The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, gives added meaning to the “dog days of summer” with a new exhibition exploring the world of canines opening July 1 and running through November 26, 2006. The Nature of Dogs is a family-friendly exhibition delves into the evolution of dogs and their connection to human society. Hands-on activities and visual displays are designed to help the visitor understand what it means to lead a dog’s life. The science-oriented show also complements the Museum’s popular art exhibition Best in Show: Dogs in Art from the Renaissance to the Present, which is on view through August 27, 2006.

The Nature of Dogs explores a dog’s view of the world through interactive activities that explain and simulate a dog’s senses. Visitors can learn how dogs communicate, see color the way a dog does, and follow a scent trail to gain a new appreciation for their best (canine) friend.

The story of the dog began about thirty-seven million years ago in North America, the birthplace of the dog family. Exhibition visitors can view a fossil of Hesperocyon gregarious, the “social western dog” and first member of the dog family. This and other fossils lent by the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, trace extinct and living dog lineages which eventually produced all thirteen genera of modern living canids. Most scientists agree that the domestic dog developed from the wolf or a very wolf-like ancestor. But the details of how and when this happened, and how dogs developed into such an extreme range of forms in a relatively short time span continue to be subjects of research and debate. Skeletal material, artifacts and illustrations provide background on some of these issues to the visitor, who is invited to consider the evidence and choose the scenario that seems most compelling.

On view are mounted specimens of the North American gray wolf and gray fox, the African black-backed jackal, and the South American maned wolf--all modern members of the dog family. Specimens are drawn from the Bruce Museum collection, the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, and the American Museum of Natural History. Dogs have a global distribution and occur on every continent except Antarctica. Cultural artifacts in the exhibition illustrate how human societies have vilified, deified, and used the dog for their own purposes including hunting, hauling, and companionship. In order to develop dogs that could better fulfill these roles, humans bred them by selecting for certain traits. The exhibition includes skeletal materials and mounts that demonstrate some of the distinctive characteristics and inbred diseases resulting from the past 150 years of creating pure breeds.

The exhibition is supported by the Charles M. and Deborah G. Royce Exhibition Fund.