Sunday, March 31, 2013

Failure by Default

English wildlife artist and illustrator, Andrew Hutchinson


"It is impossible to live without failing at
something, unless you live so cautiously
that you might as well not have lived at all,
in which case, you fail by default."

J.K. Rowling


The changes we dread most...


"Something new is upon us,
and yet nothing is ever new.

We are alive in a fearsome time,
and we have been given new things to fear.

We've been delivered huge blows but also
huge opportunities to reinforce or reinvent our will,
depending on where we look for honor
and how we name our enemies.

The easiest thing is to think of returning the blows.
But there are other things we must think about as well,
other dangers we face.

A careless way of sauntering across the earth
and breaking open its treasures,
a terrible dependency on sucking out the world's
best juices for ourselves - these may also be our enemies.

The changes we dread most may contain our salvation."

- Barbara Kingsolver

Saturday, March 30, 2013

One True Vision

Fountain at Mission San Diego de Alcala by Stephen Bay

"I would give all the wealth of the world,
and all the deeds of all the heroes,
for one true vision."

Henery David Thoreau July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862


The Unknown

White Iris by artist Endre Balogh

"For my part I know nothing with any certainty,
 but the sight of the stars makes me dream."
Vincent van Gogh


Friday, March 29, 2013

Thoughts



"Our life is what our thoughts make it."
Marcus Aurelius

One's real life...


"One's real life is so often
 the life that one does not lead."
Oscar Wilde


Thursday, March 28, 2013

Yellowstone Before and After Wolves



Wolf Wars by Douglas Chadwick



Published: March 2010
Wolf Wars
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com

Packs are making a comeback. That’s a thrill for wildlife lovers. But wolves are still wolves, killing cattle and elk. Many Westerners are angry. And so, the age-old fight over land and food has begun anew.
By Douglas Chadwick
Photograph by Jeff Vanuga

Wolves, when you get down to it, are a lot like us.

They are powerful, aggressive, territorial, and predatory.

They are smart, curious, cooperative, loyal, and adaptable.

They exert a profound influence on the ecosystems they inhabit.

Nevertheless, we have problems with wolves, no doubt about it. Maybe we can't wrap our minds around both the big bad wolf and the close relative with the adoring gaze that follows us around the house. Or maybe it's because gray wolves are the planet's most widespread large land mammals after humans and their livestock and—in the Northern Hemisphere—have long been our most direct competitors for meat.

Whatever the reasons, humans are at war with wolves. It is an ancient dispute over territory and food between their clans and ours, and its battleground spreads across the northern Rocky Mountain states and right up to the door of my remote cabin near Montana's Glacier National Park. A young female named Diane marked the place by peeing on the front-porch mat.

There is a den not too far away atop a timbered knoll sheltered by overhanging boughs. Dug between tree roots, the opening gapes like a maw and extends underground for 18 feet—a manor by wolf standards. The ground around it is worn bare by generations of pawed feet. Paths lead to an open hillside overlooking a mile-long meadow fringed by autumn-colored aspen and willow, hushed except for the occasional call of a raven. The snowy peaks of the Continental Divide rise in the distance, and a wild river flows close by. Wolf tracks intersect with the prints of elk, deer, moose, and grizzly bears. Though the pups reared here are running with the adults now, the pack isn't far away, according to the radio signals of the alpha female.

Many had thought the war was over. Relentlessly shot, trapped, and poisoned, even in nature reserves, gray wolves were gone from the West by the 1930s. In 1974, when Canis lupus was declared endangered in the lower 48 states, the gray wolf population was confined to a corner of northern Minnesota and Michigan's Isle Royale National Park out in Lake Superior.

Then, during the mid-1980s, a handful trotted down the Continental Divide from Canada. Two settled in the hidden meadow in Glacier and in 1986 reared five pups. Footsore biologists trying to keep track of the newcomers dubbed them the Magic pack for the way they seemed to vanish and reappear like wisps of ground fog.

The pack grew and soon split into two, then three, keeping mostly within the park. Some animals broke away and dispersed to neighboring national forests. Then all at once, a pair was denning on private ranchland 90 miles southwest of Glacier and less than 30 miles from the Idaho border. People began to report wolves in both Idaho and northern Wyoming. Still, there was no proof those wolves were anything but passing wanderers. Not yet.

In 1995 and 1996, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service captured wolves in Canada and released them into 2.2-million-acre Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho's wilderness areas. The unprecedented federal action triggered such an eruption of hope, fear, resentment, lawsuits, and headline news that most people assume the whole return of the wolf to the West began that way. It didn't, but those reintroductions worked like a rocket booster. Populations grew, and the war escalated.

During 2008, wildlife agents confirmed 569 cattle and sheep deaths from wolves throughout the West. That amounted to less than one percent of livestock deaths in the region, but the damage is never distributed equally. The same year 264 wolves were killed for attacking livestock in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. That's a big number, but it was taken from a wolf population now grown to around 1,600, roaming the region in more than 200 packs. Today there are two new packs in northeastern Washington and, some whisper, a small enclave in Colorado as well. The West is getting wilder by the hour.

Wildlife enthusiasts and tourists couldn't be happier. In Yellowstone alone, tens of thousands come to watch wolves each year, adding an estimated $35 million to the area's economy. Scientists are documenting ecological changes tied to this top predator's return that may hold the poten­tial to repair out-of-balance wildlands, making them more stable and biologically diverse.

On the other hand, some folks say they no longer feel as safe taking their families into the woods. Sportsmen complain too—bitterly. To many out West, where interior decorating tends to involve antlers and come fall, "Howdy" is replaced by "Get your elk yet?" wolves are depicted as four-legged killing machines—land piranhas—ravaging game populations. Guys mutter about taking matters into their own hands and to hell with the Feds. Bumper stickers show a crossed-out wolf and the slogan "Smoke a Pack a Day."

In May 2009, the wildlife service declared the species recovered in the northern Rocky Mountains and handed over responsibility for them to Montana and Idaho. Both instantly labeled them game animals and set quotas for the first legal wolf hunts in either state's memory—75 in Montana, 220 in Idaho. "It's amazing—from a single, endangered pack to a huntable surplus across a whole region," says Jim Williams, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks wildlife program manager for northwest Montana. "This is the most striking Endangered Species Act success story I can think of." Maybe. In November 2009, Idaho extended its season to last until the quota is met, or until March 31, whichever is sooner. The change could open the door to hunters traveling by snowmobile and to the killing of pregnant females.

After an earlier federal decision to de­list Western wolves in 2008, Wyoming essentially defined the animals as varmints, or pests, allow­ing virtually unlimited shooting and trapping year-round. A resulting lawsuit forced the wildlife service to temporarily put wolves back on the endangered list. (Since then, the service has refused to take them off in Wyoming until that state comes up with a different plan.) Meanwhile, a coalition of 14 environmental and an­imal protection organizations led by Earthjustice is suing the federal government to relist all wolves until the Western states develop a regional conservation strategy that includes core protected areas and buffer zones where wolves can live in normal packs that won't get shot to pieces.

John and Rae Herman run 800 head of Angus cattle in western Montana's Hot Springs area. They grew up in America's golden age for pastoralists, in rolling valleys of bunchgrass and sage with forested mountainsides—with virtually all large native predators wiped off the landscape.

"We'd usually be missing three to five calves at roundup," John says. "Now it's closer to 25. This spring our calving grounds down near the house got hit. Seven calves were confirmed wolf kills, so we were reimbursed for them."

The trouble is if ranchers don't come across a carcass right away, scavengers may drag off or shred all the evidence. Many say in some areas the actual kills by wolves may average as high as seven for every one that can be proved, but no confirmation, no compensation. And dead and missing animals are only part of the toll. Cattle harassed by wolves over one season can lose 30 to 50 pounds each. On top of that, hormonal effects from stress kick in. "We had 85 pregnant heifers this spring, and 60 aborted," John says.

"The worst part," Rae says, "is that 23 of the cows that aborted were in our son's starter herd of 25. He's stuck with a $7,500 bank note and two calves to pay it off with. We'll end up selling some mother cows to offset our losses, so we'll be going backwards."

Stock with leg injuries from chases or infections from wounds become unmarketable. And after brushes with wolves, mother cows stay ornery and extra protective of calves. The Hermans aren't the only ranchers to say it is harder to wrangle such cattle in pens; who don't even think about using their dogs; who consider the fact that if you drive those cows onto prime range the next summer, they may not stay because the upland forests are where the wolves hang around.

The Blackfoot Challenge ranchers—a cooperative established in 1993 to conserve the rural setting in west-central Montana's Blackfoot River watershed—are trying a range rider program. I'm patrolling with the lone rider himself, Peter Brown, who travels by pickup truck, motorcycle, or foot. He monitors the whereabouts of wolf packs in relation to cattle and reports daily to ranchers so they can move herds to safer grazing spots or keep a closer eye on them. Electric fencing now surrounds calving lots in many risky areas. To visually warn wolves away from other pastures, Brown sometimes turns to the old European technique called fladry, stringing wire with bright flags along its length.

As we scan some bottomlands amid October snow flurries, Brown's gaze is drawn by ravens, among his surest guides, to a carcass. In this case the birds are merely scavenging elk guts left by a human hunter. So is a raven-black wolf from the Elevation Mountain pack. Yet four deer are grazing peacefully across a fence line, and scores of cattle are doing the same 200 yards beyond.

"A herd's behavior is our early warning system," Brown notes. "What I look for is cattle bunched up or running, or just looking around alertly and calling. I also keep an eye out for unhealthy stock, which can attract predators. I think that just by moving around the area, my presence deters wolves from killing livestock. The wolves are learning and adapting at least as fast as we are. Besides that, we have good populations of natural prey here. I've seen wolves walk right through cattle herds to stalk deer."

Ranchers used to leave stock that died of disease, birthing problems, and accidents lying on the range or collected in heaps called bone piles. But "as predators began to recover, the carcasses kept luring them into trouble," explains Seth Wilson, a conservation biologist who coordinates the range rider program. "Now we collect carcasses right away and compost them at a distant site. It's one of the simplest and most effective ways to reduce conflicts with both bears and wolves. It just requires changing old habits."

The question is no longer how to get rid of wolves but how to coexist with them. Family rancher David Mannix says, "We have to realize that the general U.S. population wants wolves. That population is also our customers for beef. It's not a good idea to tell your customers they don't know what they're doing. So instead of taking a hard line and fighting to get everything back to where it was 50 years ago, we're trying things like the range rider."

"But if ranchers can't make a living," stockman and veterinarian Ron Skinner says, "the alternative these days is usually subdivision for real estate, and there goes an awful lot of the open space and prime wildlife habitat in the West."

When the new wolves in Yellowstone first came calling, the area's elk and moose stood their ground as though they were still dealing with coyotes. Bad plan. Today Yellowstone holds half the elk it did 15 years ago. Yet by most measures the population had swelled too high, and their range was deteriorating. Shortly after killing the last Yellowstone wolves in 1926, park officials were culling elk by the thousands. The elk kept rebounding and overgrazing key habitats, creating a perpetually unnatural situation for a park intended to preserve nature.

With a near-unlimited meat supply, Yellowstone's new wolves rapidly multiplied. But the count abruptly fell in 2005. It increased again, reaching 171 in 2007, then sank to 124 by the end of 2008, a 27 percent drop this time. Doug Smith, leader of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, recorded the fewest breeding pairs since 2000. "We have a declining wolf population," he says. "Numbers never got as high as we expected based on the availability of prey. This suggests that once wolves reach a certain density, you start to get social regulation of their numbers."

Clashes with humans are by no means the only wolf wars under way.

Yellowstone's Druid Peak pack established its territory in 1996 and has held it ever since. In all probability they have been the most watched group of wolves in the world: The wide-open country they claim on both sides of Wyoming's Lamar River Valley is bisected by one of the park's main roads. On a late October morning the temperature is reading 4°F. Hoarfrost coats the noses of bison below one of the Druids' favor­ite rendezvous sites. Scattered elk graze the same slope, and two coyotes are picking over the remains of an elk calf on the river's shore. I spy no wolves, but Laurie Lyman, a former teacher who moved from California to be near Yellowstone's wolves and has watched them almost daily for several years, lowers her binoculars to tell me about the ones she saw yesterday.

Two Druids—a female labeled Number 571 and her younger brother, called Triangle Blaze, for his white chest patch—were traveling by the river when three invaders from the new Hurri­cane Mesa pack appeared. The groups exchanged howls and then ran at each other. Outnumbered, the Druid pair gave way first, but the Hurricanes caught up to 571. Four times they pulled her down onto her back. The final time two held her on either end while the third—and largest—bit into her chest, shaking and tearing with its teeth. "That's when Triangle Blaze jumped in," Lyman recalls. "He came to her rescue, fighting off the Hurricanes. They started chasing him, but not before 571 got in a bite on one's rear. She escaped across the river. When her brother finally rejoined her, he was limping, and she was bleeding from her wounds."

During 2008, Yellowstone saw twice as many wolves killed by other wolves as in any previous year. Distemper claimed a record share too, after hitting the population in 1999, 2000, and 2005 as well. Parvovirus, another deadly canine disease, has been detected in the area. And like many packs, the Druids are suffering serious hair loss from an epidemic of mange.

Loss of superabundant prey is another issue, Smith says. There are still close to 10,000 elk wintering in Yellowstone and perhaps double that number summering in the park. "But wolves are very selective hunters," Smith says. "What counts for them is the amount of vulnerable prey."

Much as experience with wolves can transform cattle into not-so-domestic animals, pack-hunted elk turn into less vulnerable quarry. They become more vigilant and keep on the move more. In the wolfless era, herds practically camped at favorite winter dining spots, foraging on young aspen, willow, and cottonwood until the stems grew clubbed and stunted like bonsai plants. Released from such grazing pressure, saplings now shoot up to form lush young groves. More songbirds find nesting habitat within their leafy shade. Along waterways, vigorous willow and cottonwood growth helps stabilize stream banks. More insects fall from overhanging stems to feed fish and amphibians. Beavers find enough nutritious twigs and branches to support new colonies.

Surveying the huge northern range, where most of the park's elk winter, Doug Smith turned up just one beaver colony in 1996—the lowest tally in decades. By 2009, he recorded 12. Along Crystal Creek I find another recent beaver dam storing water, releasing a more constant flow for riparian species downstream through the dry months. Ponds and marshes that form behind the dams create habitat for moose, muskrat, mink, waterfowl, wading birds, and an array of other wildlife. After wolves moved in, cougars that had begun hunting the valleys retreated to the steep, rocky terrain they normally inhabit. The big canines killed nearly half the coyote population. They may have rebounded a bit, but the coyotes now live in groups with shrunk territories or as vagabond "floaters." With less competition from elk for grasses, bison may be doing better than ever.

From a single new predatory force on the land­scape, a rebalancing effect ripples all the way to microbes in the soil. Biologists define the series of top-down changes as a trophic cascade. In a nod to the behavioral factors at play, others speak of the "ecology of fear."

Cristina Eisenberg is a five-foot-two-inch, hundred-pound answer to the question of how dangerous wolves are to people. Over the past four years she has studied wolves, elk, and aspen in Glacier Park, often on its west side among two large wolf packs, one with 20-plus members. They sometimes watch as she and an assistant measure habitat features. Then the wolves pull out her marker stakes. During a blinding snowstorm, they silently took down an elk a stone's throw from Eisenberg.

Our afternoon survey leads to a trampled-down rendezvous site. The Dutch pack has dragged in ceramic shards, cans, pots, pieces of iron tools from abandoned homesteads in the park. Canine junk collectors. Who knew?

But what Eisenberg wants to show me is an aspen stand. Its upper tier consists of towering trees that arose between 1840 and the 1920s, before wolves were eliminated. The bottom row, 15 feet high, is of saplings that shot up after wolves returned. There are no aspens in between. None got past the elk's mouths. By contrast with Yellowstone, elk numbers haven't changed much here. As far as Eisenberg can tell, the recent aspen growth is almost all due to wolf-inspired changes in elk behavior.

The wolves' diet here is mostly white-tailed deer. Northwestern Montana has at least twice as many cougars as wolves and twice as many grizzly bears. Together they kill more adult deer and fawns than wolves do. Coyotes and black bears take a share as well. On top of that, the area has had two tough winters in a row. Deer totals dropped even where few predators prowl. Yet overall deer numbers remain within the historical average. For that matter, both elk and deer are doing well across the West. As game manager Jim Williams puts it, "With wolves back in the picture along with cougars and bears, we'll have places where elk and deer may never be as abundant again as people remember, and we'll have other places where they'll do fine. There are bigger drivers than wolves in these systems." Studies have shown that winter weather and the quality of wintering habitat are really what control deer and elk populations over time. That and human hunting.

Craig Jourdonnais is the state game department's wildlife biologist for Montana's Bitterroot Valley, near the Idaho border. Until recently, he says, most gripes about wildlife concerned elk raiding haystacks and deer damaging crops and gardens and being a danger on highways.

"Now we have 10 to 12 wolf packs for a minimum of 45 to 60 wolves. We also have 14,000 hunters coming through the Bitterroot check station in a given year." The main complaints he hears these days are about wolves overrunning the place and wiping out elk and deer. "I've been on the job 30 years, and I've never worked with any critter that raised so much emotion."

Somehow, Jourdonnais is supposed to make a place for wolves where recreation and livelihood intermingle. He understands that big-game hunting in Ravalli County is worth $11.2 million annually. He also sees game losing critical winter range to subdivisions up and down the valley but knows that the one topic as hot as wolves out West is planning and zoning.

Bottom line? Survival rates for young game animals are lower the past couple years. Wolves may be partly responsible, but winter may be too. Overall, Bitterroot deer numbers are still fairly good. Whereas the elk total stood below 3,000 in the 1970s because sportsmen were allowed a generous take of females, it's currently above 6,000. A thousand of those animals have learned to retreat before the hunting season to a private ranch where only limited shooting is allowed.

Large mammals are learning and changing their behavior all the time: deer, elk, bears, wolves, and yes, humans too. For our part it seems we need to formulate better answers to the questions posed by the return of wolves—not the wolves in our minds but the real wolves watching from the mountainsides. When we say we want to conserve wildlife communities in America, does that mean including the wolf, or not? 

Wildlife biologist and longtime contributor Douglas Chadwick lives in Montana wolf country. His book The Wolverine Way will be published this spring.

How to Build a Dog by Evan Ratliff



Photography by Robert Clark

Published: February 2012 How to Build a Dog
Scientists have found the secret recipe behind the spectacular variety of dog shapes and sizes, and it could help unravel the complexity of human genetic disease.

By Evan Ratliff
It's an unusually balmy mid-February afternoon in New York City, but the lobby of the Hotel Pennsylvania is teeming with fur coats.

The wearers are attendees of what is undoubtedly the world's elite canine mixer, one that takes place each year on the eve of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. Tomorrow the nation's top dogs from 173 breeds will compete for glory across the street at Madison Square Garden. But today is more akin to a four-legged meet-and-greet, as owners shuffle through the check-in line at the competition's official lodgings. A basset hound aims a droopy eye across a luggage cart at a wired-up terrier. A pair of muscled Rhodesian ridgebacks, with matching leather leashes, pause for a brief hello with a fluffy Pyrenean shepherd. Outside the gift shop a Tibetan mastiff with paws the size of human hands goes nose to nose with a snuffling pug.

The variety on display in the hotel lobby—a dizzying array of body sizes, ear shapes, nose lengths, and barking habits—is what makes dog lovers such obstinate partisans. For reasons both practical and whimsical, man's best friend has been artificially evolved into the most diverse animal on the planet—a staggering achievement, given that most of the 350 to 400 dog breeds in existence have been around for only a couple hundred years. The breeders fast-forwarded the normal pace of evolution by combining traits from disparate dogs and accentuating them by breeding those offspring with the largest hints of the desired attributes. To create a dog well suited for cornering badgers, for instance, it is thought that German hunters in the 18th and 19th centuries brought together some combination of hounds—the basset, a native of France, being the likely suspect—and terriers, producing a new variation on the theme of dog with stubby legs and a rounded body that enabled it to chase its prey into the mouth of a burrow: hence the dachshund, or "badger dog" in German. (A rival, flimsier history of the breed has it dating back, in some form, to ancient Egypt.) Pliable skin served as a defense mechanism, allowing the dog to endure sharp-toothed bites without significant damage. A long and sturdy tail helped hunters to retrieve it from an animal's lair, badger in its mouth.

The breeders gave no thought, of course, to the fact that while coaxing such weird new dogs into existence, they were also tinkering with the genes that determine canine anatomy in the first place­. Scientists since have assumed that underneath the morphological diversity of dogs lay an equivalent amount of genetic diversity. A recent explosion in canine genomic research, however, has led to a surprising, and opposite, conclusion: The vast mosaic of dog shapes, colors, and sizes is decided largely by changes in a mere handful of gene regions. The difference between the dachshund's diminutive body and the Rottweiler's massive one hangs on the sequence of a single gene. The disparity between the dachshund's stumpy legs—known officially as disproportionate dwarfism, or chondrodysplasia—and a greyhound's sleek ones is determined by another one.

The same holds true across every breed and almost every physical trait. In a project called CanMap, a collaboration among Cornell University, UCLA, and the National Institutes of Health, researchers gathered DNA from more than 900 dogs representing 80 breeds, as well as from wild canids such as gray wolves and coyotes. They found that body size, hair length, fur type, nose shape, ear positioning, coat color, and the other traits that together define a breed's appearance are controlled by somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 genetic switches. The difference between floppy and erect ears is determined by a single gene region in canine chromosome 10, or CFA10. The wrinkled skin of a Chinese shar-pei traces to another region, called HAS2. The patch of ridged fur on Rhodesian ridgebacks? That's from a change in CFA18. Flip a few switches, and your dachshund becomes a Doberman, at least in appearance. Flip again, and your Doberman is a Dalmatian.

"The story that is emerging," says Robert Wayne, a biologist at UCLA, "is that the diversity in domestic dogs derives from a small genetic tool kit."

Media reports about the gene for red hair, alcoholism, or breast cancer give the false impression that most traits are governed by just one or a few genes. In fact, the Tinkertoy genetics of dog morphology is a complete aberration. In nature, a physical trait or disease state is usually the product of a complex interaction of many genes, each one making a fractional contribution. Height in humans, for instance, is determined by the interaction of some 200 gene regions.

So why are dogs so different? The answer, the researchers say, lies in their unusual evolutionary history. Canines were the earliest domesticated animal, a process that started somewhere between 20,000 and 15,000 years ago, most likely when gray wolves began scavenging around human settlements. Dog experts differ on how active a role humans played in the next step, but eventually the relationship became a mutual one, as we began employing dogs for hunting, guarding, and companionship. Sheltered from the survival-of-the-fittest wilderness, those semidomesticated dogs thrived even though they harbored deleterious genetic mutations—stumpy legs, for instance—that would have been weeded out in smaller wild populations.

Thousands of years later, breeders would seize on that diverse raw material when they began creating modern breeds. They tended to grab traits they desired from across multiple breeds—or tried to rapidly replicate mutations in the same one—in order to get the dog they wanted. They also favored novelty, since the more distinct a line of dogs appeared, the more likely it was to garner official recognition as a new breed. Such artificial selection tended to favor single genes with a large impact, allowing traits to be fixed more rapidly than groups of smaller-impact genes ever could.

"It's kind of like when you set your remote control to control your TV, your stereo, and your cable," says Carlos Bustamante, a CanMap geneticist now at Stanford University. "You hit the on-off switch, and it does them all."

This revelation has implications the scientists are just beginning to unravel—most important, for the understanding of genetic disorders in humans. Already, more than a hundred dog diseases have been mapped to mutations in particular genes, many of them with human counterparts. Those diseases may have a whole array of mutations leading to a risk of disease in dogs, as they do in us. But because dogs have been genetically segregated into breeds developed from just a few original individuals, each breed has a much smaller set of errant genes—often only one or two—underlying the disease. For instance, Cornell researchers studying the degenerative eye disease retinitis pigmentosa—shared by humans and dogs—found 20 different canine genes causing the disorder. But a different gene was the culprit in schnauzers than in poodles, giving researchers some specific leads for where to start looking in humans. Meanwhile a recent study of a rare type of epilepsy in dachshunds found what appears to be a unique genetic signature, which could shed new light on the disorder in us as well.

In short, while the Victorian breeders were crafting dogs to suit their tastes, they were also creating genetically isolated populations, little knowing how useful they might be to scientists in the future. The possibilities are especially abundant for cancer, certain types of which can show up as often as 60 percent of the time in some dog breeds but only once in every 10,000 humans.

"We are the people who are doing the genetics," says Elaine Ostrander, who studies dog evolution and disease at the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH. "But breeders are the people who have done all the fieldwork."

One category of trait that has so far proved resistant to the CanMap analysis is behavior. Only a single mutant behavioral gene has been identified to date: the dog version of the gene for obsessive-compulsive disorder in humans, which can cause Doberman pinschers to obsessively suck on their fur to the point of bleeding. More common characteristics such as loyalty, tenaciousness, or the instinct to herd clearly have genetic underpinnings. But they can also be affected by factors ranging from a dog's nutrition to the presence of children in the house, making them difficult to quantify rigorously enough to study. Nevertheless, "we've probably got as good a shot, if not better, of understanding behavior in dogs over other animals," says Stanford's Bustamante. After all, he points out, there are millions of dog lovers out there willing and eager to help with the fieldwork.

  
Evan Ratliff wrote on the origins of domestication in the March 2011 issue. Brooklyn-based Robert Clark’s last dog, a pit bull named Leo, now lives on a farm.



People and Dogs: A Genetic Love Story by Virginia Hughes

People and Dogs: A Genetic Love Story

Scientists argue that friendly wolves sought out humans..


Opinion: We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us.
Scientists argue that friendly wolves sought out humans.. 
Who made the first moves toward friendship, humans or dogs?


Photograph by Vincent J. Musi, National Geographic

.Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods

for National Geographic News

Published March 3, 2013

In the story of how the dog came in from the cold and onto our sofas, we tend to give ourselves a little too much credit. The most common assumption is that some hunter-gatherer with a soft spot for cuteness found some wolf puppies and adopted them. Over time, these tamed wolves would have shown their prowess at hunting, so humans kept them around the campfire until they evolved into dogs. (See "How to Build a Dog.")

But when we look back at our relationship with wolves throughout history, this doesn't really make sense. For one thing, the wolf was domesticated at a time when modern humans were not very tolerant of carnivorous competitors. In fact, after modern humans arrived in Europe around 43,000 years ago, they pretty much wiped out every large carnivore that existed, including saber-toothed cats and giant hyenas. The fossil record doesn't reveal whether these large carnivores starved to death because modern humans took most of the meat or whether humans picked them off on purpose. Either way, most of the Ice Age bestiary went extinct.

The hunting hypothesis, that humans used wolves to hunt, doesn't hold up either. Humans were already successful hunters without wolves, more successful than every other large carnivore. Wolves eat a lot of meat, as much as one deer per ten wolves every day—a lot for humans to feed or compete against. And anyone who has seen wolves in a feeding frenzy knows that wolves don't like to share.

Humans have a long history of eradicating wolves, rather than trying to adopt them. Over the last few centuries, almost every culture has hunted wolves to extinction. The first written record of the wolf's persecution was in the sixth century B.C. when Solon of Athens offered a bounty for every wolf killed. The last wolf was killed in England in the 16th century under the order of Henry VII. In Scotland, the forested landscape made wolves more difficult to kill. In response, the Scots burned the forests. North American wolves were not much better off. By 1930, there was not a wolf left in the 48 contiguous states of America.  (See "Wolf Wars.")

If this is a snapshot of our behavior toward wolves over the centuries, it presents one of the most perplexing problems: How was this misunderstood creature tolerated by humans long enough to evolve into the domestic dog?

The short version is that we often think of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish. But essentially, far from the survival of the leanest and meanest, the success of dogs comes down to survival of the friendliest. (See "People and Dogs: A Genetic Love Story.")

Most likely, it was wolves that approached us, not the other way around, probably while they were scavenging around garbage dumps on the edge of human settlements. The wolves that were bold but aggressive would have been killed by humans, and so only the ones that were bold and friendly would have been tolerated.

Friendliness caused strange things to happen in the wolves. They started to look different. Domestication gave them splotchy coats, floppy ears, wagging tails. In only several generations, these friendly wolves would have become very distinctive from their more aggressive relatives. But the changes did not just affect their looks. Changes also happened to their psychology. These protodogs evolved the ability to read human gestures.

As dog owners, we take for granted that we can point to a ball or toy and our dog will bound off to get it. But the ability of dogs to read human gestures is remarkable. Even our closest relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—can't read our gestures as readily as dogs can. Dogs are remarkably similar to human infants in the way they pay attention to us. This ability accounts for the extraordinary communication we have with our dogs. Some dogs are so attuned to their owners that they can read a gesture as subtle as a change in eye direction.

With this new ability, these protodogs were worth knowing. People who had dogs during a hunt would likely have had an advantage over those who didn't. Even today, tribes in Nicaragua depend on dogs to detect prey. Moose hunters in alpine regions bring home 56 percent more prey when they are accompanied by dogs. In the Congo, hunters believe they would starve without their dogs.

Dogs would also have served as a warning system, barking at hostile strangers from neighboring tribes. They could have defended their humans from predators.

And finally, though this is not a pleasant thought, when times were tough, dogs could have served as an emergency food supply. Thousands of years before refrigeration and with no crops to store, hunter-gatherers had no food reserves until the domestication of dogs. In tough times, dogs that were the least efficient hunters might have been sacrificed to save the group or the best hunting dogs. Once humans realized the usefulness of keeping dogs as an emergency food supply, it was not a huge jump to realize plants could be used in a similar way.

So, far from a benign human adopting a wolf puppy, it is more likely that a population of wolves adopted us. As the advantages of dog ownership became clear, we were as strongly affected by our relationship with them as they have been by their relationship with us. Dogs may even have been the catalyst for our civilization.

Dr. Brian Hare is the director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center and Vanessa Woods is a research scientist at Duke University. This essay is adapted from their new book, The Genius of Dogs, published by Dutton. To play science-based games to find the genius in your dog, visit www.dognition.com. 


Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Euripides

Belgium Artist,  Pol Ledent (Born 1952)   https://www.artistrising.com


"The greatest pleasure of life is love."
Euripides


A Pet's Last Wish



Before humans die, they write their last Will & Testament, give their home & all they have, to those they leave behind.  If, with my paws, I could do the same, this is what I'd ask...

To a poor and lonely stray I'd give:
...My happy home.
...My bowl & cozy bed, soft pillows and all my toys.
...The lap, which I loved so much.
...The hand that stroked my fur & the sweet voice which spoke my name.

I'd Will to the sad, scared shelter dog, the place I had in my human's loving heart, of which there seemed no bounds.

So, when I die, please do not say, "I will never have a pet again, for the loss and pain is more than I can stand."

Instead, go find an unloved dog, one whose life has held no joy or hope and give MY place to HIM.

This is the only thing I can give...
                   The love I left behind.

--Author Unknown





Monday, March 25, 2013

Acceptance

The Magnificence of  the Navajo's Antelope Canyon, Arizona


"We must let go of the life we have planned,
 so as to accept the one that is waiting for us."
Joseph Campbell


Healing & Hippocrates



"Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity."  Hippocrates


Mindset


mind-set (mind'set') n. a fixed mental attitude formed by experience, education, prejudice, etc.

"It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view."George Eliot


Sunday, March 24, 2013

Unrecoverable Things in Your Life


Spite in Bogen, 1927 by Wassily Kandinsky

There are five things that you cannot recover in life:

1.  The Stone..................................after it's thrown,

2.  The Word..................................after it's said,

3.  The Occasion.............................after it's missed,

4.  The Time...................................after it's gone,

5.  A Person....................................after they die.


Saturday, March 23, 2013

Brief Reflection


"In youth we learn;
in age we understand."  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach


The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes



"THE HOLSTEE MANIFESTO"
Written by Dave, Mike & Fabian



Brief Reflection



"We write our own destiny;
we become what we do."

-Soong May-ling
(Madame Chiang Kai-Shek)


Thursday, March 21, 2013

Apache Blessing



May the Sun bring you new energy by day.  May the Moon softly restore you by night.  May the Rain wash away your worries.  May the Breeze blow new strength into your being.  May you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life.  _______Apache Blessing



Monday, March 18, 2013

Native American proverb


Every time you wake up ask yourself "What good things am I going to do today?"
Remember that when the sun goes down at sunset, it will take a part of your life with it.

A Native American proverb


Sunday, March 10, 2013

Someone Special



If you have a wonderful man who is your whole world, who isn't perfect, but perfect for you, who works hard and would do anything for you, who makes you laugh, who is your best friend and sometimes your only friend, who you want to grow old with (if you don't kill him first), who you are thankful for everyday...then never let a day go by that you don't let him know, in some important way, just how very special he is and how grateful you are he has chosen to share his life with you!


Saturday, March 2, 2013

The Best of Your Life






Give Yourself a Happiness Makeover
By Longevity expert Dan Buettner

1.  Nestle in the Right Neighborhood
Where you choose to live is one of the most important determinants of your happiness. If you're looking for a retirement destination, here are some things to keep in mind: People are generally happiest in sunny areas, in the Pacific Northwest and on the water. Look for neighborhoods with sidewalks, meeting places and other characteristics that nudge you into social interaction. Easy access to green spaces and recreation also favors well-being.

2.  Stop Shopping; Start Saving
Research shows that financial security brings much more happiness over time than buying things does. Why? Within about a year the thrill of a new item wears off, while financial security has no expiration date. Indeed, older people's less-materialistic spending habits may explain much of their increasing happiness with age.

3.  Make the Most of Your Morning
While a good night's sleep is critical to long-term happiness — a University of North Texas study found that people with insomnia are 10 times more likely to develop depression and 17 times more likely to have anxiety than are people who sleep well — our morning routine is just as important. Eating breakfast every day can boost energy, and 30 minutes of walking or other exercise raises well-being for up to 12 hours.

4.  Trim Your TV Time
The happiest people watch less than one hour of television a day, according to a study of 40,000 people who took National Geographic's True Happiness Test. Why? We get more authentic happiness from being with family and friends, reading or engaging in a hobby.

5.  Get a Daily Dose of Friends
Studies show that America's happiest people get at least six hours a day of interaction with friends or family. And if you proactively choose the right social network, bliss can be contagious. Harvard University research found that with each happy friend we add to our social circle, our own happiness grows by 9 percent. For each unhappy friend, our happiness declines by 7 percent. So find people you like, and commit to routines that put you in contact with them regularly.

6.  Find Your Soul Mate
People in long-term committed relationships suffer less stress and live longer with fewer diseases. Another bonus: Multiple studies have shown that married people are two times more likely to be happy than non-married people.  This is not to say that marriage assures bliss, though.  Research reveals that both health and happiness decline if you’re in an unhappy relationship.  The upshot?  If you’re in a long-term relationship and you’re happy, work hard to stay that way.  If you’re unhappy, it might be time to move on, even if it’s painful at first.

7.  Meet, Pray, Love
While we're not sure whether churchgoing makes you happy or whether happy people tend to be religious, research shows that people who belong to a faith-based community — regardless of religion — and attend services more than once a week live as many as seven years longer than people who don't.

8.  Create a Sunny Sanctuary
Increase happiness by creating a room at home where you can play an instrument, enjoy a hobby, read a book or spend time with family. Ideally, the room will be full of light, which can increase mood-enhancing serotonin levels.

9.  Gain Peace With a Pooch (or a Cat)
Pet owners have been found to have lower blood pressure and fewer stress hormones circulating in their blood. So if your lifestyle and budget can accommodate a pet, visit your local animal shelter and consider adopting one.

10. Ignite a Passion for Compassion
Giving feels good, and several studies have shown that givers tend to be happier people. In one experiment, one group of people was given money to spend on themselves, and a second group was given money to spend on others. At the end of the day, those who gave their money away reported being happier than those who spent it on themselves. Of course, you don't have to dole out dollars to reap the benefits. Sign up to help out at your grandchild's school, or volunteer at the local cancer center.

* For an extended version of this article, access AARP @
 http://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-02-2013/happiness-makeover-photos.html#slide1
or the February/March 2013 issue of aarp.org/magazine

To find out how happy you are, take the quiz at:  http://apps.bluezones.com/happiness/
  

Dan Buettner is the New York Times best-selling author of The Blue Zones:  Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest and Thrive:  Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way.

Friday, March 1, 2013

De-Stressing Through Laughter...



Marlo Thomas
award-winning actress, author and activist


De-Stressing Through Laughter - 10 Ways It Improves Your Health

Posted: 03/01/2013 9:12 am

A Huffington Post Article for You 


Last Monday was terrible. The phone began ringing before 9 a.m., I had back-to-back (to-back) meetings well into the afternoon, and by the time happy hour arrived, I was not happy at all. My back hurt and my head was spinning. I was, what my mom used to call, "cranky."

Then a friend sent me an email -- no message, just a YouTube link -- and I clicked onto it. Before I knew it, I was howling. That's all it took -- literally five seconds -- to turn my mood around and put me in a great frame of mind to enjoy my evening.

And all because of laughter.

This evening at sundown, the "National Day of Unplugging" begins. And in our 24/7 world of constant communication and media overload, I think that is a great thing. We all just get too swept up in our day-to-day worries and stressed out by the chaos around us -- and, boy, it's hard to remember to slow down and enjoy all the good things in our lives. The healthy things. The funny things.

De-stressing has become a big issue in recent years and there are lots of wonderful ways to decompress. It's really just a matter of finding what works for you, be it yoga, meditation, a glass of wine or just a nice long nap. But for me, personally, nothing beats funny.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to laugh. I grew up laughing, surrounded by some of the greatest comics of our time. So to this day, when I'm tense or stressed out, I make a bee-line for laughter -- whether it's a funny movie, a hilarious game of Charades with my goofier friends, or a quick trip to a comedy club. Jerry Seinfeld once told me that the average child laughs around 75 times a day, and adults average something like 12 times. I don't like those numbers at all, and I think we can do better!

Laughter is important, not only because it makes us happy, it also has actual health benefits. And that's because laughter completely engages the body and releases the mind. It connects us to others and that in itself has a healing effect.

My dear friend Alan Alda once had this to say about laughter: "Funny people -- really funny people -- will be funny under any circumstances. Someone can just lift their eyebrow or make a little shift in their tone, or get a look in their eye, and you'll fall down laughing. And that's because they want to be in a pleasant frequency with you. It's like you're both tuned into the same thing, and you're dancing together. And through that funniness, the two of you can share a moment of pleasure that you can't get any other way. An intimacy."

I like that idea a lot, and I hope you'll remember it today as you unplug and de-stress. And however you decide to enjoy the day, be sure to throw in a few laughs. Not only will it make the day more fun for everyone around you, you'll also be improving your health in the process.

Happy Unplugging Day!




Happiness Suggestions from some Experts




1.   "Choose love over being right."
Deepak Chopra, author of:   Spiritual Solutions:  Answers to Life's Greatest Challenges

2.  "Happiness is a choice you make.  Every thought you have is a decision and in any given moment you can decide to be fearful or you can decide to be happy.  Through gratitude, forgiveness and a commitment to peace you can choose to be happy."
Gabrielle Bernstein, author of:   May Cause Miracles 

3.   "Accept yourself, and expect more from yourself."
Gretchen Rubin, author of:  The Happiness Project  

4.  "The constant pursuit of happiness will lead to disappointment because happiness is not sustainable.  But gratitude, acceptance, peace and loving are. Pursue those qualities and you will discover that you are happy a lot more often!!"
Christine Hassler, author of:  20-Something, 20-Everything:  A Quarter-life Woman's Guide to Balance and Direction

5.   "Trust yourself.  If you don't learn to trust yourself, you will never be happy. You'll always be deferring your authority to someone or something outside of you."
Paul Selig, author of:  I Am the World:  A Guide to the Consciousness of Man's Self in a Transitioning Time

6.   "Nothing has meaning besides the meaning we give it!  It's not about 'positive thinking,' it's about 'powerful thinking'--realize that in any given moment, you can choose to find an empowering meaning in every situation--one that puts you in a space of love, hope and happiness."
Marie Forleo, marketing and lifestyle expert, founder of Rich, Happy & Hot

7.   "My one piece of advice to anyone who is on the pursuit of happiness is to know you have a choice--we can always choose to be happy.  No I am not talking about some saccharine, superficial ignoring of what is hurting attitude.  In every situation we can decide how we regard the circumstances and our perspective then determines how we move forward or not."
Marilyn Tam, author of:  The Happiness Choice:  The Five Decisions That Will Take You From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

8.   "Happiness, or fulfillment, comes when we step outside ourselves and serve.  Short term happiness comes from chasing "stuff"--food, drugs, material items, relationships, etc.  But we all know that doesn't last.  Contribution, service, connection and love--when we learn how to cultivate these things within ourselves and then give them away to others in whatever form inspires us most, we have stepped into a larger world.
If you are seeking joy, realize that joy is a service.  No matter what the economy, government or other people are doing, there is always an opportunity to serve others.  When we realize this and act on it, happiness is sure to follow."
Mastin Kipp, CEO/Founder of @TheDailyLove

9.   "If we want happiness, I think we should follow classic Greek wisdom and live with Arete'.  The word directly translates as 'excellence' or 'virtue,' but has a deeper meaning--something closer to 'expressing the highest version of ourselves.'  When we're showing up fully moment to moment, there's no room for regret/anxiety/disillusionment, just a whole lot of happiness.  Here's to getting our arete' on!"
Brian Johnson, CEO of en*theos

10. "Let's see:  When it comes to seeking happiness, the kiss of death is feeling entitled to happiness or believing that some other person is essential for you to be happy.  People need to lower the bar in terms of what brings them happiness in life.
Never tell yourself that you are an extraordinary person, as that will ensure your unhappiness.  Rather, discover how liberating being ordinary is and begin your journey to happiness with your feet firmly planted on the ground." 
Caroline Myss, author of:  Anatomy of the Spirit:  The Seven Stages of Power and Healing

11. "Happiness comes through finding peace and freedom within ourselves and bringing happiness to others."
Matthieu Ricard, author of:  Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

12.  "Realize that we are in charge of our inner emotions.  We control how we feel from the inside out and we can decide how we respond to what goes on around us.  Once we realize we are at the control desk of our inner world, then the responsibility is with us to steer our emotions.  We can choose happiness--whenever we are on the journey of life.  Positive emotions breed increased health, well-being, and success.  The happier we allow ourselves to feel, the more we create positive outcomes.  Happiness is a choice.  That's the secret."
Susie Pearl, author of:  Instructions for Happiness and Success