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Dogs, wolves and foxes descended from a small, weasel-like mammal called Miacis, a tree-dweller that lived approximately 40 million years ago. It was long believed that domesticated dogs dated back 14,000 years; molecular genetic techniques have revealed that dogs were domesticated long before that, probably 60,000 to 100,000 years ago.
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The tallest dogs are the Great Dane and Irish Wolfhound. The tallest Great Dane stood at 40.5 inches and an Irish Wolfhound 39 inches. |
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Zorba, an Old English Mastif, is believed to be the world's heaviest as well as longest dog ever recorded. In 1989, Zorba weighed 343 pounds and was 8 feet 3 inches long from nose to tail! |
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The heaviest dog breed is the St. Bernard, generally weighing between 140 - 200 pounds. The heaviest known St. Bernard was Benedictine, born in 1970, who weighed 305 pounds. A St. Bernard named Ayette's Brandy Bear shifted the heaviest load, 6,400'/2 pounds of steel on a wheeled cart, for 15 feet in less than 90 seconds. |
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The smallest dogs are the Chihuahua, the Yorkshire Terrier and the Toy Poodle. A Yorkie once weighed in at only 10 ounces. |
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Dogs help humans in countless ways - as guards, hunters, draught animals, eyes for the blind, drug and explosive detectors, rodent controllers - and even weapons! In Roman times and in the Middle Ages, mastiffs ran into battle against mounted knights wearing light armor, carrying spikes and pots of flaming sulfur and resin. In World War II the Russians trained dogs to run suicide missions between the tracks of German tanks with mines strapped on their backs. |
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Dogs have very acute hearing. A dog can hear sounds 250 yards away that most people cannot hear beyond 25 yards. People can register sounds of 20,000 vibrations per seconds and cats 25,000 vibrations per second dogs can register sounds of 100,000 vibrations per second. |
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Dogs have an excellent sense of smell due to the number of sensory cells they have. Humans have 5,000,000 sensory cells, a Dachshund has 125,000,000, a Fox Terrier has 147,000,000 and a German Shepard has 230,000,000. No wonder German Shepards are often used as "sniffer" dogs. Truffle hounds can find truffles (a fungus that grows underground) even when the truffles are 12 inches underground. |
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The average dogs lives to age 15, though large dogs typically live 10 years. At 10 months a dog is sexually mature. The oldest reliable recorded age for a dog was for Bluey, a Queensland "heeler", in Victoria, Australia who lived 29 years and 5 months. |
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Stone-aged people tamed dogs to help them track game. About eight thousand years ago, ancient Egyptians raised Saluki (Aribic for "noble one") hunting dogs. Saluki dogs are probably the oldest known breed. |
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Laika became the world's first canine space traveler. In 1975 Russian scientists sent the small dog aloft in an artificial earth satellite. |
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The Basenji, an African wolf dog, is the only dog that cannot bark. |
Hope you enjoyed these fascinating dog facts!
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