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What you can do now is be the best student you can be in all subjects, and recognize that who you associate with will influence who you become. Life is a series of minor decisions that result in major effects over the course of a life. An example could be the use of drugs and alcohol like everyone else seems to be doing, or recognizing that what one does under the influence of intoxicants can have bad results that will haunt you. There may be a police explorer program available in your area (Law Enforcement Career Exploring | Exploring.org).Other than the USMC occupational specialty of Interrogator/Translator (United States Marine Corps Inter), there is no career field involving only interrogation. Interrogations are conducted by police and criminal investigators in the course of their investigations. Some are better at it than others, either through natural ability or psychological related study (e.g., Inbau, F. E., Reid, J. E., Buckley, J. P., & Jayne, B. C. (2004). Criminal interrogation and confessions (4th ed.). Boston: Jones and Bartlett [there may be a later edition]).Law enforcement positions are filled on a competitive basis, those meeting the minimum requirements will not be as qualified as those with the best qualifications; and the required qualifications vary between departments. And, there are more applicants than there are positions. To become a police officer, the standard requirement for most major police agencies seems to be a minimum of 60 undergraduate hours (from a regionally accredited college), although some allow substitution of military service, and a Bachelor's degree may be preferred (generally required for federal special agent positions); although some may only require a high school diploma. Some agencies (and federal agencies) have a military hiring preference, and being an officer counts more than being an enlisted person. A good investigator is well versed in many subjects.Some agencies have age limits, for federal jobs it is 21 minimum and 37 maximum. Any major is acceptable, but Criminal Justice, Forensics, Computer Science, Sociology, or Psychology may stand you in better stead. Foreign language ability, particularly Spanish, is advantageous. Smaller agencies may have a high school requirement. And GPA may be more important than major. The agency normally provides training, but some states may have private academies (like TX). Those meeting the minimum requirements may not compare well to the best qualified applicants. Many agencies have increased pay levels for higher education, and higher education facilitates promotion.To be a detective or tactical team member, first you have to be a regular patrol officer for a certain number of years, which varies by jurisdiction. The larger the organization, the more specialized units will be employed. Generally, you may have to meet qualification requirements, may have to pass the exam (physical and firearms for tactical), and will need recommendations from supervisors. A bachelor’s degree may provide an advantage.A Bachelor's degree is required for federal special agent positions (very few exceptions). As stated above, any major is acceptable. I attended an agency-sponsored Masters program for an MS in management. GPA, work experience, ability to communicate orally and in writing, and graduate degrees are what determine who gets hired for federal positions. And, there are always more applicants than positions. Those meeting the minimum requirements may not compare well to the best qualified applicants. Military service may provide hiring preference, service as an officer is preferred over enlisted service.The FBI likes lawyers and accountants, but they hire from various backgrounds (http://www.fbijobs.gov/). Other federal agency job announcements should be available at https://my.usajobs.gov/login.aspx; acceptance of applications is cyclical. NCIS’s website: http://www.ncis.navy.mil/ (oversold due to TV).You must have no felony arrests, and many misdemeanor arrests are also disqualifying, as may be bad credit. And, a domestic violence conviction will be disqualifying. Any prior drug use of any sort may be disqualifying, although exceptions are possible in some agencies. There may be a written exam, medical exam, polygraph test, physical fitness test, drug test, minimum eyesight requirements, psychological evaluation, oral board examination, and full background check. As I said, there are always more applicants than there are positions, so it may take many application submissions to get an acceptable job (at least it did for me).Criminal profiling is not a clearly defined professional field, in that there are no admission standards based upon education, experience, or certification. Criminologists, forensic psychologists, law enforcers, and other self-appointed individuals profess to be criminal profilers or offer profiling consultation. Generically, a profile can be defined as: “a set of data ... portraying the significant features of something, ... (or) a concise biographical sketch” (Merriam-Webster, 2008). Specifically, Turvey (2001) defines a criminal profile as:A court-worthy document that accounts for the physical and behavioral evidence relating to the known victimology and crime scene characteristics of a particular case, or series of related cases, in order to infer investigatively relevant characteristics of the offender responsible. (p. 681)A Linkage Analysis can be a profiling process which assesses Method of Operation and Signature (i.e., behaviors performed during the criminal act that are not necessarily inherent to that act, like ritual or fetish) and offers an opinion on the likelihood that a series of offenses were committed by the same offender. A Post Conviction Review offers an opinion on the competence of investigation leading to the conviction, as well as recommendations for further forensic analysis. And, an Equivocal Death Analysis reviews the circumstances of a death.The Federal Bureau of Investigation, apparently in response to judicial considerations, abandoned the term “criminal profiling” in favor of “criminal investigative analysis.” However, the quasi-official Crime Classification Manual defines “investigative profiling” as a method of narrowing the focus of an investigation, and“as an attempt to provide detailed information about a certain type of criminal (Geberth 1981), and as a biological sketch of behavioral patterns, trends, and tendencies (Vorpagel 1982). Geberth (1981) has noted that the investigative profile is particularly useful when the criminal has demonstrated some clearly identifiable pathology. ... Profiling is, in fact, a form of retroclassification, or classification that works backward. Typically, we classify a known entity into criteria for assignment to that category.” (Douglas, Burgess, Burgess, & Ressler, 1992)Criminal profiling is a criminological/sociological, psychological, biosociological, and forensic analysis process that attempts to make investigative sense of apparent crime scene dynamics, in order to gain an understanding of behavior, motivation characteristics of offenders, and personality. Profilers analyze the totality of the known crime circumstances, make inferences of offender behavior from that analysis, and create a profile of the offender based on inferences of the offender's behavior (what would appear to be inferences based on inferences). Fewer than 1 in 5 profiles result in the identification of a suspect, although as many as ¾ provide a positive contribution to the investigation.“Profiling is, in fact, a form of retroclassification, or classification that works backward. Profilers recognize crime scene dynamics that are associated to criminal personality types who commit similar offences. Typically we classify a known entity into a discrete category, based on presenting characteristics that translate into criteria for assignment to that category.” (Douglas, Burgess, Burgess, & Ressler, 2006, p. 97)“Psychiatric profile” is not mentioned in the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision (2000, p. 572) (DSM-IV-TR). Even with diagnosis of more than one psychiatric problem, they may referred to as “dual diagnosis,” and a single “principle diagnosis” may be designated. Severity and course specifiers may be added, such as, mild, moderate, and severe, and/or a specifier of the state of remission, but there is no discussion of the construction of a profile. Therefore, the use of the labels “psychiatric profile” or “psychological profile” may be generic references to the diagnosis or categorization of mental disorders, but there is apparently no clinical or professional meaning.It is important to note that inductive profiling, as practiced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and others, as described by Holmes and Holmes (2002) and Turvey, above, seems to be portrayed as ignoring the full range of forensics, geographic profiling, victimology, and so forth. That is not the case in most instances. However, the FBI does provide abbreviated consultation in certain cases, and Turvey (2001) advocates a similar process he has labeled a deductive “Threshold Assessment” (TA). The TA “reviews the initial physical evidence of behavior, victimology, and crime scene characteristics” and should not be confused with a criminal profile (p. 695).John Douglas, a retired supervisor of the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) and pioneer profiler, indicated that the FBI profiling process was primarily inductive (Douglas & Olshaker, 1995). However, the current methodology for criminal investigative analysis (criminal profiling) incorporates inductive and deductive inferences (personal communication FBI Supervisory Special Agent Mark A. Hilts, March 2, 2009). Hilts is the Unit Chief of BAU-2. The National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) consists of four sections: BAU-1, Threat Assessment (Counterterrorism); BAU-2, Crimes Against Adults; BAU-3, Crimes Against Children; and, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP).Hilts related that the limits of the study of 36 convicted murderers reported in "Sexual Homicide" (Ressler, Burgess, & Douglas, 1992) have been recognized, and that data no longer dominates in the formulation of inferences in FBI analyses. Hilts indicated that there were no existing databases utilized solely for profiling, although data from ViCAP is consulted in some instances.The Crime Classification Manual (Douglas, Burgess, Burgess, & Ressler, 1992), a product of the NCAVC, includes an extensive victimology worksheet, and the FBI has been at the forefront in employment of forensic examination. And, it must be noted that inductive research has evolved from its humble beginnings by FBI agents attempting to open new doors in the criminal investigative process.The BAU personnel have conducted research and have been responsive to critiques of early collection efforts. Safarik, Jarvis, and Nussbaum (2006) studied sexual homicide of elderly females and established a typology for those offenders. And, academic research has also contributed to the inductive process (Alison, 2005; Egger, 2002). The inductive process may be less expensive due to the reusable data obtained from empirical inquiry, thereby amortizing the considerable cost of research over a period of time. However, for such a serious state of affairs, ongoing research appears necessary. And, there is a suggestion that any investigator can apply the principles of inductive profiling. While that may be true to a degree, the reliability of the product could be expected to vary with the education, training, and experience of the investigator; which impacts the overall perception of the viability of inductive profiling. Inductive profiling must be evaluated based on the qualifications of the profiler, just as the admissibility of expert forensic testimony must be established in court.Also, the inductive process may be considered less expensive due to the low numbers of certified profilers, thus the costs of maintaining a cadre of profilers available for consultation to numerous investigative agencies is small compared to the costs incurred if all of those agencies duplicated the manpower and training efforts. The BAU, of the NCAVC, requires two years of training prior to certification as an investigative profiler (personal communication Supervisory Special Agent Rhonda Trahern, BAU, February 12, 2008).Out of about 13,000 active FBI special agents, less than 200 special agents are assigned as NCAVC Field Coordinators. They are selected based on experience, they receive training on how to prepare case files for presentation to the BAU, and must serve for a period under the supervision of a certified profiler from the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). The NCAVC collects information on violent crime voluntarily submitted by police agencies, and attempts to link crimes committed in different jurisdictions.From this pool of about 200 agents, some are selected to become Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) profilers assigned to the BAU. The BAU, of the NCAVC, requires two years of training prior to certification as an investigative profiler (personal communication Supervisory Special Agent Rhonda Trahern, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, BAU, February 2008). SSA Trahern was at that time one of two non-FBI agents assigned to the BAU, from a total of about 25 Supervisory Special Agents assigned as investigative profilers. The BAU dealing with adult criminals consists of eight (8) profilers (personal communication with the BAU-2 supervisor Hilts, March 2010).Related: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-criminal-psychology-forensic-psychology-and-criminology/answer/Dan-Robb-2References:Alison, L. (Ed.). (2005). The forensic psychologist’s casebook: Psychological profiling and criminal investigation. Portland, OR: Willan.American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.) (text revision). Washington, D.C.: Author.Douglas, J. E., Burgess, A. W., Burgess, A. G., & Ressler, R. K. (1992). Crime classification manual: A standard system for investigating and classifying violent crimes. San Francisco: Josey-Bass.Douglas, J. E., Burgess, A. W., Burgess, A. G., & Ressler, R. K. (Eds.). (2006). Crime classification manual: A standard system for investigating and classifying violent crimes (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Josey-Bass.Ressler, R. K., Burgess, A. W., & Douglas, J. E. (1992). Sexual homicides: Patterns and motives. New York: The Free Press.Douglas, J., & Olshaker, M. (1995). Mind hunter: Inside the FBI’s elite crime unit. New York: Pocket Books.Egger, S. A. (2002). The killers among us: An examination of serial murder and its investigation. (2nd ed.) Illinois: Prentice Hall.Holmes, R. M., & Holmes, S. T. (2002). Profiling violent crimes: An investigative tool (3rd. ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Merriam-Webster. (2008). Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary. Retrieved on February 26, 2008 from: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/typologySafarik, M. E., Jarvis, J. P., & Nussbaum, K. E. (2006). Sexual homicide of elderly females: Linking offender characteristics to victim and crime scene attributes. In R. D. Keppel (Ed.). Offender profiling (2nd ed.) (pp. 107-125). Mason, OH: Thompson. (Reprinted from Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 17, No. 5, 2002. Sage Publications, Inc.)Turvey, B. E. (2001). Criminal profiling: An introduction to behavioral evidence analysis (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Elsevier Academic Press.

The Secret to Germany’s COVID-19 Success: Angela Merkel Is a ScientistThe chancellor’s rigor in collating information, her honesty in stating what is not yet known, and her composure are paying off.BERLIN—Today, we face the global outbreak of a disease that has the potential to catalyze what the historian Eva Schlotheuber terms a “pandemic of the mind.” As misinformation proliferates and lines between fact and fiction are routinely and nonchalantly crossed, world leaders must, now more than ever, illuminate a thoughtful path forward, one reliant on science and evidence-based reasoning. Indeed, many have. One leader goes further still. Trusted by her people to navigate this outbreak’s murky waters, without inciting or succumbing to a pandemic of the mind, one politician is less a commander in chief and more a scientist in chief: Angela Merkel.For weeks now, Germany’s leader has deployed her characteristic rationality, coupled with an uncharacteristic sentimentality, to guide the country through what has thus far been a relatively successful battle against COVID-19. The pandemic is proving to be the crowning challenge for a politician whose leadership style has consistently been described as analytical, unemotional, and cautious. In her quest for social and economic stability during this outbreak, Merkel enjoys several advantages: a well-respected, coordinated system of scientific and medical expertise distributed across Germany; the hard-earned trust of the public; and the undeniable fact that steady and sensible leadership is suddenly back in style. With 30 years of political experience, and facing an enormous challenge that begs calm, reasoned thinking, Merkel is at peak performance modeling the humble credibility of a scientist at work. And it seems to be paying off, both politically and scientifically.Born in West Germany in 1954, Merkel was raised in a small East German town to the north of Berlin. Her father was a Lutheran pastor and a target of surveillance by East Germany’s security service, the Stasi. A brilliant student, Merkel learned early on “not to put herself in the center of things” lest she expose herself or her family to undue scrutiny, according to Stefan Kornelius, her official biographer and the foreign editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Merkel, who had by then earned a doctorate in quantum chemistry, was working as a research scientist. Soon after, she left her job to join a new political group that had formed in her neighborhood, thus quietly launching her political career. She rose in German politics and, through sheer smarts and a series of well-timed tactical maneuvers, ascended in 2005 to the chancellery, the head of Germany’s federal government. Her trajectory was dramatic and uncommon—for a woman, for an East German, and for a trained scientist with no background in law or civil service.Why did Merkel leave what appeared to be a promising career for the uncertainty of politics? In a New Yorker profile of her, George Packer called the decision “the central mystery of an opaque life.” Kornelius attributes the drastic change to a realization that, as a scientist from poorer and under-resourced East Germany, she would be “outpaced” by her western peers.Merkel has never spoken publicly about why she left science, but perhaps that is because it never really left her. Scientific thinking—her deliberate probing of each new bit of information, her cautious consultation with experts—remains integral to Merkel’s daily decision-making process and her political persona. She is undoubtedly aware that her measured, modest handling of Germany’s affairs is at least partially why she has, for almost 15 years now, enjoyed the support of a country whose historical reverence for scientific achievement and great minds (think Kant, Einstein, innumerable others) is forever balanced by an acute wariness of charismatic leaders with big ideas (think Hitler).Prior to the pandemic, Merkel’s political star had been waning. She had become known, according to Kornelius, as the chancellor “who avoided things, much less as the one who built things.” Yes, she had prevented Europe from falling apart during the financial crisis and led the continent as it grappled with the subsequent migration crisis. But of late, she had been left politically sidelined by the domestic rise of populism, the far right, the far left, and by autocratic leaders around the world.Then came the coronavirus. Germany’s first case was confirmed on January 28, but the threat didn’t truly transform everyday life here until the middle of March. Government-mandated restrictions in Berlin were incremental but more and more disruptive. Few were bothered by the cancellation of large gatherings such as industry conferences, but when the city’s creative centers—its theaters, operas, and concert halls—closed on March 10, something essential went missing. A few days later, Berlin’s notorious and celebrated nightlife scene went dark too. Pedestrians dispersed, spooked restaurant owners closed up shop or erected plexiglass barriers. The very fabric of the capital’s social and cultural life was fraying. Residents of this once-divided city were again reminded just how quickly freedom can be lost.Merkel—for whom, as a former East German, liberty and freedom are known to be paramount—understood all too personally what the lockdown meant for her fellow citizens. On March 18, after the country had closed its schools, its economy, its way of life, she gave a rare televised speech that solidified her leadership.Facing the camera from behind a desk, with both the German and European Union flags to her side, she began on an emotional note, by conceding that “our idea of normality, of public life, social togetherness—all of this is being put to the test as never before.” She emphasized the importance of democracy and of making transparent political decisions and she insisted that any information she shared about the pandemic was based on thorough research. Then, in an astonishing statement for a German leader, one she “must have considered endlessly," Kornelius told me, she made reference to her country’s darkest hour. “Since the Second World War,” Merkel said, “there has not been a challenge for our country in which action in a spirit of solidarity on our part was so important.”George Packer: We are living in a failed stateWhat stood out from the address was not so much Merkel’s medical advice, but her unusually direct appeal to the notion of social togetherness and to her own limitations as an individual and as a leader (“I firmly believe that we will pass this test if all citizens genuinely see this as their task”). Her rational assurances and her emotional appeal were crucial at a time of rising panic. While the mood isn’t quite so dark here anymore—thanks to a variety of factors, Germany appears to have dealt with the outbreak better than many other countries—Germans largely continue to heed the chancellor’s detailed directives. The number of people infected by the coronavirus has increased, as it has throughout the world. But unlike in Italy, where more than 22,000 have lost their life to COVID-19, or in the United States, where the death toll has surpassed that figure and continues to rise rapidly, total deaths in Germany have been inching up from 4,000. To put this in perspective, more than twice as many New Yorkers have lost their life to the coronavirus as have individuals in all of Germany to date.While country-level comparative data may be somewhat unreliable, and the numbers can certainly take a turn for the worse in Germany as anywhere else, experts cite a number of possible factors for the country’s relatively low number of deaths: The average age of coronavirus patients has been lower here than elsewhere, which limits the risk; the number of people tested for the virus is higher than in other countries, and cases are for the most part carefully tracked; and the public health-care system has been efficient enough to ramp up the number of available intensive-care units to meet potential demand.Given her longevity, any resulting successes are at least in some degree attributable to Merkel’s leadership. The chancellor has a way of bringing “divergent interests together in compromise,” Kornelius said. Her ability to admit what she doesn’t know, and delegate decisions, has been a particularly good fit for post-war Germany’s federalized political structure.Merkel has relied on experts from well-funded scientific-research organizations, including public-health agencies such as the Robert Koch Institute and the country’s network of public universities. The Berlin Institute of Health, a biomedical-research institution, has, like other organizations, recently pivoted its efforts in order to study the coronavirus. Its chairman, Axel Radlach Pries, told me that Germany’s research institutions are currently working closely together to “establish nationwide systems” of research. The federal government, with Merkel at the helm, plays a convening role, recently gathering all of the country’s university medical departments into a single coronavirus task force.When I spoke with him, Pries stressed the significance of receiving honest communication from the highest levels of leadership during the outbreak. Merkel has relied heavily, and very publicly, on the expertise of a handful of experts, including the now famous Christian Drosten, the head of virology at the Charité hospital in Berlin. From the perspective of the public, Pries said, the chancellor and the virologist “are very trustworthy.” People know “that what they get from both Drosten and Angela Merkel are real and very well-considered facts” and that the two also “share information about what they don’t know.” Because they are “honest with respect to their information,” he said, that information is seen as credible. This honesty, at a time of widespread disinformation, Pries told me, was playing a big role in persuading Germans to largely continue to follow the rules and maintain, even now, “a very calm situation in Germany.”The virus is still far from defeated, and no one knows what challenges lie ahead for Germany, or the rest of the world. But judging by Merkel’s approach—her rigor in collating information, her honesty in stating what is not yet known, and her composure—she may someday be remembered not as Germany’s greatest scientist, but as its scientist in chief: the political leader who executed, celebrated, and personified evidence-based thinking when its mattered most.#stay home #stay safe.

25 Facts About PuppiesEveryone loves puppies, we know. It's scientifically proven that they're heart-meltingly cute. But there's more to the little fur babies than just those adorable puppy eyes. In honor of National Puppy Day (which happens on March 23), here are 25 things everyone should know about these four-legged snuggle buddies.1. THE WORD PUPPY HAS FRENCH ROOTS.Etymologists think the term puppy may come from poupeé, a French word meaning doll or toy. The word puppy doesn't appear to have entered the English language until the late 16th century—before that, English speakers called baby dogs whelps. William Shakespeare's King John, believed to be written in the 1590s, is one of the earliest known works to use the (super cute) term puppy-dog.2. PUPPIES EVOLVED TO BE BLIND AND DEAF AT BIRTH.Sviatlana BarchanPuppies are functionally blind and deaf at birth. On day one, their eyes are firmly shut and their ear canals closed. Why? In brief, it’s part of an evolutionary trade-off. Since pregnancy can hurt a carnivore's ability to chase down food, dogs evolved to have short gestation periods. Brief pregnancies meant that canine mothers wouldn't need to take prolonged breaks from hunting. However, because dog embryos spend such a short time in the womb (only two months or so), puppies aren't born fully developed—and neither are their eyes or ears.3. PUPPIES HAVE BABY TEETH, TOO.EriclefrancaisLike many newborn mammals, puppies are born completely toothless. At 2 to 4 weeks of age, a puppy's 28 baby teeth will start to come in. Around 12 to 16 weeks old, those baby teeth fall out, and by the time pups are 6 months old, they should be sporting a set of 42 adult teeth.4. PUPPIES TAKE A LOT OF NAPS.Tetiana GarkushaLike children, puppies need a lot of sleep—up to 15 to 20 hours of it a day. The American Kennel Club strongly advises dog owners to resist the urge to disturb napping puppies, because sleep is critical for a young canine's developing brain, muscles, and immune system. Puppy owners should also establish a designated sleeping space on their pup's behalf so they can snooze undisturbed.5. CERTAIN dog BREEDS ARE USUALLY BORN BY C-SECTION.MirasWonderlandPurebred dogs can exhibit some extreme bodily proportions, which doesn't always make for easy births. Breeds with atypically large heads are more likely to be born by C-section than those with smaller skulls. A 2010 survey of 22,005 individual dog litters in the UK found that terriers, bulldogs, and French bulldogs had Caesarian births more than 80 percent of the time. The other breeds with the highest rates of C-sections were Scottish terriers, miniature bull terriers, Dandie Dinmont terriers, mastiffs, German wirehaired pointers, Clumber spaniels, and Pekingeses, according to the study.6. SOME dog BREEDS HAVE BIGGER LITTERS THAN OTHERS.Anastasiia CherniavskaiaAs a general rule, smaller breeds tend to have smaller litters, while bigger dogs give birth to more puppies. The biggest litter on record was born to a Neapolitan mastiff that gave birth via Caesarian section to a batch of 24 puppies in Cambridgeshire, UK in 2004. In rare cases, very small dogs do give birth to relatively large litters, though. In 2011, a Chihuahua living in Carlisle, England, gave birth to a whopping 10 puppies—twice as many as expected. Each weighed less than 2.5 ounces.7. SOME PUPPIES ARE BORN GREEN.Martin PooleSometimes, a puppy in a light-colored litter can be born green. On two different occasions in 2017, in fact, British dogs made the news for giving birth to green-tinted puppies. In January, a 2-year-old chocolate lab in Lancashire, UK gave birth to a litter that included a mossy-green pup. Her owners named her FiFi, after Fiona, the green-skinned ogre from Shrek. Just a few months later, a golden retriever in the Scottish Highlands also gave birth to a puppy with a green coat, a male named Forest. How did the puppies end up sharing a shade with Kermit? In rare cases, the fur of a light-haired puppy can get stained by biliverdin, a green pigment found in dog placentas. It's not permanent, though. The green hue gradually disappears over the course of a few weeks.8. PUPPIES DON'T FIND YOUR YAWNS CONTAGIOUS.SmederevacEver notice that when somebody yawns, other people may follow suit? Contagious yawning, thought to be a sign of empathy, affects humans, baboons, chimps, and yes, dogs. But as research published in Animal Cognition suggests, young canines aren't susceptible to catching yawns from birth. In the 2012 study, Swedish researchers took a group of 35 dogs between 4 and 14 months old on closely monitored play dates, feigning yawns in front of each individual animal. Dogs that were less than 7 months old didn't react, yet many of the older dogs would respond with a yawn of their own. This pattern mirrors what happens with humans—children don't pick up the habit of contagious yawning until around age 4, when they start to develop social skills like empathy. These results suggest that dogs, too, may develop empathy over the course of their puppyhood.9. PUPPIES LIKE "BABY TALK" MORE THAN THEIR PARENTS DO.JStaley401Like humans, puppies seem to grow out of baby talk, recent research has found. As part of a 2017 study, 30 women were asked to look at assorted photographs of people and dogs and utter this pre-written line: "Hi! Hello cutie! Who's a good boy? Come here! Good boy! Yes! Come here sweetie pie! What a good boy!" To the surprise of no one, the human test subjects spoke in a higher register while looking at dog pictures, especially puppy photos. Afterward, the researchers played the recordings for 10 adult pooches and 10 puppies. Almost all of the pups started barking and running toward the speaker when they heard the baby-talk recordings. In contrast, the grown dogs pretty much ignored the recordings altogether.10. DALMATIAN PUPPIES ARE BORN WITHOUT SPOTS.MirasWonderlandBeloved by firefighters, Disney fans, and George Washington, Dalmatians arguably have the most recognizable coat of any dog breed. Or at least, full-grown Dalmatians do. As puppies, they're born white and spot-less. The markings usually begin to show up after four weeks or so. (A small subset of Dalmatian puppies are born with one or two large black blotches, known as patches, but those markings aren't allowed in most competitive show rings.)11. PUPPIES KNOW HOW TO MANIPULATE YOU WITH THEIR EYES.jpfotograafThose adorable "puppy eyes" aren't an inadvertent expression of canine emotion; they're a deliberate ploy to get our attention. Puppies (and adult dogs) have learned that raising their eyebrows, which makes their eyes appear bigger and sadder, makes them magnets for human attention. According to one study from 2017, dogs are more likely to make dramatic facial expressions like puppy-dog eyes when they know humans are watching. And it works. Research has shown that shelter puppies who put on such faces get adopted more quickly than dogs that show other behaviors, like wagging their tails.12. PUPPIES CAN HAVE IDENTICAL TWINS.Dixi_Scientists don't know how common identical twin puppies are, because until very recently, no one was able to prove that they existed at all. In 2016, Kurt de Cramer, a South African veterinarian, noticed something unusual while performing a C-section on a pregnant Irish wolfhound. Normally, every puppy gets its own placenta, yet de Cramer noticed that two of the seven pups in this litter shared a single placenta. Testing later verified that the puppies were genetically identical. It was the first confirmed case of identical twin puppies in the world.13. SCIENTISTS HAVE SUCCESSFULLY CLONED (AND RE-CLONED) THEM.alkirIn 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first successful mammal clone. Nine years later, geneticists in South Korea used the same process to engineer the world's first canine clone, an Afghan hound named Snuppy. While Snuppy passed away in 2015 at the respectable age of 10, his story isn't over yet. In 2017, researchers announced that four puppies had been cloned from his stem cells. Sadly, one of the pups died a few days after its birth, but the other three survived. Scientists hope that these young dogs will teach us how healthy cloned animals are compared to their naturally conceived counterparts.14. LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA'S PUPPY INSPIRED A SONG IN HAMILTON.Nicholas HuntIn the award-winning musical Hamilton, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton sing a ballad called "Dear Theodosia" to their newborn children. The tender song's inspiration wasn't a newborn babe, though. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote it the week he adopted Tobillo, a stray puppy he and his wife found while on vacation in 2011.15. A PUPPY DESTROYED HALF OF JOHN STEINBECK'S OF MICE AND MEN MANUSCRIPT.Of Mice and Men might feature one of the biggest animal lovers in American literature—the rabbit- and puppy-loving Lennie—but ironically, a puppy once jeopardized the novel's existence. In May 1936, John Steinbeck's Irish setter, Toby, was going through his teething phase. Left alone one night, he demolished half of his master's manuscript for Of Mice and Men, eating through two months of work ... and Steinbeck didn't have any backup copies. But the author found it hard to stay angry with the puppy. "I was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically," Steinbeck wrote. "I didn't want to ruin a good dog for a manuscript I'm not sure is good at all." He just buckled down and rewrote the shredded chapters.16. KEITH RICHARDS ONCE SMUGGLED A PUPPY THROUGH BRITISH CUSTOMS.Keystone FeaturesWhile the Rolling Stones were on tour in the U.S. in 1964, a fan gave guitarist Keith Richards a collie puppy named Ratbag. When Richards returned to the UK, rather than subject the pup to quarantine, he smuggled the animal through British customs under his coat. The dog would become one of Richards's most beloved companions, and a biographer would later write that the star "appeared to identify [with Ratbag] more than anybody else."17. BARACK OBAMA'S PUPPY HAS HIS OWN BASEBALL CARD.Obama White House, FlickrIn April 2009, the Obamas adopted Bo, a 6-month-old Portuguese water dog. That summer, the White House put together an official baseball card loaded with fun facts about America's First Pooch. (For one: He can't swim.) You can still download the collectible card online.18. THE SOVIET UNION ONCE GAVE JFK A VERY SPECIAL PUPPY.Cecil Stoughton White House PhotographsDogs can bring out the best in people, including political adversaries. While seated next to each other at a state dinner in Vienna in the early 1960s, First Lady Jackie Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev got to chatting about Strelka, the world-famous dog who had recently been sent into low-Earth orbit by the Soviet space program. Afterward, Khrushchev sent the Kennedys one of Strelka's newly born daughters. The puppy's name was Pushinka, which means fluffy in Russian.19. A BOSTON MUSEUM HAS ENLISTED A PUPPY TO FIND ART-DESTROYING PESTS.dosecreativeIn early 2018, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts "hired" a Weimaraner pup named Riley to find unwanted pests that, if left unchecked, could harm priceless masterpieces. Riley is being taught to sniff out art-threatening insects like textile-eating moths and wood-boring beetles. "Pests are an ongoing concern for museums," deputy director Katie Getchell told The Boston Globe in January 2018. "It's exciting to think about this as a new way to address the problem." If Riley is able to do his job well, she said, other museums and archives that collect infestation-prone materials might be able to use trained dogs as a defense against bugs, too.20. IBM'S WATSON IS JUDGING PUPPIES NOW.Erik S. LesserNot all puppies have what it takes to become guide dogs. Guide dogs have to be healthy, confident, hardworking, and not easily distracted. At the end of the day, many pups just aren't cut out for this line of work—at Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a nonprofit that trains and places seeing eye dogs in New York, only about 36 percent of trainee dogs make it. That's where Watson, the IBM supercomputer famous for winning Jeopardy, comes in. IBM has developed a program for Watson that helps it predict how likely individual puppies are to graduate from Guiding Eyes's training school using data on the temperament, medical history, and genetics of the dogs as well as the personality traits of their trainers.21. LOOKING AT PUPPIES CAN MAKE YOU MORE PRODUCTIVE.ThamKCThat puppy portrait hanging in your cubicle at work might be a bigger asset than you realized. For a 2012 Hiroshima University experiment on productivity, participants were asked to look at pictures from one of three categories: tasty food snapshots, pictures of adult animals, or photos of puppies and kittens. Then, they were asked to play a board game that required lots of precision. As it turned out, people who'd just seen puppies and kittens had an easier time concentrating on the task at hand than study subjects who saw other types of images.22. OUR STONE-AGE ANCESTORS TOOK GOOD CARE OF THEIR PUPPIES.FamVeldIn 1914, archaeologists in Germany discovered the fossilized jawbone of a puppy that lived 14,000 years ago. According to a 2018 study on the specimen, the jaw probably belonged to a 27- or 28-week-old pup—and a sick one, at that. The teeth showed signs of canine distemper virus, a life-threatening disease that still has no cure. Analysis of the bone suggested that the animal first came down with the sickness at 19 weeks old. "Without adequate care," study co-author Luc Janssens noted in a press release, "a dog with a serious case of distemper will die in less than three weeks," yet this pup survived for another eight weeks. Even though the puppy wouldn't have been very useful to its prehistoric human owners, they kept it clean, warm, and well-fed for months, helping it survive for longer than it otherwise would have.23. THERE'S A 17-TON PUPPY SCULPTURE IN BILBAO, SPAIN.luisrsphotoSince it opened in 1997, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao has been home to Puppy, a towering, flower-covered sculpture that artist Jeff Koons modeled after a young West Highland terrier. The 17-ton pooch owes its shape to a fabric-covered mesh that is topped with 37,000 live flowers. The 40-foot-tall, puppy-shaped garden is now regarded as a mascot for both the museum and the city itself.24. THEY'RE NOT RUNNING AROUND THE PUPPY BOWL LIVE. (SORRY.)CherylEDavis/iStock via Getty Images PlusThe fur-rocious Super Bowl spoof known as the Puppy Bowl made its debut on Animal Planet back in 2005. Viewers might be surprised to find out that, unlike the real game, the Puppy Bowl isn't broadcast live. Instead, the contest is shot over the course of an entire week. The crew spends two days filming the dogs with the help of 100 or more canine wranglers.25. HOLLYWOOD'S MOST ICONIC DOG WAS A TROUBLESOME PUPPY.Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesThe first dog to play Lassie on film was really a "laddie." Specifically, he was a male Rough collie named Pal. As a pup, the dog had some behavior issues—little Pal was overly enthusiastic and drove his first owner crazy with nonstop barking. (Even more disconcerting was the puppy's habit of chasing down motorcycles, a pastime he never outgrew.) After animal trainer Henry Peck failed to make any progress with Pal, he referred the puppy's owner to a colleague by the name of Rudd Weatherwax, who was much more successful at training him. Pal's original owner eventually gave him to Weatherwax, and the rest is history. Under the trainer's guidance, Pal starred in seven Lassie movies, plus two episodes of the spinoff TV series. Decades after his passing, The Saturday Evening Post declared that Pal had enjoyed "the most spectacular canine career in film history."