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Little brainiacs and big dummies: Are we selecting for stupid, stout, or small dogs? by Mark Rishniw; Curtis W. Dewey is a Agricultural and Biological Sciences article available to read on EtoBox.

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## Background: Brain size has been associated with intelligence of various orders and families of animals, leading to the concept of encephalization. Brain size scales with body weight between species within mammals to approximately the 0.67 power. However, within species, this scaling exponent appears to be much smaller (approximately 0.27 power). ## Aim: We examined whether this relationship has persisted in dogs over the 120 years since this was originally observed. ## Methods: Comparative cross-sectional study of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data obtained from 127 dogs, compared to historical data from 157 dogs and 24 non-dog canid species. ## Results: Brain size in dogs measured by MRI had a scaling exponent virtually identical to that observed previously (0.24 __vs.__ 0.26). However, the proportionality constant was smaller, suggesting that dogs in the study cohort had relatively smaller brains than the historical cohort. Absolute brain size appeared to have both a lower and upper limit in dogs. When compared to non-dogs canids, the most appropriate “representative” size for a “typical dog” when examining allometric scaling across __Canidae__ appeared to be approximately

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Author

Mark Rishniw; Curtis W. Dewey

Publisher

Faculty of Veterinary Medicine

Published

2021

Language

EN

Field

Agricultural and Biological Sciences (Life Sciences)