Vampyr Hounds: Dead Dog Cell Immortality Infects Other Dogs?

Cute Dead Dog.

And on with the story... Carl Zimmer looks at an interesting idea in biology... when can a parasitic mutation (like cancers) be considered a separate entity from its host. Or as he puts it "Can a tumor become a new form of life?".

Sticker's Sarcoma is an aleggedly transmissible tumour found in dogs. These tumours have been suggested to act more like a normal pathogen, they can be given to dogs from other dogs, by biting, licking, scratching and other transmission pathways. A similar mode of transmission has been suggested for Tasmanian Devil mouth tumours.

The weird thing is, these scientists did a genetic survey, comparing tumour cells with each other and their hosts - they found this:

"All of the tumor cells shared the same genetic marker," and that " the tumor cells [were] closely related to one another--and not closely related to the dogs in which they had been found."

Carl Zimmer calls this "Freaky". It's all sort of freaky, a little freaky-scary and a little freaky-cool.

Doghouse Dog hospital

There was a better pun waiting when dogs in need of care are sent to approved low-security female inmates.

I don't like this.

Why can't low security blokes get a similar deal? Given that girls tend to be ranked lower security risks automatically, the blokes on the same sort of detail will actually be less serious offenders.

It's sexual stereotyping and reinforcing gender bias.

I can see young men gaining positive skills through supervised care and rehabilitation of another living organism. I can also see them being hazed and teased as animal-loving poofs. But I also heard the other day from an ex-guard that prisoners eat their own shit for laughs, so something else really needs to keep them occupied.