Return to everyday life

Ryan and I are back home in Cali, settled into our new apartment and studying during the new school year. Oisin is with us, and though I occasionally miss the excitement of going a new place every day, I'm still somewhat giddy to be back going through the motions of my every day routine in Davis. Cooking my own food is a wonderful task, as chasing around a toddler, for the most part. He's back in day care during the week and so far seems to be enjoying himself immensely, which helps.

I'm back to teaching and class and research, and keep finding wonderfully interesting new papers. I'm going to try and write about the most interesting things I find, and the interesting parts of being a graduate student, but they're fewer and farther between when I'm not in the field, so once the beginning of the quarter calms down a bit, I'm going to try to post some of the stories we didn't get to tell yet about the summer. For now, I leave you with a second video of dog sampling, this one of me taking the blood, so you can see what we're talking about. As a note, the calm reaction this dog has is the standard reaction we got--even the dog in the last video was this relaxed once we got the muzzle on.

India

[guest post by Ryan]

India has been a crazy, crazy whirlwind so far, and it will only get moreso. We flew out of Vietnam on the night of the 17th, spent a handful of hours in Bangkok and then flew into Kolkata (Calcutta) early the next morning. After clearing health inspection, immigration and customs, we got our (many) bags and attempted to buy a SIM card for our phone so we could give the taxi driver directions to the person's house where we were dropping off some extra bags. We found out that India has extremely tight security around their SIM cards...without several letters, foreigners can't get one at all. So we figured out the taxi system and talked our way into using someone else's cell phone to call the woman. We went to her house, dropped off our bags and immediately had to head out to the train station. The drive there past through much of the city; slums and nice sections. The mix of vehicles/bodies on the road was very surreal---trucks, buses, cars/taxis, motorcycles, bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, regual rickshaws (yes, actual human-pulled carts), push-carts, water buffalo, cows, donkeys, dogs, pedestrians and several harder-to-describe conveyances all competed for use of the same roads. Chaos reigned.
Once at the train stations, we figured out how to buy tickets onto the train we needed and then where to catch the train---neither of which were easy tasks given the amount of English the others' spoke and the amound of Bengali Cori and I speak. We found the train, but we were too late to buy seat tickets. So Cori and I sat on the edge of the train car with our legs dangling outside the train for most of the three hour journey to Katwa. During the journey, an amazing array of goods were offered for sale: coffee, tea, water, comic books, learn-to-read books, clean seats (via children sweeping your seat and surrounds), snacks of all description, shirts, ties, belts and many other things could all be purchased from vendors climbing on and off the trains. The biggest surprise to me was that no one offered any livestock for sale (or at least not that I noticed). I'll also spare you the details of the fun of using a squat toilet without TP on a jerky train...
Anyway, near the end of the journey, a couple seats opened up and Cori and I took them, as the romance of sitting on the edge of the train was waning with the increasing downpour (it's monsoon season here). Shortly thereafter, a transvestite (apparently working as an uninvited entertainer, which is common in India as it turns out) worked her way up the aisle to my seat and promptly sat in my lap, kissed me and attempted the cuddle me, much to the amusement of the other riders. Thus I learned that lap dances from transvestites were another item on sale in Indian trains. In any case, after a bit longer we finally arrived in Katwa, where we took bicycle rickshaws to our hotel and met with our collaborator there.
The next day, after very little rest for our weary selves, we sampled from 6:30am until 1pm when the skies opened up (monsoon season, remember). The sampling was particularly difficult because the dogs here are actually feral so, for the most part, we had to actually catch them ourselves instead of having help from locals. We did attract a lot of interest from locals, however; at one point we had at least 200 people crowding around watching what we were doing (and, I think, taking bets on whether or not we'd get bitten). We've also been interviewed for the local news and by a local blogger in India. After the rain started, we headed off to our collaborator's school, where he is a teacher. We met most of the teachers in a meeting, received small gifts, made a little speech explaining our research and went on our way.
The next day's sampling was partially recorded on video, some of which is posted on YouTube and linked from this blog. It involved our first sampling at a hospital for mentally challenged individuals— this wor does take us to many interesting places where we meet many interesting people. After sampling that day, we shared a bottle of whiskey with our collaborator and his friends (and sung American and Indian folk songs while doing so), went to be at 10:30pm and awoke at midnight to pack and head to a 1:10am train. We waited at.the tiny train station until 4:15am, when the train finally showed up (at which point we were told it always ran 3 hours late). So we arrived in Kolkata at 7:45am for our 7:15am flight out of Kolkata. After an hour's taxi ride through Kolkata rush hour, we arrived at the airport to wait in a long, crazy line in order to be able to explain our situation and buy tickets on the evening flight to Bhubaneswar. We then spent a couple hours driving into Kolkata, a few hours running errands downtown, a couple hours back to the airport and then took the flight to Bhubaneswar. Sampling there went well, though I'll save that for another blog post. I think Cori is posting about our sampling in Hazaribagh after Bhubaneswar and that takes us to now (tonight in a random hotel in Ranchi about to fly to Chennai tomorrow morning).
I also have one more post on PNG and one on Vietnam on the way, as well as a couple more on India. If I can ever get the time to write...

608 dogs sampled
26 flights
11 time zones
188:15 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]
47,085 travel miles
21 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)
17 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

Welcome to the 19th century

We've just spent a few days in Hazaribagh, a town in India so completely off the map that visiting there was a bit like stepping back into the Raj. But then, that may just have been the person we were staying with.

Meet Bulu Imam:



Bulu is a true gentleman scholar, in the sense of the gentlemen who used to do all great scholarly research. He has time, and boundless energy, and so has devoted these two things to:

1. Stopping global warming, especially via coal mining near his home.
   
2. Conserving, discovering and studying the prehistoric antiquities of the area near his home
3. Conserving and studying the current culture, specifically the art, of the area near his home
4. Dogs, and promoting the Santal dog bread
5. Sharing his vast knowledge with as many people as he can manage
6. Writing poetry and prose
7. Painting
8. Tiger hunting, or, nowadays that it's no longer leagal or fashionable, telling tiger hunting stories
   

Not necessarily in that order. Bulu is deeply charming, tells wonderful stories, and knows all about the dogs of his region. After all, they're part of the people's lives here, much in the same way they've always been part of his life, traveling around on hunts and chasing after small game. This is Rosie, his pride and joy, archetype of the Santal breed, save for being just slightly too large:

Bulu's house is large and made of several different outbuildings, including a huge maze-like building build of mud in the traditional style, with all the wonderful built in quirks that a child building a snow fort might add, except more permanent. There's also Bulu's large family's home, a museum of local art, and another outbuilding with a few more rooms where we stayed, all set amdist a gorgeous mossy overgrown tropical garden. Complete with servants (for someone who can barely handle room service, this takes getting used to), meals cooked over an open fire, mosquito nets, huricane lamps, and full libraries, it was a bit like living a very long time ago for a few days. I can't say I agreed with everything, but we got our samples, and enjoyed the company and a bit of rest for a few days. Every bit of India will manage to be different, I think, but this was probably the bit I was expecting least of all.

Muzzling dogs

Due to popular demand, and a very helpful collaborator, we've finally got video of us capturing and sampling dogs. Sadly, we only had one video of us muzzling a dog so we didn't have much to choose from. It's a little amateur hour, but it gives a decent idea of the process for muzzling dogs that do not want to be muzzled. This is video from a hospital for mentally disabled people where some of the patients kept dogs, so we had additional concerns in keeping people back which made it a little more difficult, but the patients there were very sweet and helpful generally.



While this guy freaks out a bit, he was not hurt at all, just scared of the leash. We're tapping him on the head because we didn't want him chewing through the lead, as we're down to three leads now, and still have to finish sampling in India. We'll post more videos of actually taking blood and such in a bit.

[Guest post by Ryan, with bits by Cori, heh]

Muzzling the dog

Is frequently one of the most dangerous parts. In this instance, I allow Cori et al to muzzle the dog while I take a series of photos: [guest post by Ryan]

Back from Papua New Guinea

[guest post by Ryan]

We just got back out of Papua New Guinea and are now in the Kuala Lumpur airport, back in the land of free and readily available Wi-Fi. We had a great time in PNG and will have several blog posts about it forthcoming. We are headed to Ha Noi now and then the northern reaches of Vietnam where I think there will be more internet than PNG, hopefully. For the first blog post, I'll post some photos of our sampling in the coastal areas of PNG near Port Moresby. Later we'll have photos of our Highlands sampling and some stories---there were some great moments! Without further adieu, some photos with blurbs for context:

Me weighing one of the dogs; always a favorite with the children.

Cori showing off her cassowary-feather bag (bilum) given to her by the village leader's wife. It was the first of eight bilums we got...

Cori appearing as the Virgin Mary in the midst of the villagers (damn dirty lens). In any case, all those people crowded around the truck we were sampling in for the entire time!

The dogs in PNG were very small (some as small as 6 pounds full-grown); the smallest we've sampled yet. Many of them also had cute, enormous bat ears, like this guy here.

A very proud dog owner with his less-than-thrilled muzzled best friend.

Smiles all around :).

Cori drawing blood in the bed of a pick-up truck by the sea.

Cori drawing blood on the verandah of a stilt house over the sea.

The view from said verandah.

This dog does not look particularly comfortable/willing, but she's quite cute.

Such a friendly, friendly dog making friends with Cori!

The guys helping us at the Port Moresby Pound. Not a fun place to work and I'm sure they get paid a pittance, but there are people like this all over the world helping animals in whatever way they can.

This is a very mangy dog at the Port Moresby Pound. The way this pound works is that they get calls from people about very, very sick dogs on the streets. Then they collect the dogs and determine if they are beyond the ability to save. If so, they euthanize them. It sounds barbaric, but really this seems like one of the more humane and targeted ways at controlling the problems associated with unrestricted street dog populations. Still it was sad to see and take blood from several dogs destined to be euthanized in the next couple days.

When the dogs arrive at the Port Moresby Pound, they are washed---with up to a dozen dogs in a cage! They are not well-funded and do the best with what they have, but it was sad to see the conditions there. You certainly can't blame the Pound employees though who seemed to be doing the best they could with the resources they had.

Also, here are our current stats:

20 flights

9 time zones

139:15 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]

39,846 travel miles

18 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)

14 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

Photos from Croatia

Ryan with a very cute boar-hunting puppy from Croatia (well, the adult dogs, not that puppy, hunts boar).


OMG more cute puppies (we saw SO MANY in Croatia):

Sign seen outside our dorm in Zagreb:

Two local helpers from Bosnia where we sampled stray dogs around a particular town. They were great about showing us where all the dogs hang out and introducing us to the local dog owners. We've found the same thing happening in many places throughout the world---kids just love helping us out. At first they didn't want any pay but they finally relented and accepted ice cream. As a human interest story, one of them lost their dad in the Bosnian war and the other one's dad lost a leg. In fact in Bosnia we saw much more war damage than in Croatia---lots of buildings with RPG holes, etc. Lots of men missing limbs, etc. Our trip through a number of former war zones has been quite sobering.

More puppies! Trying to sample one of them its littermates just got in the way (while Ryan took pictures and laughed instead of separating them). Ah the joys of fieldwork.

So you want to sample a village dog's blood....

Actually, likely you really, really don't. But I do, and so I'm going to explain how you actually do it here. It's one of those grunt work type parts of science (that is, it's data collection) but relatively pleasant and interesting, since it's often pretty challenging. Plus, the perks (international travel to places way, way off the beaten track) are excellent.



So, here's how we actually do it.

First, we put all of the following into a large duffel bag, and throw that into the back of a 4x4:

• butterfly needles (needles with wing shaped handles and tubing attached)
  
• Vacuum sealed test tubes
  
• Tube holders and needles (plastic holders and needles to puncture vacuum sealed tubes)
  
• alcohol swabs
• measuring tape
• data sheets
• sharpies
• pens
• leads (the kind you slip over a dog's neck)
  
• muzzles (in about eight sizes)
  
• camera
• a cooler with ice
• fish scale (suspensory scale)
  
• goat sling (a mesh sling for holding dogs from the scale)
  

Step 1: Find willing helpers. People looking for coauthorships and recommendations tend to be particularly good people to work with, as they're cheap and enthusiastic.

Step 2: Find dogs. If people keep them as pets or guards, this means driving around the countryside with translators (sometimes more than one) to explain your pressing need for blood from rural dogs. After many strange looks, most people are willing to help if only out of curiosity. I've often thought that it's probably particularly helpful that I'm female, as I get some especially strange looks diving onto riled up dogs with thick bite proof gloves. Novelty gets you a lot of interest.

If people don't keep dogs, we usually rely on shelters. Shelters are awesome because they usually have very calm, well-socialized dogs and enthusiastic staff. Also, it's great to be able to compensate people by donating to a dog shelter and helping the animals too.

We've also tried driving around looking for dogs, but this usually doesn't work as well.

Step 3: Restrain the dog. Get the owner or any other foolishly helpful soul (ie, me or Ryan or our collaborators) to put a lead on the dog. If it freaks out, let it do so until it runs low on energy. Then cautiously put a muzzle on the dog from behind:



If the dog is chill, that last bit is less necessary, which saves loads of time.

Step 4: Measure the dog. For breed dogs there are more than 30 of these measurments. We take six: body length, height, chest girth, chest width, face width, and snout length. Usually I call out these measurements to Ryan, who writes them down along with a number of other types of physical descriptions and takes pictures.

Step 5: Get the blood! Get someone strong and confident to hold the dog still and hold a forelimb so that the cephalic vein is obvious after an alcohol swab. Insert butterfly needle attached to tube holder and needle. When there's blood in the butterfly needle's tube, attach the vacuum tube. Wait, trying desperately to instill patience in a figity dog, for the tube to fill with five cc's of blood. Fiddle gently with the needle and pump the dogs paw to increase the speed of the flow.



Step 6: Weigh the dog (if it's under 50 lbs) using a fish scale and goat sling. Ignore the local people's laughter as the dog slips out of the sling for the third time before you can suspend the sling from the scale.

Step 7: Carefully release the dog, making sure no one lets go of the lead or muzzle before everyone's clear and they've really been removed from the dog. Losing one of four leads to a dog running away is not fun in the middle of a busy sampling day.

Apparently, with loads of helpers, tons of chill dogs, and an efficient system, you can take blood using this method (ie, steps 3-7) at a rate of about one dog every three minutes or so. At least, that's what we did today--seventy dogs in less than four hours.

Step 8: Mail blood home. Talk to people repeatedly about the lack of danger from healthy domestic dog blood and attach loads of letters making it clear that there is no value nor any troubling regulations on shipping this stuff.

And then we move onto the next country! That's how I'm spending my summer, and while it's exhausting and not fabulously intellectual, we're having a blast.

Lebanese Shepard Dogs

[guest post by Ryan]

I never thought I'd muzzle a bear until I met a 110-pound (about---he was too big for our scales) monster of a dog today. He had enormous, powerful jaws and a disposition that left a little to be desired (to be fair, he was being approached by three strangers carrying a leash, a muzzle and needles). But we got the job done with no problems.

While that dog was extraordinary, the shepards' dogs here in Lebanon are all large, powerful, not fond of humans and many have fairly long hair (alpine meadows get cold---we were sampling in the shadows of some mountains that still have snow on them in late June). I've had to use all my dog handling prowess learned over the course of sampling several hundred dogs previously to avoid direct bites and other damage. This is in stark contrast to the dogs in Qatar who were all well-socialized since they were shelter dogs. But we've been able to sample just about every dog we've been able to leash here in Lebanon, a testament to Cori's, my and Mounir's prowess with mammal handling (Mounir is a mammologist who frequently works with wild animals). One dog bit through a leash in 3 bites and then almost bit through the 2nd leash we got around it despite our best efforts.

Still, these have been some very cool dogs. They have been very healthy (in sharp contrast to the dogs in many places), they seem very good at what they do (guarding sheep), they are beautiful animals and they seem very confident and happy with their lives.

I'd love to write more about Lebanon and the dogs here, and to post pictures, but that will have to wait until we find a faster internet connection. Plus it's Saturday night in the most happening city in the Middle East and I don't want to spend it just in a loud internet cafe.

FAQs

Hello to any new readers coming by here via Pharyngula! Welcome!

Today is our last day in Qatar, and we'll be spending it packing up and shipping samples home. Lucky for us, this leaves us some time to address some of the issues discussed in the comments here. Therefore, without further ado, Frequently Asked Questions:

1. Have you ever been bitten?
Nope. Neither of us has ever been bitten, nor has any of the assistants or dog owners who help with the project. While Ryan and I both have pre-exposure rabies shots as a precaution, it's never been an issue. Any dogs that aren't well-socialized pets, or any pets showing any signs of aggression, we muzzle. Ryan and I were both trained in how to do this safely and we have dog handling gloves (big thick un-bite-through-able gloves) for extreme cases. Ryan's pretty adept at getting a muzzle on just about any dog so long as no one gets in his way, but we like our 0 bites record more than we like a perfectly unbiased sample. We think first about keeping people safe, and then consider trying to get as interesting as a sample (ie, with both aggressive and calm dogs) as possible. So far, we have far more trouble getting blood from shy or skittish dogs than mean ones. A mean dog you can get behind with a muzzle--a shy dog is off and running before you even get out of the 4x4.

2. What about cats?
Alright, I know that no one was really asking this question over in the comments, but we actually get it a lot, particularly in Muslim countries, where dogs are considered bad luck or dirty. Cat domestication is in general pretty well understood to have occured in the Middle East, and there's a lot fewer questions that we're interested in that can be addressed with them in terms of shared history with human beings. Also, we're just not cat people.

3. What about the really interesting dogs I saw in [insert country here]?
Tell us about them! We're always fascinated by the diversity of pups we see around the world and are also interested in breed formation in general. Not only do we sample village dogs, we're also always on the look out for interesting "local breeds." Some places do have very distinct dogs, like the Armanti dogs from a village outside Luxor in Egypt, built like wire-haired afghan hounds with slightly furnished (ie, mustacioed) muzzles.

4. What about other ways of getting DNA?
Blood is particularly awesome, because it's pretty easy (you try cheek swabbing a pissed off village dog) and also managable to stabilize. We are banking this DNA for future study whenever possible, so stability is important.

5. Have you heard about the domestication experiements with silver foxes?
Yes, we have! This was actually one of the studies that got Ryan and I interested in domestication in the first place. In fact, because of this study, we pay particular attention to pedomorphic traits like floppy ears and indicators of domestication like white patches of hair on the forehead and chest.

6. Have you heard about testing dogs for breeds using DNA?
Yes, and use similar methodology to ensure that we don't wind up looking at dogs whose genes have gone through a breed bottleneck.

7. How do you get the dogs?
It depends on the country. In Uganda and Namibia, we pulled up to random villages, had translators explain what we were trying to do, and people came out of the woodwork with their dogs. It's apparently quite a spectacle to see a dog weighed in a goat sling on a fish scale. In Egypt and Qatar, we worked mainly with local animal welfare organizations. These are great places to work, as they have very enthusiastic staff used to dealing with animals and the animals themselves are often better socialized than most pariah dogs. In Luxor, Egypt, we worked with Animal Care in Egypt (ACE), a charity that provides free veterinary care to animals of all shapes and sizes, but particularly the horses and donkeys that work in Luxor's tourist industry. In Qatar we've been working with Qatar Animal Welfare Society (QAWS), a great organization that houses a really ridiculous number of dogs and cats. Both of these organizations are incredibly supportive of animal welfare under really tough conditions, and have also been really supportive of our science. The people at ACE and QAWS all work their butts off every day of the week, and they took time to help out a couple of random grad student researchers on top of their already very full schedules. They more than deserve any support anyone can throw their way, and we're proud to have been able to donate to them through this project.

Okay. I think that's enough for now. Other questions, such as the ever important "How did you guys wind up doing this?" will be addressed in later posts.

As a final note, while we would be quite jealous of us if we weren't doing this with our summer, really, we're not trying to brag about what we do. We're proud of our ability to do it, but mostly we're just really grateful that our wonderful collaborators have given us this opportunity, and really, really, really excited to be able to travel the world and meet loads of amazing dogs and even more amazing people.

Why are we sampling village dogs?

This is a guest post by Ryan.


One of the questions we frequently get is why we are taking blood from mostly unwanted, "village" or "pariah" dogs. These questions come from those who have a real interest in the science and those that just dislike dogs and can't imagine anyone would be interested in them, let alone in unbred street dogs. For the purposes of this post, I'll assume readers fall in the former group. First, let's start with the basic theoretical justification.

For the moment, ignore the 15,000 years ago bit. What we know is that dogs are most related to Eurasian grey wolves and therefore were domesticated from them, presumably somewhere in Eurasia. Sometime in the past, when dogs were intially domesticated, a population of wolves became dogs through either selective breeding by humans or "self-domestication", where some wolves started to hang around human settlements, presumably surviving on their trash. Over time some of these wolves became less afraid of humans and became so specialized in their habits that they essentially stopped interbreeding with wild wolves (though dogs, wolves and coyotes can all still interbreed). Now, we have no idea how large this population of proto-dogs was, but we do know that it was probably much larger than the number of dogs used to start most modern breeds ~200 years ago (most breeds were founded by about a half dozen sires and maybe a dozen females).

After initial domestication, dogs probably lived "breed-less" lives as human commensals (hanging around humans, not really helping or harming them but living off their trash) for many thousands of years. During this time, dog populations quickly expanded and spread across the globe. In the last few hundreds of years, several hundred dog breeds were formed from local dogs in many parts of the world; these breed dogs have entirely replaced the non-breed "indigenous" dogs in some parts of the world, notably in Western Europe and the USA. However, most dogs throughout the world still live their lives as non-breed, indigenous, commensal dogs. We refer to these dogs as "pariah" or "village" dogs. They tend to be smallish (25-40 pounds), often tan, short-haired dogs, though the type varies a bit according to the region you're in. The important point is that these dogs have not undergone the intense genetic bottleneck associated with breed formation. Thus, while breed dogs have only a small subset of the total genetic diversity of all dogs, it is likely that village dogs have a much greater range of the total diversity. Thus, they are very useful for looking at the original domestication event. They are informative of the original genetic bottleneck that led to the formation of domestic dogs many thousands of years ago.

By sampling village dogs from across the world, we get an idea of how diverse these dogs are in different regions of the globe. Then, we can look for patterns in the amount of diversity. Specifically, we look for a region with very high genetic diversity and then look for the surrounding regions to have gradually less and less diversity as it gets further away. This is what is seen in humans, with the highest diversity seen around Ethiopia and diversity decreasing gradually as one moves further and further away from Ethiopia. That's how we know modern humans evolved there. The idea is that the region where a species formed will start out with all the diversity of that species. As some animals move away from that site and colonize other areas, they bring with them only a subset of the total diversity. Then as animals move even further away from the site of origin, they take with them only a subset of a subset of the diversity, and so on. This is why breed dogs are not useful for uncovering the site of origin of domestic dogs: all modern breeds across the world have only a tiny subset of the total diversity seen in all dogs, so it's hard to compare them and know that you're seeing an effect of the origin domestication and colonization events and not some artifact of recent breeding.

In future posts I'll explain more about the controversy over how long ago dogs were domesticated and cover other aspects of the science behind our research, but I have to leave now to collect more samples.

Qatar in four photos

My first stamp in my new passport. Note that Arabic numerals are not actually the numbers they use in Arabic speaking countries. That top row of pen is written in the modern numbering system in Arabic and says 542-9179735

Ryan and I stand in front of the Museum of Islamic Art. I'm not wearing the scarf because it's required (although it does attract less attention than my very blond hair) but because the sun was bearing down on us and a white thing on your head keeps you cool. Also because it makes me feel a bit like a movie star, which is never a bad thing.

One of the things I found most interesting is that very little in the collections is just art for the sake of art--there aren't loads of paintings or even tapestries or sculpture. A few, but it's maybe 15% of the extensive collections on display. There is, however, a ton incredibly intricate and and gorgeous functional art--carpets, lanterns, doors, ceilings, tiles bowls, helmets, Qur'ans, and a whole room full of scientific instruments. All of these were both recognizable as art and absolutely amazing in the level of intricacy displayed, even in the earliest pieces. It's fitting then that the museum itself is a work of art. This is a picture of the main atrium--the star motif is used throughout--even in the shape of the building itself, if you look at google earth.

And, of course, as always, dogs:

That's our assistant Yehia on the left, and this is Ryan with Pipette, a very friendly stray puppy found some distance away, who was quite happy to donate a bit of her blood.

In Doha

This is a guest post by Ryan.
Apologies for the delay in posting; jet lag, sampling and exploring have taken all our time lately. I've finally found some time to write this post---at 3AM!
First things first, we've now collected nearly two dozen dog samples in Qatar, with more sampling arranged for Monday and Tuesday. Sampling your first few dogs is a very nice feeling; at least we know the trip will be at least a partial success! The street dogs here generally look and act much like salukis, an ancient desert-dwelling breed whose spindly body fits the climate here (humid, 115 degrees F and sunny every day with lows somewhere in the 90s during the summer). It will be interesting to compare these dogs to other Middle Eastern street dogs and to American salukis. We will write much more about the dog project and the science behind it as time goes on, but for the moment I think I'll use my time to talk a bit more about the travel.

The trip over here was a gruelling 24-hour (32 with the time differnece) affair during which we saw the sun set twice from plane seats high above two different continents. To make a long story short, a clerical error forced us to fly this leg on less-convenient and much less comfortable American carriers (Gulf carriers know how to treat their passengers). The lack of free alcohol, the poor entertainment system and the uncomfortable seats limited my sleep, though it arguably increased my productivity. I started out trying to watch Coraline but for some reason it was not working on that flight so I tried the next-best Bride Wars next (sad but true). After twenty minutes I couldn't take it anymore and got to completing a review for a journal that was due within a couple days. It was one of those papers that clearly involved a lot of long-term data but was plagued by problems in its theoretical development and data interpretation. It's the kind of paper that is all too often written, and all too often published, in primatology. Hopefully my review can help produce a stronger, more meaningful contribution.

On the flight from Frankfurt to Doha via Riyadh we were on Lufthansa which meant free drinks and more entertainment options---Meerkat Manor and Discovery Channel specials all the way!
Instead of giving a play-by-play for our trip to Doha, I think I'll just list some of the highlights so I can get to bed soon.

• The first morning we walked at 7am for an hour and wound up drenched in sweat even at that hour.
• Doha is nice in a bustling-but-not-overly-so, rapidly-expanding-but-with-some-forethought way. The city is clearly alive (but not overwhelmingly so, like Cairo) and is incredibly multicultural: more than half of the people in Qatar are not local Qataris (this results in some amazing ethnic food being available). People dressed in traditional robes freely mingle with Westerners, Indians and other Muslims from around the world. While conservative dress is expected and the sexes are frequently segregated (e.g. many restaurants will not serve women, or will only serve them in special “Family” rooms), it usually doesn't feel oppressive. Women can and do hold jobs, drive (since 1995) and there is a vibrant free press (it is, for example, the headquarters of Al Jazeera). It's also a fully welfare state with very high per capita income and decent income distribution parity.
• Our first rental car's air conditioning died, so we had to use windows and frequent rehydration for one day before we could trade the car for a new one.
• Shortly after getting our second rental car, on our way to sample dogs, we were involved in an accident. Another car left its lane in the middle of traffic circle and hit directly into us (we were in its blind spot and the driver never looked). On the bright side it was a fairly minor accident; we both drove away to the traffic police, spent an hour filling out paperwork, swiped our credit card to pay a processing fee and we were back on our way, albeit having lost half of our sampling time because the shelter is only open from 4-6pm.
• We drove all the way to the tip of the Qatari peninsula---nearly an hour's drive! One can cross the whole country north-south in about 1.5-2 hours and east-west in about 45 minutes. The scenery doesn't change much though; a lot of beige with the scattered small tree every now and then. It did give us a chance to take our 4x4 off-road on the beach and see our first Qatari wildlife, a recently deceased large lizard.
• All the bulidings here are the same shade of sand beige (except one very pink house we saw).
• If you should ever want to adopt a dog (or cat, donkey, chicken, guinea fowl or just about any kind of animal imaginable) in Qatar, QAWS is the place to do it. They have a very nice volunteer staff and do wonders to help unwanted and maltreated animals here. In general, Qatar has very few dogs as most Muslims do not like to keep dogs.
• The Islamic Art Museum in Doha is awesome and free. They even give you a golf cart ride from your car to the entrance and back. The architecture (like many buildings in Doha, including Cornell's medical school) is interesting and, in this case, gorgeous. The museum is very under-utilized resulting in a very pleasant, unrushed experience. The art is amazing; intricately designed vessels, rugs, Qarans and other artifacts from across the Muslim world, stretching from Spain and Morocco to India and spanning 1400 years.

Well, there's much I could say, but I think I should go to sleep now. Just one more thing: go USA! We've miraculously made it to the semi-finals of the Confederations Cup---we watched the last game versus Egypt in a sheesha restaurant here.

Cumulative stats:

6 flights

6 time zones

36 traveling hours

10,469 miles

4 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)

2 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

In which the adventure begins.

Ryan and I took our first flight segments of the summer (of the year?) on Friday, flying from Sacramento to Salt Lake City to St. Louis. That alliterative journey logged us two flight segments, three time zones (on the ground), about twelve traveling hours (counting from when we left for the airport and then arrived home), and 1,975 miles. Thus begins this summer's journey. We'll keep track of similar stats at the end of posts from now on.

Moving out of our cute house in California was an adventure on its own, in no small part because, with an inspection scheduled for Thursday morning, I woke up one week ago with the worst case of strep throat I've ever had. Because you know, moving with one-year-old Oisin was't gonna be crazy enough. My throat was so swollen I was worried about breathing (yes, probably an overreaction), I had a 103 degree F fever (chills and hallucinations oh my), and I could barely swallow liquids. Because of that last factor, I let myself get so dehydrated the gave me IV fluids, which, shockingly, are a great pick me up when you can't drink. After those, getting the fever under control, and some hefty meds for the pain, I was at least able to sleep, but I spent much of Tuesday out of commission while Ryan tried to pack the house and the incredibly gracious Ant 1 TA's finished my grading. Wednesday and Thursday were nutty, but thanks to wonderful friends and family helping us, we managed not to lose our whole deposit, get most of our stuff into a VERY full storage locker and pack the things we'd need (albeit rather chaotically) into bags for the flights Friday.

As for those flights, I gotta tell you, if I didn't love Oisin before, I would now. He's at an incredibly sweet age right now and I'm really having to work hard to supress the realization of how much I will miss him this summer. He slept the whole first flight after watching us take off, then peacefully and mostly quietly played the whole second one. Gearing up to be a great world traveller someday.

Now we're at our first base camp, Ryan's folks' place in southern Illinois. I'm sitting in a guest bedroom surrounded by field clothes, vaccutainers, backpacks, muzzles, toiletries, cameras, power adapters for the whole world, travel guides, and compression sacks. I'm packing most things first thing tomorrow morning, then making a trip to the mall for Oisin's one year portraits and a few last minute necessities. Ryan and I are both at the point where we're antsy. The last 48 hours before a the field are the weirdest mix of tempos--everything goes rushing by, but it still takes ages to get out the door...

'till next time.

Cumulative stats:
2 flights
3 time zones
12 traveling hours
1975 miles
1 country

Dog domestication & traveling the world

Part of why this blog is called "Travels with Darwin" is because Ryan and I are evolutionary biologists. The other part is that we have a dog named Darwin, and we travel most when we're doing stuff related to dog DNA collection.

So how do you actually wind up getting your job to send you to a dozen countries in two months? Apparently, you work for the Village Dog Project. The description of the project is below:

Understanding the evolution and domestication in dogs requires genetic analysis of a global and diverse panel of non-breed-affiliated village dogs. With a network of worldwide and Cornell-affiliated collaborators, we plan to gather dog samples from remote villages, establish a genetic archive containing DNA and phenotypic information from these dogs, carry out genetic analyses on these samples, and develop computational methods for analyzing this dataset. In particular, we are interested in understanding the location, timing, and demographic conditions underlying domestication; the genetic changes involved in the transition of wolf to dog; the relationship between these village dogs and the breed dogs; and the effect that historical forces have shaped village dog diversity.

How we wound up with this gig is a story for another time. Basically, there just are remarkably few people willing to travel through every part of the third world at the fastest rate possible, collecting dog DNA and permits for dog DNA under the most bizarre conditions you can imagine.

I've collected DNA out of the backs of 4 x 4s, using a centrifuge that plugs into a car lighter, spinning down samples in cabs, at night in the middle of a tiny Namibian village, on 3 hours sleep, for 14 hours a day, translating through two people and four languages, with the assistance of the one ten year old in a village who knows where the dogs hide, while being called a witch because the dogs don't run away from me....

You get the idea. Wouldn't you want to spend your summer doing that?

Welcome

If you're one of my friends who's been reading the previous blog I had at this address, this is likely not the site you've been expecting. Instead of leaving my old blog sitting and stagnating and turning into a mommy blog (I just can't do it), I decided to start a new blog.

Ryan and I keep having adventures, and so one of the things I've wanted to do for a while is start actually telling some of our stories. We're also going to be having quite a few adventures this summer traveling around doing dog project collection, and so many of those should wind up on here as well.

For now, I have plans for this blog. I'm going to try to write at least every other day, but we'll see how it goes. The itinerary for this summer is:

Qatar
Lebanon
Turkey
Hungary
Croatia
Belgium
France
Australia
Papua New Guinea
Vietnam
India