Dog Science

Every dog lover knows the feeling. The nuzzle of a dog’s nose, the warmth of them lying at our feet, even their whining when they want to get up on the bed. It really seems like our dogs love us, too. But for years, scientists have resisted that conclusion, warning against anthropomorphizing our pets. Enter Clive Wynne, a pioneering canine behaviorist whose research is helping to usher in a new era: one in which love, not intelligence or submissiveness, is at the heart of the human-canine relationship.

Can money buy you love? Aiden is about to find out. After years of not trusting a woman’s true intentions, Aiden has given up on them completely. He turns to Dream Droids, the premier company in creating an artificial companion, to build him the perfect woman. She’s smart—too smart. And tempting—too tempting. And Aiden can’t be tempted. An employee is stealing from his billion-dollar company, and the police feel his corporation is somehow behind a surge of a new drug on the street called Frenzy. When Aiden’s Dream Droid flaunts her intelligence and begins to connect the pieces, ...

When Danielle Geller’s mother dies of alcohol withdrawal during an attempt to get sober, Geller returns to Florida and finds her mother’s life packed into eight suitcases. Most were filled with clothes, except for the last one, which contained diaries, photos, and letters, a few undeveloped disposable cameras, dried sage, jewelry, and the bandana her mother wore on days she skipped a hair wash. Geller, an archivist and a writer, uses these pieces of her mother’s life to try and understand her mother’s relationship to home, and their shared need to leave it.

A newly certified space engines mechanic desperate for a job must overcome his doubts to apply for work in a small village in the asteroid belt. It's run by a beautiful women with a quirky sister. He gets the job, but must deal with falling in love with his boss, her sister falling in love with him, and a village full of eccentrics that include a man over exposed to cosmic rays who patrols around the village thinking he's a French Legionnaire. Dog Walking in the Asteroid Belt is a sweet and humorous story about a young man weighed down by doubts who comes to realize a village really can be ...

“How we interact with animals has preoccupied philosophers, poets, and naturalists for ages,” writes Susan Orlean. Since the age of six, when Orlean wrote and illustrated a book called Herbert the Near-Sighted Pigeon, she’s been drawn to stories about how we live with animals, and how they abide by us. Now, in On Animals, she examines animal-human relationships through the compelling tales she has written over the course of her celebrated career.

This delightful narrative takes listeners on a powerful search to unlock the secrets of dog cognition, based on evidence from trainers, owners, behaviorists, and the animals themselves. With in-depth reporting and more than a few personal adventures, best-selling author Jennifer S. Holland digs into what intelligence really means.

Toby dog suddenly has plenty to say for himself. The only witness to the brutal murder of his owner, Toby is hexed by a woman with evil intentions. “Speak to none but me”, she tells him. Wretched and misunderstood, he’s incarcerated in the local pound. With a death sentence hanging over his head, Toby has almost given up hope. But then he meets Clarissa. Not only is she a witch, she’s a local investigative journalist, and - amazingly - she can understand what he says too. Finally, he’s found somebody who believes his story.

The band's Tokyo concert is turning out to be more trouble than it's worth. Topper is doing his best to work things out. Snitz's dad shows up, with a problem. The girls manage to find friends. Come find out about all of this, and more besides.

CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson has one simple task: Watch an ambassador’s dog while the diplomat is conducting sensitive negotiations with an alien race. But you know dogs - always getting into something. And when this dog gets into something that could launch an alien civil war, Wilson has to find a way to solve the conflict, fast, or be the one in the Colonial Union’s doghouse. "The Dog King" is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

The Talbot clan has settled in to life at Etna Station. Mike has earned the rank of Lieutenant, but there’s no time to rest. Colonel Bennington has ordered Mike and his squad of misfits on a secretive mission to New York City, where they are tasked to complete a complicated rescue that rapidly becomes nearly impossible to accomplish. Cut off from all support, they face what may be the single most dangerous threat to all mankind as a super predator emerges from the rubble of the once vibrant city, now a broken shadow of its former self.

When eight-year-old Kirstie brings home a strange egg from the Scottish shore, her family never expects it to hatch. But the next day, Kirstie discovers a baby sea monster swimming in her bathtub! Part horse, part toad, part turtle and part crocodile, he's the oddest-looking creature Kirstie's family has ever seen. Only Kirstie's grandfather knows what the beastie really is: a Water Horse! This lovable creature is the perfect pet. The only trouble is, he can't stop growing.

A science experiment gone horribly awry has granted Max, Rocky, and Gizmo the unique ability to read and understand human words. Armed with this know - how, they continue to journey south, on the lookout for beacons planted by a trusted friend's owner - beacons that promise to lead the trio to their people. When the companions reach the ocean's edge, they find a free-spirited beachfront community.

The First Striker Pursuit have been tasked with hunting down war criminals. Joel and his team have the full resources of the Union behind them, and the Butcher of Blackrock is at the top of their list. The Butcher is as bad as they come—rumored to have killed hundreds and legendary for his brutal slaughtering of servicepeople, he’s the most prolific murderer in Talon history. Having once escaped the Butcher’s grasp, Joel learned long ago that when you go off-world, anything can and does happen. During this assignment to capture the Butcher, he and his team will be tested to their ...

It will take the courage of an outsider, the strength of a warlord, the skills of a rogue, and the bond between two sisters to forge a new future from the Ruins of Greatness left in the wake of the Masters. Long before Step’s time, and even before the birth of Salvo, the world that would create the greatest heroes and monsters ever known was a much colder place. Ferals and Neverwarms stalk the frozen wastes, searching for their next victims. Food is scarce, and warmth is scarcer. The dogs that remain must fight to ensure their survival in the harsh reality that has sprung up from the ...

Generations of dogs have been labeled training lemons for requiring actual motivation when all along they were perfectly normal. Numerous other completely and utterly normal dogs have been branded as canine misfits simply because they grew up to act like dogs. Barking, chewing, sniffing, licking, jumping up, and occasionally (just like people) having arguments are as normal and natural for dogs as wagging tails and burying bones.

When Bronwen Dickey brought her new dog home, she saw no traces of the infamous viciousness in her affectionate, timid pit bull. Which made her wonder: How had the breed - beloved by Teddy Roosevelt, Helen Keller, and TV's Little Rascals - come to be known as a brutal fighter? Her search for answers takes her from 19th-century New York City dogfighting pits - the cruelty of which drew the attention of the recently formed ASPCA - to early 20th-century movie sets where pit bulls cavorted with Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton.

Alexandra Horowitz’s brilliant On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes shows us how to see the spectacle of the ordinary - to practice, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put it, "the observation of trifles". On Looking is structured around a series of eleven walks the author takes, mostly in her Manhattan neighborhood, with experts on a diverse range of subjects, including an urban sociologist, the well-known artist Maira Kalman, a geologist, a physician, and a sound designer. She also walks with a child and a dog to see the world as they perceive it.

In the field known as Astrobiology, there is a research program called SETI, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. At the heart of SETI, there is a mystery known as The Great Silence, or The Fermi Paradox, named after the famous physicist Enrico Fermi. Essentially, he asked “If they exist, where are they?”. Some quite cogent arguments maintain that if there was extraterrestrial intelligence, they should have visited the Earth by now. This story, a bit tongue in cheek, gives a fictional account of one explanation for The Great Silence, known as The Zoo Hypothesis. Are we a ...

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But what about relativity? Physics professor Chad Orzel and his inquisitive canine companion, Emmy, tackle the concepts of general relativity in this irresistible introduction to Einstein's physics. Through armchair- and sometimes passenger-seat-conversations with Emmy about the relative speeds of dog and cat motion or the logistics of squirrel-chasing, Orzel translates complex Einsteinian ideas into examples simple enough for a dog to understand.

In this entertaining and accessible exploration of love, Oxford anthropologist Dr Anna Machin dives into the science behind the myriad types of love that exist in the world, including romantic love, parental love, friendships, love for pets, football teams, religious love and even love for our smartphones. Through original research brought to life by interviews and case studies, and encompassing such fascinating areas as polyamorous relationships, parasocial (love for a celebrity) and sacred loves, this book argues that it is time to stop putting romantic love on a pedestal.