Week 3: Twitter!

Hello!!! Today, I completed the Week 3 Twitter Posts! I sought the aid of ChatGPT, but I specifically started off with something that I had wanted to talk about ever since I chose the Canidae family for my research!

My first tweet revolved around Hachiko, the most loyal dog in history!

This is a statue of Hachiko at Shibuya Station (which I visited!) Hachiko waited at Shibuya Station for over 9 years when his owner, Dr. Ueno Hidesaburō passed away on the job. Hachiko had been accustomed to waiting for him to get off of work, but one day in 1925, Dr. Ueno never returned. The amazing loyalty demonstrated by Hachiko has always amazed me, so I looked into why Akita Inu dogs might behave that way for my first tweet.

In my second tweet, I wrote about a peculiar but amazing experiment in Russia which sought to breed a more tame, domestic Silver Fox. The experiments were largely a success! After over 45,000 foxes worth of breeding, Lyudmila Trut, the head scientist behind the research, reported the foxes as being "excellent house pets."

In my last tweet, I wrote about yet another, far less adorable Russian experiment, in which a Soviet scientist, Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov surgically attached the head of a small dog to the body of another dog, connecting its arteries to the host dog. Both disturbing and amazing at the same time, these grafted dogs managed to live for several days.

I also followed a lot more accounts this week, most of them centered around dogs and other canines, since that's what I'll be studying moving forward. Of all of them, I was most fond of @dog_cognition. Posting both fun updates from their facilities and interesting scientific findings, @dog_cognition is a great account.