The Science of Dogs

My career as a science journalist began with a story on canine genetics. It was the summer of 2004, and a female boxer named Tasha had just become the first dog in the world to have her complete genome sequenced. It was a major advance for an animal that, though beloved by humans, had been overlooked by many scientists.

Over the two decades since, I have seen dogs transform from an academic afterthought to the new “it” animal for scientific research. In the United States alone, tens of thousands of dogs are now enrolled in large, ongoing studies. Canine scientists are investigating topics as varied as cancer, communication, longevity, emotion, retrieving behavior, the gut microbiome, the health effects of pollution and “doggy dementia.”

The research has the potential to give dogs happier, healthier and longer lives — and improve human well-being, too, as I report in a story published this morning. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain why dogs have become such popular scientific subjects.

Big dog data

First, an important clarification: Dogs have long been the subject of invasive medical experiments, similar to lab rats and monkeys. That’s not the research I’m discussing here. The studies that have exploded in popularity involve pets. They require the enthusiastic participation of owners, who are collecting canine saliva samples, submitting veterinary records and answering survey questions about their furry friends.

One reason these studies have become more common: Scientists realized that dogs were interesting and unique subjects. Our canine companions have social skills that even great apes lack, for instance, and they happen to be the most physically diverse mammal species on the planet. (Consider the difference between a Chihuahua and a Great Dane.) Dogs also share our homes and get many of the same diseases that people do, making them good models for human health.

“Most of the questions that we have in science are not questions about what happens to animals living in sterile environments,” said Evan MacLean, the director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center at the University of Arizona. “They’re questions about real organisms in the real world shared with humans. And dogs are a really, really good proxy for that in ways that other animals aren’t.”