AR-News: NOVA (PBS) airs Feb. 3 "Dogs and More Dogs"celebrating dogs

[Snugglezzz at aol.com]

NOVA explores the genetics of man's best friend

By NANCY RABINOWITZ
Associated Press Writer

BOSTON -- 
Dino the dog wasn't just another handsome face. He got the acting job because of his ability to release a squirt bottle trigger with his paw.

Dino's new life - more glamorous than his old one in the Las Vegas pound - is now focused on helping to sell fabric deodorizer. The cute mixed-breed is featured in "Dogs and More Dogs," a public television NOVA show that show celebrates man's best friend.

"Dogs" (airing 8-9 p.m. EST Tuesday Feb. 3; check local listings) is a fun, eclectic combination of whimsical cartoons and science with an added dash of humanity thrown in to remind viewers just why people love dogs so much. It explores dogs' genetic origins and the biology behind floppy ears, curved tails, spotted coats, short legs, long snouts and other canine traits.

"I think the most adorable thing is just all the dogs. The extraordinary, the most interesting thing is the science of it, how in the world the dogs become the varied species, how their roles become specialized genetically," show host John Lithgow said in a telephone interview. The actor is a self-proclaimed dog lover who walks his own 7-year-old Australian blue merle shepherd, Blue, every day in New York's Central Park.

"Dogs" ponders the theory that our modern pets evolved from wolves.

The program winds the clock back 20 years to Siberia, where Russian geneticist Dmitri Belyaev observed changes in hormone levels and appearance of wild foxes that were tamed. Other scientists believe similar changes occurred in ancient wolves that interacted with humans, eventually leading to the evolution of dogs.

Wolves who approached ancient human settlements to feed on garbage eventually developed tamer characteristics as a survival edge, said Raymond Coppinger, a biologist and animal behaviorist at Hampshire College in Amherst who appears on the show.

"Any one wolf that's a little tamer than the other, who can stay there longer, gets more food. He's the one that's going to win that evolutionary battle," Coppinger said in a telephone interview.

The program also explores the idea that dogs who were the best hunters were rewarded with the most food by their human masters. A better-fed dog had a better chance of attracting a mate, and passing on its genes.

NOVA also looks at the competitive world of dog breeding and dog shows, and genetic disorders blamed on the quest to produce the perfect-looking dog.

University of Pennsylvania researcher Karen Overall, who examines an English pointer on the program, studies dogs born with debilitating shyness. Some dogs have the trait naturally, but overbred dogs can have severe symptoms, so nervous their bodies are stiff and can be easily maneuvered like cardboard cutouts, Overall said.

She and other researchers study those dogs for clues to human disorders such as schizophrenia and autism.

"Dogs are, in my opinion - and I'm very biased - the flawless model for human behavior. It's the closest we're ever going to get to see how our behaviors are going to go wrong. Dog's brains work the same way human's brains work," Overall said in a telephone interview.

The show reminds viewers of their social bonds with dogs. University of California geneticist Mike Levine - a self-described `bug guy' - tells how he held out for 10 years against pet ownership. Then his wife and children talked him into adopting a small mixed-breed dog named Taxi.

Levine's fears that the new dog would throw up, wet on the floor and shed hair, were all realized. But Taxi began to grow on him.

Returning from a tough day at his competitive Berkeley lab Levine found things didn't seem so bad when Taxi greeted him in "a very straightforward and honest fashion."

"Dogs slavishly like us," says NOVA producer Noel Buckner. "Somebody who just likes us unconditionally, we love them back. They look at you with those big, soupy eyes and they wag their tales, and they lick your face and we're all susceptible to that."

---

On the net: www.pbs.org/nova/dogs