Dog Facts

Happy Hound
Originally uploaded by Elfleda.

All 400 breeds of domestic dog belong to the same species: Canis familiaris. The vast diversity is down to humans carefully selecting valuable inherited traits but often encouraging unusual ones - such as dwarfism or lack of a tail - that, in the wild, might prevent a dog surviving long enough to reproduce.

A dog's nose has 220 million olfactory cells, a human's just five million. A dog's sense of smell is not only hundreds of times better than ours: it's four times better than the best odour-detecting machines. They can even smell cancer.

Doctors in California have found that both Labradors and Portuguese water dogs can detect lung and breast cancer with greater accuracy than mammograms or CT scans. The dogs correctly identified 99 per cent of lung cancer sufferers and 88 per cent of breast cancer patients simply by smelling their breath.

Smell

When the Roman Emperor Vespasian (AD 9-79) was challenged over his policy of taxing public lavatories, he declared: "Money has no smell." In 2006, scientists at the University of Leipzig found out that he was right. The metallic smell we experience after handling coins is actually a type of body odour. When we touch the metal, sweat from the skin gains electrons, then reacts with body oils and causes them to decompose, creating the familiar smell.

RIP Sir Edmund Hillary

Sir Edmund Hillary, who has died today at the age of 88, made it to the summit of Everest in 1953, and became the first man on the planet to reach its highest point.

There had been seven legal failed attempts to reach the top before he was sucessful.


Photo by apurdam

Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

The origin and true meaning of this phrase is actually totally unrelated to any form of animal or its testicles. Back in time to the period of the Napoleonic War, the great gunships of this time carried many cannons on various gun decks. As an efficient method of storage and delivery of cannon balls to the cannon for firing, a "Monkey" (this term is used to define a table and/ or a rail) made of brass was used to hold the balls. In very cold temperatures the brass would contract or even break thus allowing the cannon balls to roll off the Monkey onto the gun deck. Hence the sailors would say "it is cold enough to freeze the balls off a Brass Monkey".

Picture by Anne Bourne