Could raccoons become the new dogs? They're undeniably cute, but they'd also be a pretty annoying pet. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .

Military roads helped the felines domesticate about 2,000 years ago. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Our pet dogs have been by our side for at least 20,000 years, evolving right along with us. True to their more elusive nature, the timeline of when cats domesticated is more murky. Our homespun feline friends appear to be a more recent arrival in some parts of the world, likely only arriving in Europe about 2,000 years ago.

Most dog owners will insist they can tell what their pooch is thinking from their face alone. But man's best friend used to be even more expressive, according to a new study. Researchers have discovered that the domestication process has resulted in the loss of some communication abilities in today's dogs compared to their wolf ancestors. The team, from Durham University, used a'Dog Facial Action Coding System' to analyse video recordings of captive wolves and domestic dogs. This was during both spontaneous social interactions and reactions to external stimuli, for example a squeaky toy.

Wild elephants are one of the few known species to show signs of self-domestication. The phenomenon has only previously been documented in humans and bonobos, a closely related primate. Humans have bred animals to maximise traits such as friendliness, sociability and a docile temperament in a process called domestication. Some researchers believe humans and bonobos have gone through a similar process but that they have naturally done it to themselves. Limor Raviv at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands wondered if other species have self-domesticated too.

Dogs were first domesticated around 29,000 years ago and have since become one of the most popular species of companion animals around the world. But until now, exactly why the animals became'man's best friend' has remained unclear. Now, scientists from Azabu University in Japan believe they have the answer, having discovered two key gene mutations in dogs. These mutations may have played a role in their domestication by lowering stress and making pups more comfortable interacting with humans, according to the team. Researchers from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh recently found that dogs have similar muscles in their faces to humans, allowing them to form facial expressions close to our own.

From'Babe' to'Black Beauty', popular culture is constantly telling us that speaking to animals gently and'politely' is the best way to get them to do our bidding. Now a new study has shown the same is true in the real world, as domesticated animals like pigs and horses can tell the difference between negative and positive sounds in human speech. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen's Department of Biology and ETH Zurich found that the animals reacted react more strongly to'negatively charged' human voices. In some cases they even seemed to mirror the emotion expressed in the human voice, according to the researchers. 'That'll do, pig': The findings in the study backs up teachings in films like'Babe' where characters speak politely to their furry companions The stallion in'Black Beauty' goes through many good and bad owners, and researchers have found that this experience could have bearing on the wellbeing of real-life horses Researchers concluded that it is most likely that horses may be able to perceive and interpret each other's sounds by virtue of their common biology.

With their large, child-like eyes and raised eyebrows, it can be difficult to say no to your dog when they give you the'puppy-dog eyes'. Now, a new study has revealed the precise anatomical features that could explain what makes dogs' faces so appealing. Researchers from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh found that dogs have similar muscles in their faces to humans, allowing them to form facial expressions close to our own. Their findings suggest that these features have been selectively bred by humans over the last 33,000 years, since our ancestors first started breeding wolves. 'Throughout the domestication process, humans may have bred dogs selectively based on facial expressions that were similar to their own, and over time dog muscles could have evolved to become "faster," further benefiting communication between dogs and humans,' said Professor Anne Burrows, senior author of the study.

Dogs have a sense of the basic way objects should behave, according to scientists, who say they stare longer if a computer animation breaks the laws of physics. Humans use a process known as'contact causality' from an early age to make sense of the physical environment, but little is known about the processes that non-primate animals use to make sense of the world and how things work. To better understand this in dogs, a team at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, adapted an eye tracking system used on human infants. Dogs were presented with realistic 3D animations of balls that obey and break Newton's basic laws of physics, and tracked their pupil dilation and attention span. The animals tracked the movements of balls closely throughout the study, but pupils were larger when objects in the animations broke the laws of physics.

Dogs are able to pick up on individual words in sentences spoken to them using similar computations and brain regions as human babies, a study has found. When we are infants, we learn to spot new words in a stream of speech first, before we actually learn what each individual word means. To tell where each word ends and another begins, babies use complex calculations that keep track of which syllables appear together -- and thus likely form words. By using a combination of brain imaging techniques, experts led from Hungary's Eötvös Loránd University have shown that dogs are capable of similar feats. This is the first time that the capacity to apply so-called statistical learning has been shown to be demonstrated in a non-human mammal.

Dog puppies understand humans in a way that their relatives like wolves just don't thanks to undergoing some 14,000 years of domestication, a study has concluded. Researchers from Duke University tested both dog and wolf puppies in a series of tests that involved locating hidden food by picking up on human clues. They found that dog puppies have similar social cognition abilities as human babies -- and are able, for example, to instinctively recognise pointing as communication. This superficially simple understanding is, in fact, rare in the animal kingdom. Not only did the wolf pups in the study lack it, but so do chimps, our closest relatives.