Dog

Peru’s breed of hairless dogs almost died out. But now Peru claims these dogs as “cultural patrimony.”

Prairie dogs once numbered in the billions across the prairies of the West and Mexico. Today there is a fraction of the original population left but activists are working to bring back the prairie dogs and possibly the prairie along with them.

Anyone who owns a dog knows that each one is a little different, with a distinctive personality. At the Clever Dog Lab at the Veterinary University of Vienna, scientists are trying to figure out where that personality comes from — and how it can be tapped.

Tracking endangered animals is a tough task. But some scientists from Washington state have an unlikely ally in highly trained, and hyper-active, dogs. The animals smell out skat, which the scientists can then analyze to make determinations about the health of a species in a given area.