41 Facts About Dogs - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.213)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube

And did you know that the Doberman Pinscher came about in the 1800s because a German guy named Louis Doberman

decided that he needed some extra protection for his job? He was, it rather goes without saying, a tax collector

And that's the first of many facts about dogs I'm going to share with you today. Let's get started

So Snoop Dogg got that name from his mom who compared him to Snoopy. Meredith, I told you, facts about dogs, not facts about Snoop Dogg

Okay, actual dogs. In 1942, William Randolph Hearst wrote an elegy that was published in Time magazine. It was for his toy dachshund. Rest in peace, Helen

Pablo Picasso also had a dachshund. His name was Lump, and he made frequent appearances in Picasso's work

Thing of which, dachshund means badger dog in German. They were bred to help with hunting

They have a long body that was used to, like, get badgers and other animals from their burrows

On to presidential dogs, Warren G. Harding's Airedale Laddie Boy had his own seat at cabinet meetings

He was also pretty famous. The New York Times ran many stories about him with headlines like

Laddie Boy, a newsboy, and Laddie Boy gets playmate, and we're running out of things to write about Laddie Boy

Maybe instead you could have covered Harding's disastrous presidency. FDR's Scottish Terrier Fala was an honorary private in the army

Speaking of Fala, at a campaign dinner in 1944, Roosevelt went on a rant about how Republicans made up a story that he had left his dog in the Aleutian Islands and sent a Navy destroyer to go pick him up

And it cost taxpayers 20 million dollars and Roosevelt referred to the story as libelous statements about my dog

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev once gave a dog to JFK's daughter Caroline

Caroline, the dog was named Puschinka, Russian for fluffy. Puschinka's mom was none other

than Strelka, one of the first animals to orbit the earth. While George H.W. Bush was in office, his dog Millie had a litter of puppies at the White

House, and one of those puppies, Spot, would later move back into the White House when

George W. Bush took office. The Beatles were also dog lovers. In fact, Paul McCartney once said, if you ever play

Sgt Pepper watch your dog The band put a dog whistle sound during the song A Day in the life so you won hear it but your dog might The Golden Retriever that played Comet for a full six seasons on the great American television program Full House also played Buddy in Air Bud

One of the greatest movies ever made. Terry the Cairn Terrier, who was Toto in The Wizard of Oz, got paid $125 a week

Compare that with the $100 a week that the Munchkins earned. Judy Garland got paid $500 a week

Moose, the Jack Russell Terrier from Frasier, received more fan mail than any of the other actors

I bet Kelsey Grammer hated that. At the height of Rintintin's fame for his work in silent films, a chef prepared him a daily steak lunch

and while he ate, classical musicians played to aid his digestion. Cover Alex's ears, Mark. I do not want her to know about that

Poodles have a reputation for being spoiled, but their haircuts are actually functional

So they were bred as hunting dogs to retrieve birds who'd fallen in water

and their coats were mostly shaved for swimming, except for strategic areas left for warmth

They do have famously warm coats. You are a very bad person, Cruella de Vil

Why did we put you next to Lincoln? He's an American hero. I'm moving you. You're going next to the troll face in Napoleon

Speaking of dogs with jobs, not to be confused with the Disney Channel program Dog with a Blog

corgis were prized for their herding abilities. Despite their strange body type, they herded cattle, sheep, and even ducks and geese

Pekingese dogs were bred to be the emperor's bodyguards in ancient China, and miniature

Pekingese were named sleeve Pekingese for how they were carried in the large sleeves

of the robes worn by members of the Chinese imperial household. Belgian Malinois shepherd dogs have historically been police dogs, sniffing out explosives

narcotics, and so on, but more recently they've been trained to smell prostate cancer

Dogs can also be trained to sniff out bootleg DVDs, plus some are used to track down smuggled

phones in prisons. Watch out, Orange is the New Black people. So how is that possible

Well, because dogs have a sense of smell that's between 10,000 and 100,000 times more acute

than a human sense of smell. Moving on to seeing-eye dogs, the idea originated in Switzerland to help blind veterans

Seeing-eye dogs are also trained to go to the bathroom on command. For the record Jack Russell Terriers were in fact bred by a man named John aka Jack Russell Which isn that weird when you consider how many things dogs actually have in common with people like dogs who bark continuously can also get laryngitis or they can be left or right or pawed

They also have different blood types, and dogs even process voices much the same way that humans do

which allows them to detect emotions. But studies indicate they actually don't feel guilt, so all those sad looks you know so well from dog-shaming blogs

are just a response to the owner's displeasure. They do, however, experience envy if they feel another dog is being better rewarded for the same trick

Also a thing with humans. Like, remember when Kim got the Bentley and all the other Kardashian sisters were super jealous

because they were like, we are also professionally vapid? In the 1800s, a dog-powered device was invented

A dog would walk on a treadmill that ran an appliance, like a washing machine or a butter churner

Here's a crazy fact. The smaller a dog is, the more likely it is to have dreams

Also, big dogs have shorter life expectancies because they age faster. A Chinese study found that people who own dogs get better sleep at night and are sick less often

but they're also more likely to have to clean up vomit regularly. That wasn't actually part of the study. It's just a fact that I happen to know

Anyway, dog owners are also less likely to suffer from depression than non-pet owners

Some of those dog owners take that affection pretty far. Like an estimated 1 million dogs in the US have been named the primary beneficiary in their owner's wills

Speaking of which, in 1991, German Countess Carlotta Liebenstein left around $106 million to her German shepherd Gunther III

Most of that went to his heir, Gunther IV. So in 2000, Gunther IV bought an 8-bedroom mansion in Miami that once belonged to Madonna

Dogs are capable of understanding up to 250 words and gestures, and the average dog is as intelligent as a two-year-old child

so I hope Gunther IV bought himself some Baby Einstein videos with all that sweet Will money

In 2010, a border collie named Chaser made news because researchers from Wofford College had taught her to recognize 1,022 words

including many commands as well as hundreds of toy names. That reminds me of my dog Willie who knows the word treat Most pregnant Boston Terriers and Bulldogs have to deliver via Caesarean section In fact up to 92 of Boston Terrier deliveries these days are C

So that's probably how you came into the world, Blue 3, although hopefully not with that bone in your mouth

In the 1860s, two stray dogs named Bummer and Lazarus roamed the streets of San Francisco

and they became a fixture in local newspapers. They were allowed to keep roaming in spite of the city's anti-stray dog rules

It also didn't hurt that they were experts at ratting. The Norwegian Lundehund has six toes on each foot

By the way, they were bred to hunt puffins in Norway, which is how they got that name

Lunde is the Norwegian word for puffin, and hund, of course, means dog

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the tallest dog is a Great Dane named Zeus

He's 44 inches tall and reaches 7'4 when he's standing on his hind legs

Finally, I returned to my salon to tell you that in 2003, Ozzy Osbourne saw the family

Pomeranian Pip being attacked by a coyote in the garden. He heard the dog screaming and

then physically wrestled with the coyote rescuing Pip from its mouth and engaging in the most

aerobic exercise Ozzy Osbourne has seen since at least 1978. Ah, if only a nearby fan could have wrestled Ozzy Osbourne to the ground, he could have

saved that back. Anyway, thanks for watching Menno Floss here on YouTube, which is made with the help of

all of these nice people. Every week, we endeavor to answer one of your mind-blowing questions

This week's question comes from the GiantsFan0987, who asks, Why do grading scales skip the letter E in the United States

Well, first off, the Giants suck. Secondly, the grade E was used. The first school in the U.S. to use a grading scale like the one we see today was Mount Holyoke

And they used the letters A to E, A being the highest grade, E being the lowest

But they worried that parents would think that E stood for excellent

I want to apologize, Giants fan. I'm a Cubs fan. I'm just jealous. Anyway, now F can be interpreted as standing for fail, but by the 1930s, F had replaced E in most grading scales because, you know, it's not excellent

If you have a mind-blowing question of your own you'd like answered, please leave it below in comments. We'll endeavor to answer as many as we can

Thank you again for watching, and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome