take a trip through warped space.  If they mysteriously vanish only to show up elsewhere, chances are they were traveling in some completely ordinary fashion, and the only thing that's awry is your memory of what happened.

****************************************

Grieving

I've always been an animal lover.  I grew up with dogs, and have had one or more dogs or cats all of my adult life.  Add to that a near-fanatical passion for birding, and a general fascination with wildlife of all sorts, and it's no wonder I went into biology.

My background in evolutionary genetics has driven home the point that humans aren't as different from the rest of the animal world as a lot of us seem to think.  The false distinction between "human" and "animal" is a pretty hard one to overcome, however, which explains the argument I got into with a professor at the University of Washington over a mouse he'd killed for experimental purposes when I was in an animal physiology class.

Even back then, I understood that non-human animals die for experimental purposes all the time.  Despite my youth, I had thought deeply about the ethical conundrum of sacrificing the lives of our fellow animals for the benefit of science and medicine, and had come to the conclusion (an opinion I still hold) that it is a necessary evil.  But what I could not stomach was the professor's cavalier attitude toward the life he'd just taken -- joking around, acting as if the little warm body he held in his hand had been nothing but a mobile lump of clay, worthy of no respect.

"It's not like animals have feelings," I recall his saying to me, with a faint sneer.  "If you spend your time anthropomorphizing animals, you'll never make it in this profession."

I remembered, while he was lecturing me in a patronizing fashion about my soft-heartedness, pets I had owned, and I had a momentary surge of self-doubt.  Was he right?  I began to question my own sense that my dogs and cats loved me, and were feeling something of the same kind of bond toward me that I felt toward them.  Is my puppy's wagging tail when I talk to him nothing more than what C. S. Lewis called a "cupboard love" -- merely a response that he knows will get him fed and petted and played with, and a warm place to sleep?

But I couldn't bring myself to believe that forty years ago, and I don't believe it now.  I have several times gone through the inevitable tragedy of losing beloved pets, and what has struck me each time is not only how I and my wife have reacted, but how our other animals have.  Most recently, when our sweet, quirky little one-eyed Shiba Inu, Cleo, somehow got out of our fence and was hit and killed by a passing car, our big old pit bull Guinness went into a positive decline.

It was unexpected in a way, because Cleo and Guinness didn't really interact all that much; they kind of didn't speak the same language.  Cleo, typical of her breed, was independent, curious, and eccentric; Guinness is strongly bonded to us (especially my wife, whom he follows around like a shadow), protective, and thinks that chasing a tennis ball is the most fun hobby ever.  But when Cleo died, Guinness went into a prolonged period of grief that nearly matched our own.

Recent experiments have shown that the neurochemical underpinning of emotions in our brain are shared by dogs and cats -- they experience a surge of oxytocin when they see their friends (whether human or not) just like we do.  When I go out to get the mail and come back inside under a minute later, and my puppy Jethro greets me as if he thought I'd abandoned him forever and ever and OMIGOD I'M SO GLAD YOU'RE BACK, he really is experiencing something like the rush we feel when seeing someone we dearly love.

Of course, he does like belly rubs, too.

If you needed one more piece of evidence of the falsehood of my long-ago professor's contention that non-human animals don't experience emotion, it came out this week in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.  A study of pet cats -- an animal widely considered to be independent and self-sufficient -- experience genuine grief when a family member dies, even if that family member is another pet...

... and even when it's a dog.

The study analyzed the behavior of 450 cats that had gone through loss, and the results were widely consistent -- grieving cats slept and ate less, vocalized more, hid more, refused to play but became clingy, and appeared to look for their lost friend.  "Unlike dogs, we tend to think that cats are aloof and not social," said Jennifer Vonk, a comparative/cognitive psychologist at Oakland University and a co-author of the work.  "They may not form packs like wild dogs, but in the wild, cats still tend to band together and form hierarchies...  I think we’ve been mischaracterizing them."

The divide between ourselves and our pets -- and by extension, between us and the rest of the natural world -- is far narrower than many of us think.  A lot of pet owners say "he understands every word I say" (I've been guilty of that myself), which is certainly untrue, but the emotional resonance between pets and the rest of the members of their household is undeniable.  And grief is experienced deeply by a great many more species than ourselves.

But y'all'll have to excuse me.  Jethro is looking at me with his big, soulful brown eyes.  He hasn't lost a friend or anything, but probably would like a belly rub.

Gotta keep my priorities straight.

****************************************

Since this post is pet-related, I thought it was a good opportunity to put in a plug for our Third Annual Pandemic Pottery Sale.  My wife and I are both amateur potters, so we tend to get overrun with pottery we don't have space for.  Two years ago, we came up with the idea of selling a bunch of it and donating the proceeds to charity.  This year the recipient we chose is the fabulous Stay Wild Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation (where we got our two wonderful rescue dogs Jethro and Rosie).  They do fantastic work and are constantly dealing with costly animal care and bringing dogs and cats from states with kill shelters (Jethro came from Georgia, Rosie from Texas), which is crazy expensive.

The way it works is if you see a piece you like, you make a bid on it.  If no one else bids, it's yours.  If there are competing bids, the high one gets the piece.  A few provisos: first, the shipping costs outside of the United States are prohibitively expensive -- so unfortunately, this event is limited to our American friends.  Second, all of the pieces EXCEPT AS MARKED are food safe, microwave safe, and dishwasher safe.  However: we work with stoneware clay, which is not completely vitrified even when glazed and fired properly, so if you're using a piece to hold water long-term (mostly this caution is for vases) make sure to put something underneath it so you don't ruin nice furniture.  (Many of them won't leak, but don't take the chance.)

Once most of the pieces are claimed, we'll present Jane George, who runs Stay Wild, with what will hopefully be a big check!

So check out the website, take a look at the gallery, and bid on what takes your fancy!  Feel free to pass the link along to interested friends.  Enjoy!

****************************************

Dog tales

People who know me are well aware that I consider our two dogs, Guinness and Cleo, to be family members, not just pets.

They're kind of an odd couple.  Guinness ("Dorkus Maximus") is a big, lumbering pit bull mix, whose thick coat and curly tail comes from some husky and chow ancestry turned up by DNA analysis; Cleo ("Dorkus Minimus") is a tiny, one-eyed pure-bred Shiba Inu rescue, whose personality supports the contention that Shibas are dogs for people who really wanted a cat instead.  Despite the fact that they seem to have nothing in common, they are best friends.  When they play tug-of-war, even though Guinness outweighs Cleo by a factor of four, he lets her win sometimes, as a good big brother should.

I've dealt here before with the fascinating questions surrounding how dogs were domesticated, and how since then they've coevolved to live with (i.e. manipulate) their owners.  So it was no surprise that a recent piece of research in the journal Anthropozoologica caught my eye.  The author, Julian d'Huy of the Collège de France, has been studying the mythology that has grown up around dogs in cultures across the world, and found some fascinating commonalities -- suggesting that our mythologizing dogs has as long a history as our domesticating them.

d'Huy found that there were three themes that seemed to be universal: (1) dogs as faithful companions to heros/heroines; (2) dogs as protector spirits and guides to the afterlife; and (3) an association between dogs and the star Sirius (the "Dog Star," the brightest star in the night sky, in the constellation Canis Major -- the "Big Dog").  

The first one is hardly surprising, given the fact that humans have had dogs as companion animals for thousands of years.  The second I find a little more puzzling.  Neither of our dogs is what you might call an effective guard dog, unless you count their mortal hatred of the Evil UPS Guy.  When the Evil UPS Guy shows up, both Guinness and Cleo go berserk, running around and barking, Guinness's booming "WOOF" punctuated by Cleo's comical and high-pitched "Ruff!", until finally the Guy gets scared and intimidated and leaves.  At least that's how they interpret it.  What seems to go through their heads is "we barked and he ran away, go us!"  Then they high-five and go back to sleep, so worn out that they wouldn't even twitch if an actual burglar were to show up.  In fact, if the burglar had some chunks of cheese in his pocket, Cleo would probably show him where the valuables are hidden.

I do think it's kind of fascinating, though, despite my own dogs' failings in the Guardian of House and Hearth department, that so many cultures associate dogs with being protector spirits, many of them shapeshifters who were thought to continue their loyal defense even in the afterlife.  Part of the elaborate tattoo on my back, shoulder, chest, and arm contains a design of two Celtic-style dogs, a tribute not only to my personal furry friends but to their role as spiritual guides and protectors.

But the oddest of all is the third of d'Huy's observations -- that apparently, Sirius was associated with dogs by more cultures than just the ancient Greeks.  Given the dubious resemblance of the constellations to the things they're supposed to represent, I always figured that most of them were completely arbitrary, and our current designations were probably the result of some ancient Greek guy looking up into the night sky at a random cluster of stars, probably after drinking way too much ouzo, and saying, "Hey, y'ever notice that bunch o' stars over there?  Looks just like a dude pouring water out of a pitcher."  And that's how "Aquarius" was born.

d'Huy's contention is that the association of Sirius with dogs isn't because there's anything especially doggy about it, but that the connection goes way back -- so much so that it's been passed down in many different cultures, and maintained even as populations traveled all over the world.  I don't know how you'd prove such an assertion, but in any case, it's kind of a strange coincidence otherwise. 

So dogs have worked their way not only into our hearts and homes, but into our stories, lore, and mythology.  I guess it only makes sense that these creatures who have become so close to us would show up in the tales we tell.  Dogs have made appearances in my own books, most notably the characters of Ahab (in Signal to Noise) and Baxter (in Kill Switch), the latter of which was the cause of one of the funniest interactions I've ever had with a reader.  I was walking down the street in my home village, and a guy I barely know came up to me and said he was reading Kill Switch, and so far, enjoying it.

"I just wanted to let you know one thing, though," he said.  "I know it's a thriller.  I know people are gonna die.  But..." -- and here, he grabbed me by the arm and looked me straight in the eye with a grim expression -- "... if you kill Baxter, I will never speak to you again."

We care deeply about our pets, even fictional ones, I guess.

But now I need to wind this up, and go see why Guinness and Cleo are barking.  My guess is it's the Evil UPS Guy again.  He just never gives up, that Guy.

****************************************

Catcalling

For many years we owned two cats, Puck and Geronimo.

Imagine two soft, gentle, affectionate, fluffy kitties.  Puck and Geronimo were the exact opposite of what you just pictured.

What neither of our cats looked even remotely like.  [Image courtesy of the Creative Commons Nicolas Suzor from Brisbane, Australia, Cute grey kitten, CC BY-SA 2.0]

Puck and Geronimo were siblings, both long-bodied, tough, lean, and solid black.  Puck had some odd features, though.  She had one single white whisker accentuating a face that was already kinda... off.  Her eyes didn't quite line up, so you never could be 100% sure of where she was looking.  She had one broken fang, so her tongue frequently protruded from the side of her mouth.  Plus, her voice sounded like a creaky wheel.  She was actually quite a sweet, affectionate cat, but even dedicated cat lovers had to admit she looked like she had a screw loose.

Geronimo, on the other hand, hated everyone, with two exceptions: (1) my wife; and (2) our dog, Grendel.  When we adopted Grendel, we were assured by the shelter that he was great with cats.  But shelter staff -- no insult intended, they do amazing work -- can sometimes overplay animals' good qualities in the interest of getting them adopted, so when we brought him home, we introduced him to the cats on leash, with me hanging on to my end of it like grim death.  Puck, he ignored completely.  Then he came up and sniffed Geronimo, who sniffed him back (without hissing, which was Geronimo's primary way of communicating with the entire world).  So I tentatively relaxed my end of the lead...

... and Grendel lifted his big front paw and body-slammed Geronimo to the floor.

I leaped forward, yelling, "Noooooooo....!!!!"  But then Grendel started to lick Geronimo's face.  Geronimo, although still pinned to the ground, started purring.  And thus was born the only interspecies gay romance I've ever witnessed.  They were boyfriends for as long as we had them.

But other than those exceptions, Geronimo viewed the entire world with something between haughty disdain and utter loathing.  Sometimes I'd look up from what I was doing to find Geronimo staring at me, his yellow eyes narrowed to slits, and he was clearly thinking, "I am going to disembowel you in your sleep."

What brings all this up is a paper that appeared in Nature last week about some research done at Kyoto University.  A team led by animal behavioral psychologist Saho Takagi did a clever set of experiments to see if cats could not only learn their own names but the names of other cats, and their results suggest that the answer is yes.

They worked with two sets of cats -- household pets, and "café cats."  Apparently in Japan, it's common to have cats living in cafés, for the benefit of patrons who would like to pet cats while they have their coffee and pastries, or at least have cats glaring at them and making harsh judgments about their general appearance.  They had their test subjects "softly restrained" by volunteers, who I hope were wearing body armor at the time, and the cats were given vocal stimuli (the cats' own names, the names of other cats living in the same place, and neutral words falling into neither categories), along with photographs of different cats, sometimes the photograph of the cat being named, sometimes not.

They found that the cats tended to look more quickly and for a longer duration at photographs when the photograph was of the cat being named.  It was evident that the cats tested did indeed know the names of the cats that cohabited with them.  (Except for one test subject who "completed only the first trial before escaping from the room and climbing out of reach.")

I found these data mildly surprising, considering that our own cats gave no evidence of knowing either their own names or each other's.  Geronimo usually responded to being called as follows:

Us:  Geronimo!!!

Geronimo:  Fuck you.

Us:  Geronimo, come get your dinner!

Geronimo:  Fuck you.

Us:  C'mon, kitty kitty kitty!

Geronimo:  Fuck you.

Us: We have a plate of fresh salmon for you!

Geronimo:  Fuck you...  Salmon?  Well, okay, maybe this time.

So I don't know how we'd have been able to tell if he did know his name.

But all of this does point out something I've always thought, which is that a lot of animals are way smarter than we give them credit for.  I know one of our current dogs, Guinness, always gives us this incredibly intent look when we talk to him, as if he's trying his hardest to understand every word we're saying.  Our other dog, Cleo, spends a lot of time ignoring us, but she's a Shiba Inu, which in my opinion is a cat wearing a dog suit.

So okay, maybe that doesn't exactly support the contention that our pets are really smart.  But my point stands.

In any case, that's our cool piece of animal behavior research for today.  If you are the owner of two or more cats, see if you can figure out if they know each other's names.

If any of your cats have a temperament like Geronimo's, you might want to have fresh salmon handy.

**************************************

What's bred in the bone

See this innocent-looking face?

This is Cleo.  She's a Shiba Inu, a Japanese breed (the name means "underbrush dog" because they were used for hunting small game in overgrown places).  We adopted her from a rescue facility in December, and she has settled right into our home, including becoming best buds with our other dog, a big, goofy pittie mix named Guinness.

Cleo is sweet, charming, funny, playful, and cuddly.  However, she is also stubborn, independent, willful, and has zero interest in learning commands for rewards.  For any rewards.  She is the only dog I have ever met who is completely unmotivated by food.  She sort of likes cheese, so that occasionally works, but she approaches everything with the attitude, "I'm doing this only because I want to.  And if I don't want to, even cheese doesn't tempt me."

For example, shortly after we adopted her, we installed a dog door (once it became obvious that she wanted in and out dozens of times a day).  And for weeks, she steadfastly refused to use it.  We were becoming convinced that she wasn't smart enough to figure out how it worked.  Turns out she understood perfectly well, she just didn't want to.  Last week she started using the dog door -- going through it, both directions, as if it was nothing.  Apparently she wasn't going to do it until she made it clear to us that it was her decision.

Then there's her volubility.  There's a phenomenon called the "Shiba scream," which was one of many things we didn't find out about her breed until after we adopted her.  When she's excited by something good like my wife pulling into the driveway, or there's a red-alert situation like the FedEx guy or a cyclist going past or a squirrel farting somewhere in the next county, she goes -- and this is as accurate a transcription of it as I can manage -- "ruff ruff ruff rrrrOOOWWRRROOO WAAAAAHHWAAH WAAHWAAH."  She also barks when she's excited, or (especially) when she wants something and we are not providing it right away as we, of course, should.  This includes taking her on a walk at two in the morning, a habit that led my wife to christen her "Demon-Spawn Dog," or, more succinctly, "Beelzebark."

It's not that we don't love her, or don't appreciate her positive qualities, of which there are lots.  Something my wife and I have said about 358 times since adopting her is, "She is so cute -- fortunately for her."  It turns out we're not alone in this experience of Shiba Inus.  Here's what the site Shiba Rescue has to say:

In their eyes, Shibas can take on the world no matter how big the foe or the task.  They are dominant with other dogs and do not usually get along well with other "bossy" dogs of the same sex.  Many Shibas will, however, get along great with another dog or cat that agrees the Shiba is boss.

Shibas always like to be in charge; their favorite word is "mine."  Although not "barky" dogs, they do yodel and scream anytime they feel they are being violated, such as nail trimming, bathing, and leash training.  Shibas can be runners.  The Shiba Inu is a natural hunter.  Given a chance, Shibas will take off in search of game.  It is advisable to never trust your Shiba off-lead unless in a fenced yard.

The Shiba's least favorite word is "come."  They will usually take your number and get back to you, when called.

Shibas have a mind of their own.  While it is possible to obedience train a Shiba, it is a challenge.  Tell him to sit and he sits . . . sometimes.  If there is something in it for him, and it is convenient at the time.

The first thing I thought after reading this (besides "Amen!") was how interesting it is that you can characterize an entire breed like this, irrespective of how an individual animal was raised.  Not that prior treatment is inconsequential; one thing that Cleo still exhibits is wariness from having been abused as a puppy (you'll notice if you look closely at the photograph that she's missing her left eye).  But the fact that you can draw a detailed picture of a typical Shiba personality like this indicates something fascinating -- that a great deal of dog behavior is controlled by genetics, not by training.

Way back in 2008, a paper in The American Journal of Human Genetics considered this phenomenon, and suggested that these kinds of behavioral trends are caused by a fairly small number of genes (and speculated that the same sort of thing may be true of human personality types).  A more recent 2019 study looked specifically at canine aggression and fearfulness, and found that those have between sixty and seventy percent heritability.  Consider how many breeds you characterize in a word or two  -- the friendliness of Golden Labs, the intelligence and always-on-the-job attitude of a Border Collie, the aggressiveness (despite its size) of a Chihuahua.  And Shibas are not the only ones who have built-in, almost certainly genetic, difficult behaviors; a friend of mine once told me that if you want an exercise in frustration, try to house-train a Cocker Spaniel.  This kind of thing has an unfortunate effect on dog owners who are unprepared or uninformed.  A particularly sad example is that after the movie One Hundred and One Dalmatians aired, there was a run on Dalmatian puppies -- and six months later, an influx of Dalmatians being given up at shelters.  Far from the cute, cuddly stereotype of the puppies from the movie, as a breed Dalmatians tend to be high-stung, nervous, reserved, and aggressive; they are considered to be one of the top-ten breeds most likely to bite, and a great many of the people who adopted a Dalmatian puppy very quickly regretted their choice.

I say this knowing, of course, that "unprepared and uninformed" is a pretty good description of my wife and I when we adopted Cleo.  However, in our defense I have to add that we're experienced dog owners with a history of adopting rescues, just about all of whom have had bad pasts and the attendant behavior problems -- and we have yet to own a dog who hasn't turned out to be a wonderful and charming, if quirky, companion.  We strongly believe that pet adoption is forever; if you can't commit, don't adopt.  (I do reconsider that stance on occasion when Cleo starts screaming in the middle of the night, but those lapses are short-lived.)

So we're not expecting Cleo's personality to change, and indeed, we don't want it to.  She's a charmer even when she's being a pain in the ass.  We'd like to modify some of it -- such as the twice-aforementioned barking for something in the wee hours -- but by and large, those kinds of characteristics are what make dogs interesting.

It reminds me of the famous quote from John Heywood, "What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh."  There's a lot of truth to that, for better or worse.  For better at the moment; right now, Cleo is cuddled up at the foot of the bed, paws twitching as she dreams of chasing squirrels.  And she's already become part of the family, difficulties and all.  Whatever the source, each dog's personality is as rich and varied as each person's is, something I've come to appreciate more and more with every dog we've adopted.  And we've always been rewarded tenfold by having pets -- receiving love for kindness, devotion for care, deep trust for patience.

For me, that makes it all worthwhile.

**************************************

Puppy dog eyes

We have two dogs, our big thirty-kilogram galumphing galoot, Guinness:

And his comical sidekick, little eight-kilogram Cleo:

They are best buddies and love to be outside playing together, which is as fun for us as it is for them because watching them is so damn comical.  Cleo is about twice as fast as Guinness is, and runs in circles around him, sometimes attempting a full-on body slam that is completely unsuccessful because of this inconvenient law of physics called Conservation of Momentum.  Usually Cleo just ricochets off Guinness's side like a ping-pong ball off a boulder, but it never seems to discourage her from trying again.

Remember Chester and Spike, from Looney Tunes?

Yeah, that's Guinness and Cleo, right there.

Carol and I frequently laugh ruefully at how many times a day we say, "They are so stinkin' cute."  I mean, it's true, but it's kind of ridiculous how much they have us wrapped around their paws.  Guinness, especially, has an incredibly expressive face, and when we talk to him he gazes up at us adoringly as if he's hanging on every word we say.  The funny thing is that it doesn't, in fact, matter what exactly it is we're saying.  We could be explaining to him something like why it is not a good idea to eat the sofa, or reading to him from a text on economics for that matter, and he will still stare at us as if to say, "My god, yes!  That's genius!  I never would have thought of that!"

A paper presented last week at the annual meeting of the American Association for Anatomy has shown that this ability dogs have to communicate with their facial expressions is no accident.  Researchers Anne Burrows and Kailey Omstead of Duquesne University did a detailed comparison of mimetic muscles -- the tiny muscles in the face that allows us (and other animals) to alter our expressions -- between domestic dogs and wolves, and they found something fascinating.

To understand what's going on here you have to know a little about muscle composition.  In the broadest-brush terms, mammals have two types of skeletal muscles; fast-twitch muscles, which can contract rapidly and powerfully but aren't able to maintain sustained contraction, and slow-twitch muscles, which are much slower to react but can remain contracted for long periods.  Our upper bodies are predominantly fast-twitch muscle; this is why lifting a heavy weight with your arms is doable, but keeping it lifted for more than a few minutes is excruciatingly difficult.  On the other hand, the three big muscle groups in your upper legs -- the quadriceps, biceps femoris (hamstrings), and gluteus maximus -- have to maintain tension just to allow you to support your own body weight, but can do so for hours without fatiguing.  One of the reasons for this is that slow-twitch muscles have a protein called myoglobin, which improves the ability of the muscle to absorb oxygen from the blood; it's this protein that makes the dark meat of a chicken dark.  And notice which two muscles are dark meat -- the leg and the thigh, same as us.

Not that I'm recommending eating humans, mind you.

Anyhow, back to dogs.  The analysis by Burrows and Omstead found a striking difference in the muscle composition of dogs' faces as compared to wild wolves; dogs' mimetic muscles are predominantly fast-twitch, while wolves' are predominantly slow-twitch.  What this means is that dogs' faces are much quicker to change in expression.  Wolves do have expressions; one obvious example is the wrinkled forehead and retracted lip that signifies aggression or anger.  But domestic dogs can alter their expressions rapidly and subtly in response to the circumstances, allowing them to communicate with humans in a way few other animals can.

"Dogs are unique from other mammals in their reciprocated bond with humans which can be demonstrated though mutual gaze, something we do not observe between humans and other domesticated mammals such as horses or cats," said study co-author Anne Burrows.  "Our preliminary findings provide a deeper understanding of the role facial expressions play in dog-human interactions and communication."

This difference between dogs and their wolf cousins is almost certainly due to unwitting artificial selection by humans -- our ancestors back in the Paleolithic, when we have the first evidence of dog/human cohabitation, selected the puppies that were the most responsive to us as companions.  (At the same time, selection was going on for other features as well, such as size, color, and skill at tasks like herding or retrieving.)  Over the intervening years this selection has actually altered the composition of the muscles in our canine friends' faces, so that they're even better at communicating with us.

Which I think is amazingly cool.  But I'd better wrap this up, because Guinness just looked at me with a furrowed brow and a head tilt, which means he wants his breakfast.  You know how it goes.

**************************************

Escaping the mill

Content warning: this post is about the mistreatment and neglect of animals.  There's nothing graphic or gratuitous, but if you're sensitive to such things and would prefer not to read about them, you may want to sit this one out.

********************************

I'm going to do something today that I almost never do: use this blog to plead with you, directly and personally, to do something.

I'll say it straight out.  If you are considering getting a pure-bred pet, please please please do some research and make sure that the breeder the pet comes from is reputable and treats their animals humanely.

This, unfortunately, rules out the lion's share of the pure-bred puppies and kittens you find at most of the big-chain pet stores.  You can often find "bargains" there -- pedigreed pets that will cost you one-half to one-third what you'd pay to a good breeder -- but that money saved comes at a terrible cost.

I'm not referring to the fact that most "puppy mills" and "kitten mills" don't do much in the way of screening for genetic health.  (An example is the most common congenital problem in large dog breeds, hip dysplasia.)  I'm also not going to get into the wisdom and logic of pure breeding as a practice in and of itself; perhaps that will be a topic for another day.

The reason you should never purchase puppies and kittens from unknown or questionable sources is because of the way disreputable breeders treat the animals they own.  Pure-bred dogs and cats owned by these people are used for one thing: producing income.  They are only valuable as money generators.  Dogs and cats who have been selectively bred for centuries for their ability to connect emotionally and bond to humans are kept isolated in cages, rarely if ever allowed to play with humans or the other animals confined in the same facility, and once their useful life as reproduction machines is over, they are either euthanized or given up to rescues.

The owners of puppy and kitten mills are usually pretty good at dancing on the line between neglect and outright abuse.  The difficulty for regulatory agencies is proving that they've crossed that line; it's time-consuming and often expensive to bring a suit against owners unless the case is clear-cut (which it seldom is).

An example -- and the reason this topic comes up -- is my new dog, Cleo.  I mentioned here that I got her from a rescue a month ago.  She's a pure-bred Shiba Inu, a Japanese breed that looks a little like a cross between a dog and a fox.  She spent her first four years with a breeder who should, in my opinion, never be allowed within a hundred meters of a dog for the rest of his life.  When Cleo was a puppy, she injured her left eye, and the injury was ignored until it looked like it might be life-threatening.  By that time, it was bad enough that she had to have the eye removed.  If that's not bad enough, her owner apparently decided the way to stop the dogs from barking was to bang on their cages with a metal pipe.  The result is that Cleo is terrified of loud noises -- even closing a cabinet door makes her startle.

It's taken her a month to begin to understand that she's not going to be locked up any more.  Her first three weeks with us, she became panicked whenever she saw a door closing.  We'd leave the door into the back yard open for her -- despite the fact that it's winter -- and at first, we thought it was kind of funny that she'd walk inside, then turn around and walk back out, then in, then out, sometimes for twenty minutes before she'd commit.  It became much less amusing when we figured out why she was doing it.  She's beginning to learn that she can go outside (or back inside) whenever she wants to, and doesn't need to freak out that once the door closes, she'll be stuck for hours or days.

She's also having to figure out how to play.  One really positive thing is that she and our other dog, a big galumphing galoot of a pittie mix named Guinness, hit it off right away.

Best buds.  Yes, the dogs have their own couch.  No, we don't spoil them at all, I don't know what you're talking about.

It was simultaneously heartwarming and heart-wrenching to watch her and Guinness romping in the snow two days ago.  We got our first big snowfall of the winter on Monday, and it quickly became obvious that she'd never had the opportunity to play in the snow before.  I spent a half-hour standing at my kitchen window watching them galloping around -- the contrast between Guinness's ponderous trot and Cleo's spring-loaded, gazelle-like bounce was hilarious.

Cleo's first time playing in the snow -- Monday, January 17, 2021

The emotional scars from her past aren't going to go away quickly, and I'm well aware that we are going to have to be patient, gentle, and reassuring to her, until she becomes convinced that she's in a safe place with people who love her.  The thing I've said to her the most often, when something panics her and she freezes, shivering uncontrollably, is, "You don't have to be afraid, little one.  You're safe.  No one will ever hurt you again."  I know she can't understand the words, but I think she's beginning to understand the intent.  She spends a lot of time sitting next to me, dozing, pressed against my leg -- making up for all those lonely, desolate years when she was never touched with love and compassion.  We're lucky that her mistreatment didn't make her scared of all humans.  Instead it's left her craving someone to trust and to bond with, and she's fortunate we're here to be that.

And so are we.  She's a sweet, gentle, funny little girl, who is beginning to learn how to be playful -- yesterday evening she bounced around in the living room, barking at her rawhide chew, tossing it up in the air, play-bowing and tail wagging furiously, and she kept checking in with us as if she couldn't quite believe we were letting her have fun with it.

So I'll reiterate my plea to be careful where you buy your dogs and cats from.  No animal, ever, should be treated the way Cleo was.  I know that it's not the fault of the puppies and kittens for sale in stores that they came from mills, and they need homes too, but the flow of money to disreputable breeders has got to be stopped.  Put pressure on pet stores to certify that their animals came from breeders who treat them kindly.  Put pressure on state legislators to pass laws cracking down on breeders who neglect the animals they own.  Donate to the Humane Society or the SPCA.  If you don't want to do a cash donation, then volunteer at your local shelter, or call them and find out what supplies they are in need of.

Consider adopting a pet from a rescue.  Yes, it means you'll probably have to work with your new friend to overcome what happened in the past.  But I'm writing this right now with Cleo snoozing peacefully in my lap, safe and warm and secure, and she is returning to me in love and devotion everything I've given her and more.

*************************************

Since reading the classic book by Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape, when I was a freshman in college, I've been fascinated by the idea of looking at human behavior as if we were just another animal -- anthropology, as it were, through the eyes of an alien species.  When you do that, a lot of our sense of specialness and separateness simply evaporates.

The latest in this effort to analyze our behavior from an outside perspective is Pascal Boyer's Human Cultures Through the Scientific Lens: Essays in Evolutionary Cognitive Anthropology.  Why do we engage in rituals?  Why is religion nearly universal to all human cultures -- as is sports?  Where did the concept of a taboo come from, and why is it so often attached to something that -- if you think about it -- is just plain weird?

Boyer's essays challenge us to consider ourselves dispassionately, and really think about what we do.  It's a provocative, fascinating, controversial, and challenging book, and if you're curious about the phenomenon of culture, you should put it on your reading list.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Such dog

When we lost our beloved old hound Lena in November, I really had no intention of getting another dog, at least not any time soon.  I went through the feelings of "I can't face going through this again" all grieving pet owners experience.  But then we started noticing that our other dog, a big galumphing galoot of a pittie mix named Guinness, was sliding into a serious depression.  He and Lena had been good buddies, and he was having a hard time adjusting to suddenly being an Only Dog for the first time in his life.

So Carol and I started perusing the wonderful site PetFinder, which pulls together listings for adoptable pets, sorted by whatever parameters you like -- breed, age, sex, temperament, proximity to your location, and so forth.  We wanted someone who would be a good companion for Guinness as well as ourselves, and initially thought another pittie mix would be a good choice (despite several friends voicing the sentiment, "Are you insane?  You don't have enough trouble with one?").

And the shelters have lots of pittie mixes.  Whether this is because of their largely-undeserved bad reputation or simply because they're common, I have no idea.  But we had our minds open -- the one firm criterion was compatibility with us and with Guinness.

That was how we stumbled on a listing for a little Shiba Inu rescue only an hour from where we live.  She had a sad backstory -- I suppose most dogs in shelters and rescues do -- she'd been used as breeding stock by a guy for whom the word "unscrupulous" is altogether too kind, and because of an injury and subsequent neglect, she was missing her left eye.  Despite this, the listing said she was sweet, friendly, curious, and intelligent -- and, best of all, loved other dogs.

So we put in an application with the wonderful non-profit rescue organization Home Stretch Dog Haven, of Moravia, New York, letting them know that the whole thing was contingent on getting along with Guinness, who (and I say this with all due love and affection) can be a little weird at times.  (When I talked to the owner of Home Stretch, she said the dog we were considering "didn't have any quirks."  My comment to Carol was, "yeah?  Wait till she's lived with us for a couple of months."  We've owned a lot of dogs, and none of them could be described as "not quirky," even the ones who kind of started out that way.  What that says about us as pet owners I'll leave you to decide.)

Anyhow, after passing the vetting process, the owner of Home Stretch invited us up this past Sunday to meet her.

My first thought upon seeing her was, "Holy smoke, she's tiny."  I've always had big-ish dogs -- not as big as our friends Wendy and Renée, who seem to specialize in Mastiffs and Great Danes, but still not what you'd usually think of as a lap dog.  (No one has explained this distinction to Guinness, who at thirty kilograms still thinks he's a lap dog, despite being more of a lap-and-a-half dog.)  But this little dog only weighs a little over ten kilograms.  At first glance, my impression was that her whole head was about the size of Guinness's paw.  But maybe, I thought, it'd be nice to finally have a Port-a-Dog, who if they're misbehaving, you can just pick them up and move them, unlike Guinness, who when he sets his mind on something, is like trying to tow a Sherman tank.

Well, the long-and-short of it is that they got along fine, and after a long, chilly walk in the fields behind the rescue facility, we wrote a check for the adoption and put Guinness and his new friend into the car for the ride home.

So, dear world... meet Cleo.

Such dog.  Much cute.  Many fuzzy.  So happy.  Wow.

She was a little nervous at first, but the evening we got her, she and Guinness were already chasing each other around the living room (the contrast between her quick, lithe, dance-like movements and Guinness's bull-in-a-china-shop approach is laugh-out-loud funny).  "Shiba Inu" is Japanese for "underbrush dog," apparently because their small size and agility make them useful for hunting in overgrown areas.  It was only after we got home, though, that Carol did some research on the breed, and sent me the following:

Some breeds are more difficult to train than others and the Shiba Inu is considered one of the most difficult breeds to train.  People fall in love with the “fox” look of the Shiba Inu but are not prepared to deal with their larger than life and stubborn personality.  Shiba Inus will only respond to activities that make sense to them and are very strong-willed and stubborn.  They will fight back if feeling threatened and will not back down once they have their mind set on something.  Shibas have a singular state of mind and once they focus on something, they become obsessed and giving up is not an option.  A Shiba will be willing to not eat, not get attention, not go on walks, and much more if they feel their pride is on the line.

My response to this was, "... oh."

No quirks, my ass.

In any case, Cleo is settling right in, and fortunately, we're no strangers to dogs with behavioral difficulties.  We've had a neurotic border collie who herded everything including our cats, a (very) mixed breed who was sweet and lovable but an absolute unholy terror at the vet, a hound who was so rambunctious that Carol's doctor saw her bruised arms and legs and asked if her husband was abusing her, and (of course) Guinness, who has richly earned his nickname of El Destructo.  And there's no doubt that after her rough first four years, she needed a warm, secure home with people who will love her no matter what.

Which is what she's found.  As I write this, she's curled up in my lap.  It's a little hard to write with a dog draped over your arm, but I'm managing.  I obviously can't ask her to move.  Wouldn't want to injure her pride, you know.

****************************************

I remember when I first learned about the tragedy of how much classical literature has been lost.  Take, for example, Sophocles, which anyone who's taken a college lit class probably knows because of his plays Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus.  He was the author of at least 120 plays, of which only seven have survived.  While we consider him to be one of the most brilliant ancient Greek playwrights, we don't even have ten percent of the literature he wrote.  As Carl Sagan put it, it's as if all we had of Shakespeare was Timon of Athens, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Cymbeline, and were judging his talent based upon that.

The same is true of just about every classical Greek and Roman writer.  Little to nothing of their work survives; some are only known because of references to their writing in other authors.  Some of what we do have was saved by fortunate chance; this is the subject of Stephen Greenblatt's wonderful book The Swerve, which is about how a fifteenth-century book collector, Poggio Bracciolini, discovered in a monastic library what might well have been the sole remaining copy of Lucretius's masterwork De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), which was one of the first pieces of writing to take seriously Democritus's idea that all matter is made of atoms.

The Swerve looks at the history of Lucretius's work (and its origin in the philosophy of Epicurus) and the monastic tradition that allowed it to survive, as well as Poggio's own life and times and how his discovery altered the course of our pursuit of natural history.  (This is the "swerve" referenced in the title.)  It's a fascinating read for anyone who enjoys history or science (or the history of science).  His writing is clear, lucid, and quick-paced, about as far from the stereotype of historical writing being dry and boring as you could get.  You definitely need to put this one on your to-read list.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Requiem for a gentle soul

Seven years ago we were looking for a dog to adopt.  Not too long before we'd lost our brilliant, eccentric border collie mix Doolin, and while we knew there was no replacing that big a personality, we felt like our house needed another canine presence.  Our other dog, Grendel, had gone into a positive decline when his friend died, and although he was beginning to come out of it, he was clearly still lonely.

We started pawing through (pun intended) local rescue and adoption sites, and for a while didn't see anyone who seemed right.  Grendel was great with other dogs, so compatibility wasn't likely to be a problem, and one April day we drove with him to a couple of shelters to see who might need a home.

After a couple of "well, maybes," we ended up at the lovely Animal Care Sanctuary in East Smithfield, Pennsylvania.  If you're ever up that way looking for a dog -- not very likely, I guess, because it's in the middle of rural north-central Pennsylvania -- this is the place to go.  Carol had found a listing for a dog who seemed interesting, a seven-year-old hound mix, so we drove down to meet her.

The first thing we found out about her was that she'd already been adopted three times -- and brought back.  The people at ACS weren't sure why, although they thought one time had been because of problems getting along with another dog who was (their words) "kind of hyperactive."  But we figured we could tell a lot by how she interacted with Grendel when they met, and it'd be obvious quick if the problems had been partly on her side.

We left Gren in the car while we went to meet her.  We were escorted into a meeting room with toys and a dog bed, and waited for the assistant to bring her in.  When the door opened and she came in on a leash, Carol and I said simultaneously, "Oh, my goodness, she is gorgeous."  I'd never seen a dog with those markings.  Apparently she was part bluetick and part redbone hound, and the markings were a blend of both -- patches of black and chestnut-brown, and lots of white with freckles of both colors.

The second thing that became apparent quickly was that whatever the problem had been with the other dog, it hadn't been her fault.  She trotted right up to us, tail wagging madly, as if we'd known her for years.  When we brought Gren in to meet her, there was more tail wagging, as well as the obligatory mutual all-over sniff.  It took us about five minutes to decide she was coming home with us.

We named her Lena.

Me with Lena and Grendel shortly after her adoption

Our dogs seem to accrue nicknames, and in short order Lena got the moniker "Splat:"

Her penchant for digging led to her being called "Pothole:"

Snow, ice, whatever.  Didn't matter.

Other times she was JellyBean (what Carol usually called her), Moaning Myrtle (because of her moans and groans when she was getting an ear rub or a belly skritch), Speed Bump (she had a knack for lying right across door thresholds or across the top of the stairs), Derpy (when she did something unusually silly), and Your Royal Majesty (from her habit of standing at the back door barking when she wanted to be let in right now).

The most striking thing about her, though, was her extraordinary gentleness.  She is far and away the sweetest, most laid-back dog I've ever met.

When Grendel died four years ago and we decided to find her a new friend -- and settled on a big, goofy knucklehead of a pittie mix who's named Guinness but who earned the nicknames "Galoot" and "Crash" really early on -- she tolerated his antics and love for rough play without a hint of a growl.

Like they all do, she got creaky with age.  When she hit ten, she started to get a little arthritic, but most days handled all the staircases in our house without any hesitation.  And even when her health began to get more precarious, early this year, she never lost her exuberant cheerfulness and sweet disposition.

The tail never stopped wagging.

That, in fact, is how we knew something was seriously wrong last week.  She stopped eating, and began to experience other unpleasant symptoms I won't go into.  But the biggest red flag was that she was clearly unhappy.  The tail was down, the eyes downcast, and a gentle probe of her stomach elicited a yelp -- and the presence of a mass that shouldn't have been there.

Three days later, it became obvious she was suffering badly.  As a frail fourteen-year-old, there was no way we were going to put her through surgery, which was unlikely to be successful and certainly would have compromised her quality of life even if it extended the quantity.  And Monday evening, we sat with her as our wonderful vet, Dr. Bonnie, helped to end Lena's pain with us sitting right next to her stroking her head and telling her what an amazing dog she was.

Even though it was the right thing to do, I feel heartbroken.  It's going to be a long time before I stop looking for her to walk into my office in the morning to say hello and get the obligatory ear rub.  Other pet owners will understand how much they become part of the fabric of your family, and how much both pet and owner get from the mutual unconditional love.  Lena was an extraordinary dog, and her loss leaves a hole in our lives.  But despite the pain I'm feeling now, I'm thankful we had the chance to give her seven great years in a warm and loving home.  Although I'm crying now I'll always remember with a smile a calm, sweet, gentle soul with a huge heart, who needed very little to be happy -- and always gave us far more than she ever took.

**********************************

I've always loved a good parody, and one of the best I've ever seen was given to me decades ago as a Christmas present from a friend.  The book, Science Made Stupid, is a send-up of middle-school science texts, and is one of the most fall-out-of-your-chair hilarious things I've ever read.  I'll never forget opening the present on Christmas morning and sitting there on the floor in front of the tree, laughing until my stomach hurt.

If you want a good laugh -- and let's face it, lately most of us could use one -- get this book.  In it, you'll learn the proper spelling of Archaeopteryx, the physics of the disinclined plane, little-known constellations like O'Brien and Camelopackus, and the difference between she trues, shoe trees, and tree shrews. (And as I mentioned, it would make the perfect holiday gift for any science-nerd types in your family and friends.)

Science education may never be the same again.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]