December 22, 2000

1 min read

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Baying, Biting Dogs?

By Kate Wong

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People have long blamed the moon for inspiring strange behavior in humans. But might Fido feel those same effects? The answer, it appears, depends on who you ask. Two studies published today in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) reach rather different conclusions. In the first study, Chanchal Bhattacharjee and his colleagues identified 1,621 patients who had checked into an English hospital from 1997 to 1999 after being bitten by an animal (dogs inflicted 95 percent of the bites). They then compared the number of animal bites each day with the lunar phase in each month. Intriguingly, they found that the incidence of these animal bites more than doubled during a full moon. Simon Chapman and Stephen Morrell of the University of Sydney conducted the second study, which focused on dogs. They looked at 1,671 dog-bite-related hospital admissions from 1997 to 1998. But when they compared the admission dates with the full moon dates, they failed to find a pattern. In fact, of 18 peak days none coincided with a full moon, and the maximum peak occurred around the New Year. "More caution with dogs might be exercised over Christmas and especially at New Year," they write, "irrespective of the full moon."

Kate Wong is an award-winning science writer and senior editor for features at Scientific American, where she has focused on evolution, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, paleontology and animal behavior. She is fascinated by human origins, which she has covered for nearly 30 years. Recently she has become obsessed with birds. Her reporting has taken her to caves in France and Croatia that Neandertals once called home to the shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana in search of the oldest stone tools in the world, as well as to Madagascar on an expedition to unearth ancient mammals and dinosaurs, the icy waters of Antarctica, where humpback whales feast on krill, and a “Big Day” race around the state of Connecticut to find as many bird species as possible in 24 hours. Wong is co-author, with Donald Johanson, of Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins. She holds a bachelor of science degree in biological anthropology and zoology from the University of Michigan. Follow her on Bluesky @katewong.bsky.social

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