For all the dogs I’ve known in my life, I wrote What the Dog Knows. Such a slow and pleasureful project; it took nearly ten years of revising the story and evolving the characters. No one rushed me, I ... Read More  

Have a junior science lover on your holiday shopping list? Here’s how to give them a special treat: Buy a copy of Fox Talk or Fuzzy Forensics from your favourite bookseller Email a copy of the receipt to shop@foxtalk.ca Include ... Read More  

Some people hate the fact that scientists are always changing their minds about stuff. Eggs are healthy! Eggs are bad for you! No wait, not actually that bad after all! *facepalm* I have no problem with this kind of ... Read More  

Turns out that there’s a difference between cats and dogs. Shocking, I know. 😀 Dogs, much like the foxes featured in my book Fox Talk, are domesticated. They’ve undergone an evolutionary process that had such a large genetic impact on ... Read More  

In Fox Talk, I describe experiments done on wolves and dogs and domestic foxes, to test their ability to understand human pointing gestures. Comparisons showed that dogs and foxes are better at using human body language, even without prior ... Read More  

Thanks so much to Crystal Garrett and the Global Morning News for inviting me to talk about foxes on the show! It was a lot of fun and over so quickly I didn’t have time to get nervous, which ... Read More  

1. Dogs were the first domestic animal species. Unambiguous archaeological evidence for dogs is about 12,000 years old, but domestication may have started 20,000 years or more before that. 2. Ancient Egyptians had at least three dog breeds: a ... Read More  

Any dog owner will tell you that their pet understands them – recognizes words, follows commands, and somehow knows when they need a sympathetic snuggle. Scientists call this communicative skill and intelligence “social cognition.” It’s the set of knowledge ... Read More