Cocker spaniels - a hostile breed?

A floppy-eared, innocent-looking breed may be one of the world's most aggressive dogs, according to a new study.

The Spanish study found that English cocker spaniels tend to be more hostile than other breeds.

The discovery adds to the mounting evidence that aggressiveness is an inherited characteristic, suggesting that genes and breeding practices can both help determine how a dog will behave.

"In our country and according to our database, the English cocker spaniel is the breed that shows more aggression problems," says lead author Marta Amat. Amat, a researcher in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and her colleagues analysed 1040 cases of canine aggression brought to a nearby veterinary teaching hospital from 1998 to 2006.

Of those cases, the majority were attributed to English cocker spaniels, Rottweilers, Boxers, Yorkshire terriers and German shepherds. Probing the data further, Amat and her team discovered that English cocker spaniels were more likely than other dogs to act aggressively toward their owners as well as unfamiliar people. In contrast, dogs with reported behaviour problems from other breeds tended to act aggressively toward other dogs.

Among the English cocker spaniels, golden varieties and males were found to be the most hostile.

The findings, published in the latest Journal of Veterinary Behavior, confirm an earlier study conducted by a separate Spanish team from the University of Cordoba, which also found males and golden English cocker spaniels were more aggressive than females or those with black and mixed-colour coats.In terms of coat colour, Amat explained that the coat pigment melanin shares a common biochemical pathway with dopamine and other brain chemicals involved in the control of aggressive behaviour.

Amat also noted that "inadequate handling by the owners due to their lack of information on dog behaviour" is a contributing factor.

Other experts place blame on caretakers, suggesting there are no born-to-be-bad dogs, only bad owners. Joaquin Perez-Guisado of the University of Cordoba led one of the earlier studies on English cocker spaniels and is the lead author of a new Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances study that found poor training by owners predicted aggressive behaviour in 711 test subjects from a variety of breeds.

Taking all possible reasons into consideration, he and his team found that 40 per cent of dominance aggression in dogs is associated with a lack of authority on the part of owners, who performed no, or minimal, obedience training.

According to Perez-Guisado and his team, "dogs that are trained properly do not normally retain aggressive dominance behaviour." Members of the English Cocker Spaniel Club of America appear to agree. They describe their favourite breed as being "a homebody" that is "typically affectionate, loyal and reserved with strangers."

Science News

Global mass extinction caused by ancient volcanic eruption

A previously unknown giant volcanic eruption that led to global mass extinction 260million years ago has been uncovered by scientists at the University of Leeds. The eruption in the Emeishan province of south-west China unleashed around half a million cubic kilometres of lava, covering an area five times the size of Wales, and wiping out marine life around the world.

Unusually, scientists were able to pinpoint the exact timing of the eruption and directly link it to a mass extinction event in the study published in Science.

This is because the eruptions occurred in a shallow sea, meaning that the lava appears today as a distinctive layer of igneous rock sandwiched between layers of sedimentary rock containing easily datable fossilised marine life.

The layer of fossilised rock directly after the eruption shows mass extinction of different life forms, clearly linking the onset of the eruptions with a major environmental catastrophe. (great and usually sudden disaster)

The global effect of the eruption is also due to the proximity (nearness) of the volcano to a shallow sea. The collision of fast flowing lava with shallow sea water caused a violent explosion at the start of the eruptions" throwing huge quantities of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere. "When fast flowing, low viscosity(thick and sticky) magma meets shallow sea it's like throwing water into a chip pan there's spectacular explosion producing gigantic clouds of steam," explains Professor Paul Wignall, a palaeontologist at the University of Leeds, and the lead author of the paper.The injection of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere would have lead to massive cloud formation spreading around the world - cooling the planet and ultimately resulting in a torrent of acid rain. Scientists estimate from the fossil record that the environmental disaster happened at the start of the eruption.

"The abrupt extinction of marine life we can clearly see in the fossil record firmly links giant volcanic eruptions with global environmental catastrophe, a correlation that has often been controversial," adds Professor Wignall. Previous studies have linked increased carbon dioxide produced by volcanic eruptions with mass extinctions.

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