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Vomeronasal organ lets dogs identify potential mates,or distinguish between friendly and hostile animals.It alerts them to our various emotional states,and it can even tell them when someone is pregnant or sick.Because olfaction is more primal than other senses,bypassing the thalamus to connect directly to the brain structures involving emotion and instinct,we might even say a dog's perception is more immediate and visceral than ours.But the most amazing thing about your dog's nose is that it can traverse time.The past appears in tracks left by passersby,and by the warmth of a recently parked car where the residue of where you've been and what you've done recently.Landmarks like fire hydrants and trees are aromatic bulletin boards carrying messages of who's been by,what they've been eating,and how they're feeling.And the future is in the breeze,alerting them to something or someone approaching long before you see them.Where we see and hear something at a single moment,a dog smells an entire story from start to finish.In some of the best examples of canine-human collaboration,dogs help us by sharing and reacting to those stories.They can respond with kindness to people in distress,or with aggression to threats because stress and anger manifest as a cloud of hormones recognizable to the dog's nose.With the proper training,they can even alert us to invisible threats ranging from bombs to cancer.As it turns out, humanity's best friend is not one who experiences the same things we do,but one whose incredible nose reveals a whole other world beyond our eyes.

dogs to distinguish and remember a staggering variety of specific scents at concentrations up to 100 million timesless than what our noses can detect.If you can smell a spritz of perfume in a small room,a dog would have no trouble smelling it in an enclosed stadium and distinguishing its ingredients,to boot.And everything in the street,every passing person or car,any contents of the neighbor's trash,each type of tree,and all the birds and insects in it has a distinct odor profile telling your dog what it is, where it is,and which direction it's moving in.Besides being much more powerful than ours,a dog's sense of smell can pick up things that can't even be seen at all.A whole separate olfactory system,called the vomeronasal organ,above the roof of the mouth,detects the hormones all animals,Including humans, naturally release.

airflow enters a regionfilled with highly specialized olfactory receptor cells,several hundred millions of them,compaired to our five million.And unlike our clumsy way of breathing in and out through the same passage,dogs exhale through slits at the side of their nose,creating swirls of air that help draw in new odor molecules and allow odor concentration to build up over mulitple sniffs.But all that impressive nasal architecture wouldn't be much help without something to process the loads of information the nose scoops up.And it turns out that the olfactory system dedicated to proessing smells takes up many times more relative brain area in dogs than in humans.

Hi, Bob.Morning, Kelly. The tulips looks great.Have you ever wondered how your dog experiences the world?Here's what she sees.Not terribly interesting.But what she smells,that's a totally different story.And it begins at her wonderfully developed nose.As your dog catches the first hints of fresh air,her nose's moist, spongy outside helps capture any scents the breeze carries.The ability to smell separately with each nostril,smelling in stereo,helps to determine the direction of the smell's source so that within the first few moments of sniffing,the dog starts to become aware of not just what kind of things are out there but also where they're located.As air enters the nose,a small fold of tissue divides it into two separate folds,one for breathing and one just for smelling.

The chewing-lapping mouthpartis a combination of mandiblesand a proboscis with a tongue-like structure at its tipfor lapping up nectar.On this type of mouthpart,the mandibles themselves are not actually used for eating.For bees and wasps,members of the Hymenoptera order,they serve instead as tools for pollen-collecting and wax-molding.Of course, in nature, there are always exceptions to the rules.The juvenile stages of some insects, for example,have completely different kinds of mouths than their adult versions,like caterpillars, which use chewing mouthparts to devour leavesbefore metamorphosing intobutterflies and mothswith siphoning mouthparts.Still, mouthpart identification can, for the most part,help scientistsand you categorize insects.So why not break out a magnifying lensand learn a little more aboutwho’s nibbling your vegetable garden,biting your arm,or just flying by your ear.

The siphoning mouthpart,a friendlier version of the piercing and sucking beak,also consists of a long, tube-like structure called a proboscisthat works like a straw to suck up nectar from flowers.Insects of the Lepidoptera order—butterflies and moths—keep their proboscises rolledup tightly beneath their headswhen they’re not feedingand unfurl them when they come across some sweet nectar.With the sponging mouthpart,there’s yet another tube,this time ending in two spongy lobesthat contain many finer tubes called pseudotracheae.The pseudotracheae secrete enzyme-filled salivaand soak up fluids and dissolved foods by capillary action.House flies,fruit flies,and the other non-biting members of the Diptera orderare the only insects that use this technique.But, there’s a catch.Biting flies within Diptera,like mosquitoes,horse flies,and deer flies,have a piercing-sucking mouthpart instead of the sponging mouthpart.

The features of an insect’s mouthparts canhelp identify which order it belongs to,while also providing clues about how it evolved and what it feeds on.The chewing mouthpart is the most common.It’s also the most primitive—all other mouthparts are thought to have started out looking like this onebefore evolving into something different.It features a pair of jaws called mandibleswith toothed inner edges that cut up and crush solid foods,like leaves or other insects.You can find this mouthpart on ants from the Hymenoptera order,grasshoppers and crickets of the Orthoptera order,dragonflies of the Odonata order,and beetles of the Coleoptera order.The piercing-sucking mouthpart consists ofa long, tube-like structure called a beak.This beak can pierce plant or animal tissueto suck up liquids like sap or blood.It can also secrete saliva with digestive enzymesthat liquefy food for easier sucking.Insects in the Hemiptera order have piercing-sucking mouthpartsand include bed bugs,cicadas,aphids,and leafhoppers.

A whip-like straw.Powerful, crushing blades.A pointed, piercing tube.There are nearly a million known insect species in the world,but most have one of just five common types of mouthparts.And that’s extremely useful to scientistsbecause when they encounter an unfamiliar insect in the wild,they can learn a lot about it just by examining how it eats.Scientific classification, or taxonomy,is used to organize all living things into seven levels:kingdom,phylum,class,order,family,genus,and species.

Further, hiccups appear in human babieslong before birthand are far more common in infants that adults.Their explanation for this involves the uniquely mammalian activity of nursing.The ancient hiccup reflex may have been adapted by mammals to help remove air from the stomach as a sort of glorified burp.The sudden expansion of the diaphragm would raise air from the stomach,while a closure of the glottis would prevent milk from entering the lungs.Sometimes, a bout of hiccups will go on and on,and we try home remedies:sipping continuously from a glass of cold water,holding one's breath,a mouthful of honey or peanut butter, breathing into a paper bag,or being suddenly frightened. Unfortunately, scientists have yet to verify that any one cureworks better or more consistently than others. However, we do know one thing that definitely doesn't work.

Charles Osborne began to hiccup in 1922 after a hog fell on top of him.He wasn't cured until 68 years later and is now listed by Guinness as the world record holder for hiccup longevity.Meanwhile, Florida teen Jennifer Mee may hold the record for the most frequent hiccups,50 times per minute for more than four weeks in 2007.So what causes hiccups?Doctors point out that a round of hiccups often follows from stimulithat stretch the stomach,like swallowing air or too rapid eating or drinking.Others associate hiccups with intense emotions or a response to them:laughing,sobbing,anxiety,and excitement.

Let's look at what happens when we hiccup.It begins with an involuntary spasm or sudden contraction of the diaphragm,the large dome-shaped muscle below our lungsthat we use to inhale air.This is followed almost immediately by the sudden closure of the vocal chords and the opening between them,which is called the glottis.The movement of the diaphragm initiates a sudden intake of air,but the closure of the vocal chords stops it from entering the wind pipe and reaching the lungs.It also creates the characteristic sound:hic.To date, there is no known function for hiccups.They don't seem to provide any medical or physiological advantage.Why begin to inhale air only to suddenly stop it from actually entering the lungs?Anatomical structures,or physiological mechanisms, with no apparent purpose present challenges to evolutionary biologists.Do such structures serve some hidden function that hasn't yet been discovered?Or are they relics of our evolutionary past,having once served some important purpose only to persist into the present as vestigial remnants?One idea is that hiccups beganmany millions of years before the appearance of humans.

The lung is thought to have evolvedas a structure to allow early fish,many of which lived in warm, stagnant water with little oxygen,to take advantage of the abundant oxygen in the air overhead When descendants of these animals later moved onto land,they moved from gill-based ventilation to air-breathing with lungs.That's similar to the much more rapid changes faced by frogs today as they transition from tadpoles with gills to adults with lungs This hypothesis suggests that the hiccup is a relic of the ancient transitionfrom water to land.An inhalation that could move water over gills followed by a rapid closure of the glottis preventing water from entering the lungs.That's supported by evidence which suggests that the neural patterning involved in generating a hiccup is almost identical to that responsible for respiration in amphibians.Another group of scientists believe that the reflex is retained in us today because it actually provides an important advantage.They point out that true hiccups are found only in mammalsand that they're not retained in birds,lizards, turtles,or any other exclusively air-breathing animals.

After the death of Enheduanna’s father, King Sargon,a general took advantage of the power vacuum and staged a coup.As a powerful member of the ruling family,Enheduanna was a target,and the general exiled her from Ur.Her nephew, the legendary Sumerian king Naram-Sin,ultimately crushed the uprising and restored his aunt as high priestess.In total, Enheduanna served as high priestess for 40 years.After her death, she became a minor deity,and her poetry was copied, studied, and performed throughout the empire for over 500 years.Her poems influenced the Hebrew Old Testament,the epics of Homer, and Christian hymns.Today, Enheduanna’s legacy still exists,on clay tablets that have stood the test of time.

In her writing, she humanized the once aloof gods—now they suffered, fought, loved, and responded to human pleading.Enheduanna’s most valuable literary contribution was the poetry she wrote to Inanna, goddess of war and desire,the divinely chaotic energy that gives spark to the universe.Inanna delighted in all forms of sexual expression and was considered so powerful that she transcended gender boundaries,as did her earthly attendants, who could be prostitutes, eunuchs or cross-dressers.Enheduanna placed Inanna at the top of the pantheon as the most powerful deity. Her odes to Inanna mark the first time an author writes using the pronoun “I,”and the first time writing is used to explore deep, private emotions.

about 300 years before Enheduanna’s birth. This early writing style, called cuneiform, was written with a reed stylus pressed into soft clay to make wedge-shaped marks. But until Enheduanna, this writing mostly took the form of record keeping and transcription, rather than original works attributable to individual writers. Enheduanna’s Ur was a city of 34,000 people with narrow streets, multi-storied brick homes, granaries, and irrigation. As high priestess, Enheduanna managed grain storage for the city, oversaw hundreds of temple workers, interpreted sacred dreams,and presided over the monthly new moon festival and rituals celebrating the equinoxes.Enheduanna set about unifying the older Sumerian culture with the newer Akkadian civilization. To accomplish this, she wrote 42 religious hymns that combined both mythologies. Each Mesopotamian city was ruled by a patron deity, so her hymns were dedicated to the ruling god of each major city. She praised the city’s temple, glorified the god’s attributes,and explained the god’s relationship to other deities within the pantheon.

Sargon was a northern Semite who spoke Akkadian,and the older Sumerian cities in the south viewed him as a foreign invader.They frequently revolted to regain their independence,fracturing his new dynasty.To bridge the gap between cultures,Sargon appointed his only daughter, Enheduanna, as high priestess in the empire’s most important temple.Female royalty traditionally served religious roles,and she was educated to read and write in both Sumerian and Akkadian,and make mathematical calculations.The world's first writing started in Sumeras a system of accounting,allowing merchants to communicate over long distances with traders abroad.Their pictogram system of record keeping developed into a script

4,300 years ago in ancient Sumer,the most powerful person in the city of Ur was banished to wander the vast desert.Her name was Enheduanna. She was the high priestess of the moon god and history’s first known author. By the time of her exile, she had written 42 hymns and three epic poems—and Sumer hadn’t heard the last of her.Enheduanna lived 1,700 years before Sappho,1,500 years before Homer,and about 500 years before the biblical patriarch Abraham.She was born in Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,and the birthplace of the first cities and high cultures.Her father was King Sargon the Great, history’s first empire builder,who conquered the independent city-states of Mesopotamia under a unified banner.

Humanity’s longest experiment in controlled evolution has had other side effects as well.Generations of selection for tameness have favored more juvenile and submissive traits that were pleasing to humans.This phenomenon of selecting traits associated with youth is known as neoteny,and can be seen in many domestic animals.Thousands of years of co-evolution may even have bonded us chemically.Not only can canines understand our emotions and body language,but when dogs and humans interact,both our bodies release oxytocin;a hormone commonly associated with feelings of love and protectiveness. It might be difficult to fathom how every Pomeranian, Chihuahua, and Poodle are descended from fierce wolves.But the diversity of breeds today is the result of a relationship that precedes cities, agriculture,and even the disappearance of our Neanderthal cousins.And it’s heartening to know that given enough time,even our most dangerous rivals can become our fiercest friends.

The earliest of these Proto-Dogsor Wolf-Dogs,seem to have appeared around 33,000 years ago,and would not have looked all that different from their wild cousins.They were primarily distinguished by their smaller size and a shorter snout full of comparatively smaller teeth.But as human cultures and occupations became more diverse and specialized,so did our friends.Short stocky dogs to herd livestock by nipping their heels;elongated dogs to flush badgers and foxes out of burrows;thin and sleek dogs for racing;and large, muscular dogs for guard duty.With the emergence of kennel clubs and dog shows during England’s Victorian era,these dog types were standardized into breeds,with many new ones bred purely for appearance.Sadly, while all dog breeds are the product of artificial selection,some are healthier than others.

Wolves that showed less aggression towards humans could come closer to their encampments,feeding on leftovers. And as these more docile scavengers outlasted their aggressive brethren,their genetic traits were passed on,1 gradually breeding tamer wolves in areas near human populations. Over time humans found a multitude of uses for these docile wolves. They helped to track and hunt prey,and might have served as sentinels to guard camps and warn of approaching enemies. Their similar social structure made it easy to integrate with human families and learn to understand their commands.Eventually they moved from the fringes of our communities into our homes,becoming humanity's first domesticated animal

When our Paleolithic ancestors first settled Eurasia roughly 100,000 years ago,wolves were one of their main rivals at the top of the food chain.Able to exert over 300 lbs. of pressure in one bone-crushing bite and sniff out prey more than a mile away,these formidable predators didn’t have much competition.Much like human hunter-gatherers,they lived and hunted in complex social groups consisting of a few nuclear families,and used their social skills to cooperatively take down larger creatures.

Since their emergence over 200,000 years ago, modern humans have established homes and communities all over the planet. But they didn’t do it alone. Whatever corner of the globe you find homo sapiens in today, you’re likely to find another species nearby: Canis lupus familiaris. Whether they’re herding, hunting, sledding, or slouching the sheer variety of domestic dogs is staggering. But what makes the story of man’s best friend so surprising 10 is that they all evolved from a creature often seen as one of our oldest rivals: Canis lupus, or the gray wolf