Hi Mia,

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I’m coming to you hopped up on 3 cups of coffee, a chocolate chip cookie and a barrel of excitement. This weekend, I’m participating at Science Hack Day: Science in the City, an event in its second year running. The host is Francois Grey (Twitter:@FrancoisGrey) a physicist and the head of Citizen Science at NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress.

This two-day event is built on a simple premise:

Life in the city is complicated, and sometimes the only way to solve an urban problem is with a hack–a science hack, that is.

Science hacks are low-cost, elegant workarounds that create useful scientific projects. Science Hack Day is a two-day event that brings together scientists, designers, developers and innovators who will invent, build and test their projects.

On Saturday morning, thirteen hacks were pitched, and anyone who is interested can drop by to participate in Downtown Brooklyn. I’m surrounded by people either tinkering away on computers or other robotic-looking structures. Others took to the streets to record the sounds of the city or set-up hi-tech trash cans. Tomorrow I have the pleasure of sitting on a panel that will give out awards for the best Science Hacks.

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You know exactly what I'm talking about because you were all jazzed after attending  Science Rewired (and covered the experience here), and a while back, I listed some of my favorite #citsci projects, including projects involving laughing babies, otters and clouds. 

For those less familiar with public participation science projects, here’s a short, quick and dirty video describing the wide range of projects that anyone can join. Being involved is not only about participating in research and helping researchers, it's also about learning more about local communities, collecting relevant data (say on air quality in your neighborhood), and in some cases, making new discoveries:



But what about dogs? Much of the canine research in recent years is conducted in academic lab spaces or owner homes, but over the last few years, we’ve seen immense growth in virtual, online projects that require active participation from anyone in the world. As examples, we've previously blogged about Project: Play With Your Dog as well as Poo Power!

Here are online, public participation dog science projects that anyone in the world can join:

C-BARQ (Free)
A questionnaire designed to provide dog owners and professionals with standardized evaluations of canine temperament and behavior. 

Dognition 
A variety of science-based games that Dognition members can sign up for and play with their pup.

Emotional Content of Vocalizations (Free)
What is the emotional content of dog and human vocalizations? Listen and submit your answer (I covered this study on Scientific American, dedicating a lot of words to making fun of Bret Michaels, as is appropriate).

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Howl Coder (Free)
The Canid Howl Project is the work of a large number of scientists, trying to understand the range of different vocal behaviours of canids, primarily wolves, dogs, and coyotes. Participants listen to vocalizations and analyze the recordings.

Woof! (Free)
The Woof! experiment explores how people respond to dog barks. The study is trying to better understand how we respond to everyday sounds.

Risk factors for low-appeal shelter dogs (Free) 
This online study investigates how descriptors and physical appearance affect shelter dog length of stay and adoption success. Participants help by tagging images of dogs.

Factors contributing to aggressive impulsivity in the dogs (Free)
This is a serious welfare problem for both humans and dogs. PhD student Fernanda Fadel is trying to identify genetic risk factors in dogs which may allow researchers to develop a simple test to identify at-risk individuals. These dogs may need specific management measures to help them live happy and fulfilling lives, at minimal risk to others. Participate by completing a short questionnaire. 

Canine Researchers! Do you have an online, public participation project that we haven't listed here? Email us, and let us know! doyoubelieveindog@gmail.com
~~

Projects often revolve around researchers and participants, and each group can have slightly different needs. 

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RESEARCHERS! I imagine that many of our colleagues are looking for study participants. Hooking up with citizen science project aggregators, like those listed below, is a great way to find interested participants. Researchers spend months and months on project design and methods, but recruiting and engaging participants is an entirely different bag of worms. Some of the below websites focus on participant recruitment and engagement. For example, SciStarter has many tools and resources for citizen science projects seeking participants.

PARTICIPANTS! It's not just about dogs, although dogs are very excellent. Many public science projects need help collecting and analyzing data on a wide range of topics. Interested in plants? Interested in birds? Interested in whale vocalizations? There's something for everyone. Take a look below:

SciStarter

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“SciStarter is the place to find, join, and contribute to science through recreational activities and citizen science research projects. Our database of citizen science projects enable discovery, organization, and greater participation in citizen science.”

CitSci.org
“CitSci.org supports your research by providing tools and resources that allow you to customize your scientific procedure - all in one location on the internet."

Cornell Lab of Ornithology
"Anyone who watches birds, from backyards to city streets to remote forests, can help researchers better understand birds and their habits."

Zooniverse
"Zooniverse contains projects produced, maintained and developed by the Citizen Science Alliance. The member institutions of the CSA work with many academic and other partners around the world to produce projects that use the efforts and ability of volunteers to help scientists and researchers."

Scientific American
An aggregator of many public engagement projects.

Your Wild Life 
Many projects that "explore the biodiversity in our daily lives." I’m pretty psyched about the new Cat Tracker project. 

These are just a sampling of non-canine projects flying around the Internet. If anyone has contributed to public participation projects, we'd love to hear about your experience.

See you in T minus 2 weeks!!!!

Julie

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Hey Julie!

So much going on I need to take three deep breaths to calm down!

Firstly - we have a winner! Actually - thanks to the awesome crew at SPARCS, we have two! Very excited to meet Marsha P and Kristi M at #SPARCS2014 and want to thank all the excellent people who responded to our giveaway shoutout on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. We hope those of your who weren't successful will consider still coming along or joining us on the livestream broadcast.

Secondly - I loved learning about the differences in UK and US shelter workers perceptions of pit bulls and all the associated bits and pieces that went along with that in our latest guest post by Dr Christy Hoffman. Really, really interesting research and I look forward to the next piece of the puzzle (aka 'new science') in that area.

Thirdly - it's dog bite prevention week in the USA right now! We can't all own Tara the Hero Cat (and to be fair, as much as she is worthy of her notoriety and 20million+ hits on the viral video showcasing her ninja skills, she didn't actually prevent the bite - although I'm pretty confident she helped prevent it being a whole lot worse). If you somehow missed what on earth I'm talking about - check out this clip of amazing Tara (but a warning, it does show security camera footage of a child being attacked by a dog and the subsequent wounds):

• Supervise children <14yo around dogs, even known dogs
• Don't try to pat a dog you don't know, even if it is on the other side of a fence
• Make sure your dog is well socialised and trained in basic commands
• Keep your dog healthy
• Teach your children to be mindful and careful of their actions around dogs, especially when the dog is tied up, eating or sleeping
• If you are threatened by a dog, remain still and calm with your hands balled by your sides - don't run
• If you are attacked by a dog, curl up in a ball and protect your face

Click to enlarge

 © Do You Believe in Dog? 2014

Hi Julie and Mia,

Guess what? We have something in common!
Do You Believe in Dog? started as a result of you two meeting at a conference, and my latest publication also resulted from a conference-inspired, long-distance collaboration. Dr. Carri Westgarth and I met at the International Society for Anthrozoology meeting in England in 2012. We quickly realized we share both personal and professional interests in dogs. During one of our chats, I showed Carri pictures of dogs I’d worked with in a US shelter. As I flipped through the pictures, I noted out loud that many were pit bulls, and Carri responded, “We wouldn’t call most of those dogs pit bulls here in the UK.”

Flickr/denial_land

This conversation motivated us to conduct a study investigating differences between which dogs shelter workers in the US and UK consider pit bulls. Following the conference, Carri and I collected pictures of shelter dogs and designed a survey to learn more about shelters’ intake policies and assess how shelter workers determine breed identity. We wanted survey participants to look at pictures of shelter dogs and then tell us what breed they thought the dog was and which characteristics led them to their conclusion. Then, we had participants go through the pictures a second time and tell us whether or not they felt each dog was a pit bull.

One of the hardest parts of this project was narrowing down the pictures to just 20. We would have loved to have included more but didn’t want to make our survey so long that people became frustrated and quit before finishing. Our final set of pictures included 11 bull breeds. Twelve of the dogs were from the US, and the remaining 8 were from the UK.

Some of the dogs used in our survey (excerpt from publication)

We launched the survey at the end of 2012 and recruited participants via social media and an e-mail campaign directed at shelters. We ended up with responses from 416 US participants and 54 UK participants.

Eleven percent of US participants reported working in shelters that are impacted by Breed Specific Legislation (BSL). Although all UK shelters are impacted by BSL due to the Dangerous Dog Act, the survey results indicated that not all UK shelter workers were aware of this. That surprised us!

Flickr/hand-nor-glove

We were even more surprised by participants’ thoughts regarding which dogs were pit bulls. Over half of US participants considered 7 of the 20 dogs to be pit bulls, whereas over half of UK participants considered only 1 of the dogs to be a pit bull. Furthermore, US participants were significantly more likely than UK participants to consider 12 of the dogs to be pit bulls.

Flickr/actionkat13

When we provided participants with a list of 10 bull breed and Mastiff breed names and asked if they considered any of these breeds to be pit bulls, US participants were more likely than UK participants to say that 6 of the breeds were. The biggest discrepancy between US and UK participants’ responses was regarding the Staffordshire bull terrier. Two percent of UK participants considered this breed to be a pit bull, whereas 69% of US participants did!

Carri and I were astonished by how much UK and US shelter workers’ perceptions of what a pit bull looks like differed. We also were surprised by how much disagreement there was amongst shelter workers within our respective countries. We thought about how many times we have seen news reports that identify aggressive dogs as "pit bulls" and how infrequently pictures of the impounded dogs accompany these articles. It made us wonder how much of the pit bull’s reputation is affected by dogs being identified as pit bulls in one location, even though they may not be considered pit bulls elsewhere.

We tried to figure out why there is so much disagreement regarding what a pit bull dog is and concluded it may in part be because the American Kennel Club and the UK’s Kennel Club do not have breed standards for the pit bull or American pit bull terrier (although the United Kennel Club does!). According to the UK’s Dangerous Dog Act, a pit bull dog is one that meets the physical features described for pit bulls in a 1977 issue of the American periodical Pit Bull Gazette. American pit bull terriers and American Staffordshire terriers fall under the UK’s definition of a pit bull. Notably, Staffordshire bull terriers are not classified as pit bull dogs in the UK, although as our results showed, they tend to be considered pit bulls in the US.

Flickr/eileen_mcfall

One might wonder if our findings indicate there should be alternative ways of identifying shelter dogs. Recently, there has been a push to label US shelter dogs of unknown lineages as American shelter dogs, but based on our survey results, this strategy has not taken off. Perhaps, at least, our findings will inspire people to question the morality and efficacy of legislation that is based on a dog’s appearance, particularly when disagreement is so pervasive.


Christy Hoffman, PhD  
Assistant Professor
Department of Animal Behavior,
Ecology, and Conservation
Canisius College




Further reading:
Hoffman C.L., Harrison N., Wolff L. & Westgarth C. (2014). Is That Dog a Pit Bull? A Cross-Country Comparison of Perceptions of Shelter Workers Regarding Breed Identification, Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/10888705.2014.895904

Voith, V. L., Trevejo, R., Dowling-Guyer, S., Chadik, C., Marder, A., Johnson, V., & Irizarry, K. (2013). Comparison of visual and DNA-based breed identification of dog and inter-observer reliability. American Journal of Sociological Research, 3(2), 17–29. DOI: 10.5923/j.sociology.20130302.02

Marder A. & Voith V. (2010). The American Shelter Dog: Identification of dogs by personality, Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 5 (1) 26. DOI: 10.1016/j.jveb.2009.10.036

Voith V.L., Ingram E., Mitsouras K. & Irizarry K. (2009). Comparison of Adoption Agency Breed Identification and DNA Breed Identification of Dogs, Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 12 (3) 253-262. DOI: 10.1080/10888700902956151

Flickr/jasonbacon

Relevant links on breed and breed identification:
Dangerous Dogs Act (UK): http://archive.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-pets/pets/cruelty/documents/ddogslawyouleaflet.pdf

Description of the physical features of a pit bull type dog based on the 1977 issue of the Pit Bull Gazette: http://archive.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-pets/pets/cruelty/documents/dogs-guide-enforcers.pdf (p.14)

American Kennel Club: http://www.akc.org/

Kennel Club: https://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/

United Kennel Club: http://www.ukcdogs.com/Web.nsf/WebPages/Home

© Do You Believe in Dog? 2014

Flickr/jenorton

#AFO2014

Hi Mia,

Last week I had the pleasure of traveling to Olomouc — which I learned to pronounce like ‘all um oats’ — the 6th largest city in the Czech Republic. I was there to participate in Academia Film Olomouc (#AFO2014, Trailer, Twitter/Facebook), an international science film and science communication conference in its 49th year! AFO blew me away and left me wanting it to be 2015 so I could go back already!

AFO featured science communication galore with international and short documentaries as well as panels and talks between scientists, government and the general public. I arrived and immediately caught a great panel on 'What is Science Communication' with Jack Lewis (Twitter), Karl Byrne (Twitter), and Jennifer Gardy (Twitter) -- who has the most entertaining website I’ve ever seen.

Film awards went to More Than Honey, a story about decimated bee colonies and its implications, Monthlies, a coming of age story about teen girls facing a “new period” of their lives (menstruation), and a number of other films. I am now obsessed with the Canadian program The Nature of Things, and I recommend that everyone check out two of their episodes: Lights Out!, exploring how the type of light we are exposed to at night can cancel the benefits naturally triggered by the absence of light, and Wild Canada, featuring wildlife photography at its best (with bears doing bear-things that only a mindful photographer could capture).

I gave a presentation following a screening of the 2010 Horizon program, The Secret Life of the Dog (online here). I think this was one of the first programs to look at the growing field of canine science, and since then many other programs have covered the many studies in our field (like the NOVA special that aired recently, Dogs and Super Senses).

In the presentation, I cautioned that media outlets often oversimplify canine research findings. Instead of reporting, “This is what the research found,” the media often puts a spin on the findings that doesn’t necessarily follow from the research itself. I gave an example of this oversimplification and mis-selling of research over at Dog Spies in the post, ’Don’t Sell Your Dog Short.’

You and I often have this conversation because at Do You Believe in Dog? we try to walk the line between simplifying research, but not oversimplifying or misrepresenting. What concerns me the most about media oversimplification, is that the conclusions they draw tend to reify stereotypes about dogs, and it’s almost as if the research were never done.

The comic Science News Cycle (via PhD comics) that you shared with me is a great example of what we're talking about. It shows how research findings can gets twisted and convoluted through the process of translation and dissemination. In the comic, the researcher finds that, “A is correlated with B, given C, assuming D and under E conditions.” These findings are then interpreted by the media and news organizations, and ultimately the researcher's grandma in the cartoon ends up wearing a particular hat to “ward off” A. The takeaway: research translation can spiral out of control, and the resulting "content" might have no bearing on the research itself. Not good!

(PhD Comics, Copyright Jorge Cham)

I’m looking forward to hearing from our next guest blogger later this week who will present her new study on a highly contentious topic that is often oversimplified by the media. What could it be??? ;)

Till later!

Julie

Just comment below to let us know what you'd like most to see at the show and we'll nominate our favourite responses by the end of Sunday 27 April 2014. 

This giveaway is also open to responses received via our Facebook and Twitter community.


THE BIGGEST DOG EVENT IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE RETURNS TO MELBOURNE
Australia’s largest and most comprehensive event dedicated to educating, informing and entertaining dog lovers will take centre stage from Friday 2nd

Over three huge days, over 250 exhibitors, more than 600 dogs and a pack of pooch experts, personalities and performers will descend on the venue to provide 20,000+ visitors with everything and anything dog related on a scale never before seen in the Southern Hemisphere!

The Dog Lovers Show is a family friendly event which celebrates the unconditional love we share for our dogs with expert seminars, dog shows from the country’s most talented canines, information on all the off-leash parks in Victoria and literally thousands of the latest doggy products and services to reward your dog.

From dog adoption to hot dogs, there’s talks on diet, training and exercise to the fun of watching Chester the famous skateboarding dog on Centre stage - the Dog Lovers Show offers something for all ages.

LOCATION: Royal Exhibition Building, Carlton, Melbourne

DATES: Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th  May at the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton.

TIMES: 10am - 5pm Daily

Detailed info and for tickets visit: dogloversshow.com.au or
Facebook: www.facebook.com/dogloversshow
__________________________________________________________

The give away has now ended! We had such great responses here on the blog, on our Facebook page and at our Twitter feed, that we ended up using a random number generator to decide who won - it seemed the most fair way! Winners have been contacted - thank you all so much for participating - hope to see you at the DLS - please come say hello if our paths cross!  :)  Mia

Just Wow. Photo: Chris Sembrot Photography

Hi Julie,

Yes, but WHY?

I loved Claudia Fugazza's guest post about drawing on dogs' social imitation capacities to learn as copy-cats in the Do as I do training technique. Good stuff!

A few things collided this week that resulted in me deciding to look into why dogs lick people. The first was the Huffington Post 'This Is What Happens When You Ask People To Kiss Their Dogs In Front Of A Camera' (example above from Chris Sembrot's 'For the love of dog' photography collection) that a friend so kindly brought to my attention. 

The second was this tweet that came to us on Twitter from passionate science education guru (and keen admirer of dogs), Charlotte Pezaro:

@DoUBelieveInDog why do dogs lick you lots when they like you?
— Chloe Zara Potter (@cpezaro) March 28, 2014

Now Julie, like me, I'm sure you know there's no quick and easy answer to this - I knew I needed more than 140 characters to respond to Charlotte, and I also threw it out to the 7,500+ people (What! So exciting!) in our Facebook community:

Valid point! Photo: Flickr/jmonin87

Turns out (not surprisingly!) our Facebook community is a really clued in bunch (I've hazed names to be polite). They pretty much know it all anyway. However, for Charlotte's sake, let quickly revisit why indeed, dogs lick us bipedal folk.

Food: the evolutionary basis of licking?
Many people have heard at some point or another that dogs lick at us -- and particularly our faces -- because young wolves lick and poke at adult wolf muzzles to trigger them to regurgitate food that they can then feed on. It's likely that the common ancestor shared by dogs, wolves and other canid species also demonstrated this behaviour, as it's also seen in foxes, African wild dogs, etc. 


However, licking is also seen in young canids (and many mammal species) as a newborn behaviour when a puppy seeks the mother's nipples to feed.

This suckling behaviour is thought to be re-oriented to become a useful pacifying gesture. A human analogy is to consider young children thumb-sucking to self-soothe -- imagine if they licked our faces instead when they felt a bit unsure or stressed! Dogs have been seen to use licking as a type of appeasement behaviour - often interpreted by people as intended to reduce tension or 'apologise'. This kind of 'pacifying' lick can be self directed in the absence of other dogs or people, and in extreme cases, can even be a self-mutilation health issue.

Greeting: I lick you = I like you?
Dogs may lick another (dog, or person) during greeting. This can be for a number of reasons as our clever Facebook team outlined. Greetings can even become ritualised, and in addition to licking, can include play bows, rubbing, jumping, running and vocalising.

These can be considered affiliative behaviours - designed to elicit attachment, often interpreted as bonding and playful. 

Not really from a pirate.

These greetings are generally consistent and independent of how we look or what we do. Lynette Hart (in The Domestic Dog, see below for reference) suggests that "In this way, dogs may provide their owners with feelings of unconditional acceptance, and at the same time, enhance the person's attachment to the dog". 

 

Similar to the evolutionary basis of appeasement licking, affiliative licking may have originally developed in young pups experiencing parental licking to keep clean and generalised into a shared bonding and tactile behaviour amongst littermates. 

Others have suggested that dog licking can be used to 'dismiss' people or increase space. This is interesting (outlined here by Dr Patricia McConnell), and although it has not been published in the scientific literature (to my knowledge), it is something I can relate to from scenarios with my own dog. 

 
If I blow in Caleb's face - he will 100%, always, absolutely - lick me. If I do it again, he will 100%, always, absolutely box me with a front paw - usually right in my face. This can be teamed with a play bow and launch into play, he might move his face away or he might leave by walking off altogether. To the left I even managed to interrupt the old man's sleep on the couch to demo this for you (n=1). 

 

So do you think his lick saying "go away"? Or is it a variation on appeasement? Or affiliative? Food for thought. Speaking of food...

Taste: licks to sample?

Maybe we just taste good? We often have salty, sweaty hands and faces, don't we? We put delicious things into our mouths every day, so why wouldn't dogs be interested in having a sample of the residue? 

We can be fairly sure that licking, in addition to smelling, brings a whole host of information to dogs about where we have been, not just what we've ingested. It also gets our attention which may lead to more interaction, feeding, patting - things that serve to reward the behaviour and reinforce dogs that good things come from licking people.

So Julie - and Charlotte - licking is a lot of things. It can be appeasing and it can be affiliating, it can be exploratory and it can be tasty, it can get our attention or maybe even dismiss us, it can be stress relieving and it can be a sign of anxiety. The initial question asked 'Why do dogs lick you lots when they like us" - but can we assume that because they lick us, they like us? Maybe.

Flickr: MikeBaird

But maybe not always. It's certainly nice to think so. Alexandra Horowitz said, "It is not a stretch to say that the licks are a way to express happiness that you have returned". But then again - it could just be that leg moisturiser you just applied.

What an oxymoron licking appears to be - but it certainly seems important to dogs! 

I think it's important we keep asking these kinds of questions and considering the answers from the dogs' perspective.

Til next time, big slurps to all!

Mia

p.s. maybe 140 characters is enough after all?

.@cpezaro Short version: can be affiliative, attention seeking, stress relieving, tasty!
— Cobb & Hecht (@DoUBelieveInDog) March 28, 2014

Further reading: 

Mech L.D., Wolf P.C. & Packard J.M. (1999). Regurgitative food transfer among wild wolves, Canadian Journal of Zoology, 77 (8) 1192-1195. DOI: 10.1139/cjz-77-8-1192

Horowitz, A. (2010). Inside of a dog: What dogs see, smell, and know. Simon and Schuster.

Abrantes, R. (2013). Dog language. Dogwise Publishing.

Serpell, J. (Ed.). (1995). The domestic dog: its evolution, behaviour and interactions with people. Cambridge University Press.

Bradshaw J.W.S., Blackwell E.J. & Casey R.A. (2009). Dominance in domestic dogs—useful construct or bad habit?, Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 4 (3) 135-144. DOI: 10.1016/j.jveb.2008.08.004

Bonanni R., Cafazzo S., Valsecchi P. & Natoli E. (2010). Effect of affiliative and agonistic relationships on leadership behaviour in free-ranging dogs, Animal Behaviour, 79 (5) 981-991. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.02.021

© Mia Cobb | Do You Believe in Dog? 2014