SCIENCE

Total 17 Posts

Embarking on Dog Ancestry Research

If you have Embarked your dog and opted to participate in scientific research, you’re officially a citizen scientist! On behalf of Embark, I want to say thanks for your contribution. In 2017, Embark presented some of the first research to come out of the data that you and others have...

Oedipus Rex: Dog Inbreeding, its Consequences, and its Quantification

For millenia, dog breeders have intentionally mated relatives as a way to fix traits in a lineage, recognizing that there is a reduction of fitness in offspring of close relatives. However, this certainly wasn’t always intentional as one can see from this post on the Hapsburg lip. A century ago,...

What’s in Your Dog? Why Breed Doesn’t Always Dictate Appearance

What makes a dog breed a dog breed? Let’s answer that question using one of the most popular breeds today as an example: the Corgi. For starters, the signature bobtail in the Pembroke Welsh Corgis comes from a mutation in the T-box gene. Without it, the Corgi everyone knows and...

Exercise-Induced Collapse in Dogs

Exercise-Induced Collapse (EIC) in dogs is a common neurologic/brain and spinal cord disorder that can cause muscle weakness in dogs, leading to a sudden collapse during otherwise normal puppy play sessions. In a 2008 survey, owners reported that episodes were more likely to occur during times of excitement or, less...

Why I Founded Embark

I founded Embark because I love dogs and science. My earliest experiences as a biologist came in the rainforests of Costa Rica and Panama studying all different sorts of tropical biodiversity, and also getting friendly with the free-ranging dogs wandering around the nearby towns (my family even adopted a dog...