Sunday, March 26, 2006

Variety is the very spice of life.


I was thinking about this the other day, you can have a normal health Chihuahua that only weighs 3 pounds and a equally healthy 120 plus pound beast like Goofy, who is of questionable parentage. Dogs come in snow white, every shade of brown and grey, all the way to a black that practically sucks in light, even yellow, red, or orange. There is every possible pattern of spotting and solids and you can sorta count brindles as being striped. Vizslas, Weimaraner, Great Danes, all have fur so short it feels like silk and there is no way you can grab one of these ‘fur-less wonders’ and try to steer it into a kennel. Then there are the furry beasts, the ones that molt more than shed, the ones you can knit yourself a new dog every time you comb them out. (I actually have a friend who turns her dog’s fur into yarn and then knits with it – so while you and I fight to reclaim the house from dog fur, she is wearing it)


Think about it, dog skulls range from the size of an egg to just bigger than the turkey I served at Thanksgiving.

If we had the variety in people that there are in dogs, we would range from a foot tall to 20 feet. We do come in all the same colors as dogs; white, tan, brown, caramel, and black but no spots. I think spotted people would be pretty cool. If anyone finds a picture of a person tattooed into a stunning Guernsey cow design – forward that puppy.


Turns out I am not the only one who thinks about these crazy things. The Salt Lake Trib had an article on a team of researchers from the University of Utah that are studying zebra fish colors. They hope to find the gene that controls pigment. Using this information they may be able to determine why we come in the colors that we do and only those colors. Isn’t science fun?

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