Creature feature
As we speed into February, here’s a round-up of factoids and tidbits about pets and those who love them.
Leash lizard: There’s no telling what you might see people out walking on a leash, but on a warm day last fall, I looked out my window to see a woman with an iguana. At first I thought it was an odd, hairless dachshund, but it was really an iguana.
The reptile, which looked to be about 3 feet long and was sporting a harness and leash, didn’t appear to be excited or particularly enjoying itself as it crept sluggishly through the grass in the yard across the street. But, admittedly, I’ve no way of gauging a lizard’s emotional state. After a minute or two, the owner picked up the reptile, hugged it to her chest and walked on down the road.
Apparently, taking a pet iguana for a walk isn’t unheard of in iguana-owner circles. The Green Iguana Society website, greenigsociety.org, dedicates a page to explaining the pros and cons of leashing an iguana when taking him out for a breath of fresh air. A pro for leashing a big lizard: “It will reduce the chances of your iguana making a mad dash up a tree before you can grab it.” And the con?: “Training the iguana to accept the leash.” Apparently, iguanas are terrified of leashes and will go into an “alligator roll” at the feeling of being restrained.
Showing the love: When Feb. 14 rolls around, our furry family members will share in the annual outpouring of love. The National Retail Federation released a report in January predicting that American pet owners will spend $703 million to show their devotion. While that seems like a lot, the federation points out that it averages about $5.28 per pet.
Windows to the soul?: If you’ve ever been told you look like your dog and wondered why, wonder no more. In an article in the journal Anthrozoos, psychologist and researcher Sadahiko Nakajima of Japan thinks he knows why: It’s all in the eyes.
In a study last year, Nakajima showed more than 500 people two sets of photographs: One was of actual dog-owner pairs while the other set contained random pairings of people and dogs. He asked study participants to look at the photos in various configurations, such as with the eyes masked, faces fully exposed and with the eyes or mouths covered.
With only the photo subjects’ eyes showing, the participants correctly paired owners and dogs 74 percent of the time as opposed to only 50 percent of the time when the eyes were covered.
Nakajima’s take on why a person might look like his dog is that people may tend to choose dogs that appear similar to themselves in some way because humans have a preference for the familiar.
Left-brain, right-brain: Researchers at the University of Sussex in England say dogs and people use the same brain hemispheres when interpreting human speech, according to ScienceNews.org.
A study of 25 dogs showed that dogs favored the left brain when listening to a flat, robotic voice issuing commands without emotion. But when hearing emotion-laden but meaningless speechlike sounds, the dogs were more likely to turn an ear favoring the right brain. But the study doesn’t explain whether there are different meanings for a dog’s left or right head-tilts when listening to his human.