Dogs: From Feral to Friend

Angela Perri, Ph.D.
Durham University

Angela is a Marie Curie COFUND Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University and a Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. She is an archaeologist with primary interests in zooarchaeology, paleoecology, and paleoenvironments. Her research focuses on early human-canid interactions, including dog domestication and the use of dogs as hunting technology.

Elaine Ostrander, Ph.D.
National Institute of Health

Dr. Elaine Ostrander is Chief of the Cancer Genetics and Comparative Genomics Branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute of NIH and head of the Section on Comparative Genetics. She received her Ph.D. from Oregon Health Sciences University in 1987, and did postdoctoral training at Harvard and UC Berkeley. She initiated the canine genome project in 1993, building maps to navigate the dog genome. Her current work focuses on finding genes controlling morphologic variation and disease susceptibility. She was a faculty member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center for 12 years and moved to NIH in 2004. Dr. Ostrander has published over 340 papers, edited multiple books, and won several awards including the American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Award, Burroughs Welcome Award for Functional Genomics, Asa Mays Award, the International Canine Health Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2013 Genetics Society of America Medal.

Lee Dugatkin, Ph.D.
University of Louisville

For the last six decades a dedicated team of researchers in Siberia has been domesticating silver foxes to replay the evolution of the dog in real time. Lyudmila Trut has been lead scientist on this work since 1959, and together with biologist and historian of science, Lee Dugatkin, she tells the inside story of the science, politics, adventure and love behind it all. Like a set of Russian nesting dolls, How to Tame a Fox and Build a Dog opens up to reveal story after story, each embedded within the one that preceded it. Inside this tale of path-breaking science in the midst of the often brutal -35° winters of Siberia is hidden a remarkable collaboration between an older, freethinking scientific genius and a trusting, but gutsy young woman. Together these two risked not just their careers, but to an extent their lives, to make scientific history. If you go one level deeper, you find yourself lost in the magical tale of how some hardscrabble but openhearted humans and the wild animals who they domesticated developed such deep attachments to each other that both seemed to forget the species divide

Arnie Arluke
Northeastern University

Arnie Arluke, (PhD, NYU) is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Anthropology at Northeastern University and Senior Scholar at the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy. Author of 13 books and over 100 articles, he has studied conflicts and contradictions in the work of animal cops, shelter workers, and laboratory animal scientists, the sociology of animal abuse and animal hoarding, the relative perception of suffering in animal versus human victims, animal protection in Nazi Germany, and early twentieth century photography of human-animal relationships. His current research examines problems that prevent the delivery of free or discounted veterinary care to underserved populations in the US and Central America.

Roland Kays, PhD
North Carolina Museum of Natural History

In this one-of-a-kind performance, Dr. Roland Kays will present the latest research about coyotes to a soundtrack performed by Senator Jaiz. Dr. Kays will explain how hybridizing with wolves and dogs has allowed these coyotes to rapidly evolve into a larger predator, helping them to ll the ecological niche left open by the local extinction of wolves in the East. Now that they have colonized all our wild areas, coyotes have begun to be seen in urban areas, leading to new questions about their adaptability to city life. Dr. Roland Kays is the head of the Biodiversity Research Lab at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and a research associate professor in the Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology program at NC State. His research on urban wildlife has been feature in documentaries, the popular press, and his recent book, Candid Creatures, features camera trap photographs from a number of researchers. Eban Crawford/Senator Jaiz is part of the Television/Emerging Media Group at NC Museum of Natural Sciences.