National Geographic Explorer
Rodd Houston
Rodd Houston narrates us through this National Geographic Explorer episode called “The Science of Dogs”. This TV documentary views the extreme rapid evolution of dogs in a very short period of time evolutionary speaking. It’s a close look at the relationship between man and dog, and even into the dna to attempt to determine how we were able to evolve all these different species in such a short time. It also looks at what this mutation of the genes of our canine friends has cost them. The same “slippery” genes that allow vast difference in size, shape, and such, has also introduced genetic problems in certain breeds like blindness, deafness, bone deformities, etc. It also looks at the differences between the wolf and the dog. It seems that dogs are 99.8% identical, and all the differences between great danes, collies, chihuahuas, and dachshunds comes from differences in the last .2%.
There are also very interesting looks as specific experiments in developing breeds of dogs for very specific uses; how dogs can be used for identifying cancer, drugs, explosives, and other types of things. There is a very interesting experiment where a couple raised a group of dogs and a group of wolves from birth, and they can experiment on the two groups in the same way. In an interesting experiment, the showed how a wolf sets about to solve a problem by himself, and a dog, on the other hand, would give up very easy and depend on the human for assistance. There are some very interesting reasons why dog is man’s best friend. Not only have the been helping us for centuries, but the experimentation of the dog genome is very useful because of the ability of a dog to evolve very quickly. By having 2 litters a year, it speeds up the process even faster, and developing ways to help genetic problems in dogs may very well help us to correct genetic problems in humans.
This is a very interesting documentary, and a fascinating hour learning a lot of new things about our closest animal friend. I found it all very intriguing and quite entertaining. I gained a lot of respect for my dogs behavior and why he’s like he is. I also learned a lot about the value of “the mutt” and why a pure breed is not always the best thing for the dog. I highly recommend this documentary for anyone who is interested. It is an excellent episode of Explorer.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
Movie Review - National Geographic: The Science of Dogs (2007) {NR},
