pigs, 3 ways

i. Pig as food pet.

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ii. Pig as pigoons (fictional and non).

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iii.  Pig as oracle bones to the human past, pigoons of history:

Tracing the roots of pig domestication may help in tracking past human migrations and cultural development, said study lead author Greger Larson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Durham in England.

Though they are not the earliest known domesticated species — dogs beat them out for that title — pigs were bred in large enough numbers as a food source to leave plenty of bone remnants to study. Domesticated dogs, in contrast, were so limited in number that it's harder to cull information from the few remains they leave behind, Larson said.

Using animal DNA to study human history is easier for several reasons, Larson said. For one thing, the animals outnumbered their human owners and thus left more bones behind to be analyzed. For another, digging up and testing ancient human DNA is ethically problematic.

"Local cultural groups are not super keen for us grind up the bones [from burial sites] to see what their signatures are," Larson said.

- From "Domesticated Chinese pigs' ancestory goes back at least 8,000 years," Los Angeles Times, April 24, 2010

origin stories

New York Times: New findings put origins of dogs in Middle East...

The Onion: Yes, but dogs were first turned into surrogate children in the Western Hemisphere during the mid-20th century.

transience

I.  Shanty town in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China
(Source: image / article)

II. Tent city on a golf course in Pétionville, Haiti
(Source: image / article)

dog tree of life

Why is it a circle?  I don't really understand this but I'm mesmerized.

Cross-posted at tumblr (sort of)

skunk & cat

... sharing a free meal and the suburban ecosystem:

(Screen shot from Is That Skunk?)

russian dogs from Pavlov to now

It's been months since I've posted anything here! In the interim, it has belatedly dawned on me that Russia is where it's at with dog studies.  Duh.

First there's the fascinating case of post-Soviet subway dogs...

(image from English Russia)

... whose increasing detachment from human homes (though not from human-built environments) seems to suggest some kind of cosmic reversal of Russian scientist Dmitri Belyaev's Cold-war era silver fox domestication experiment...

(image from Thoughtful Animal)

... Around the same time that Belayev's foxes were being aggressively selected for tameness, Laika was being immortalized (and mortalized) as the first dog in space...

(image from Wikimedia Commons)

... And of course, before Belayev, there was Pavlov and his salivating dogs:

(image from Wikimedia Commons)

... one of whom is seen here at the Pavlov Museum, borg-like with surgical implant - and stuffed.

categories, or, "soul of the new south"

Cross-posted from my Tumblr image blog Village Dog (such as it is - and where you can see the subtitle of the magazine more clearly).  Also see this earlier post on dogs and guns and other accoutrements of Southern history.