Main content
Sorry, this episode is not currently available

Dogs have changed us and we've changed them. Brett Westwood visits Battersea to meet the animals whose history is most inextricably linked with our own.

Dogs have changed us and we've changed them. Brett Westwood visits Battersea to meet the animals whose history is most inextricably linked with our own. And in the process very nearly loses a furry microphone cover to an enthusiastic lurcher named Trevor (pictured above)... As the first domestic animals, dogs made it possible for humans to spread into the areas of the world that they did, to eat more protein and to take up activities from hunting to sledding. But it was only in the Victorian period that the dogs we know today were "invented", by breeding. And throughout all of this dogs have also been changing human lives as companions.
Producer Beth O'Dea
Taking part:
Professor Greger Larson, Director Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford
Dr John Bradshaw, anthrozoologist and author of In Defence of Dogs and The Animals Among Us
Susan McHugh, Professor of English at the University of New England
Naomi Sykes, Lawrence Professor of Archaeology at the University of Exeter
Julie-Marie Strange, Professor of British History at the University of Manchester
Dr Krithika Srinivasan, Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Edinburgh

Release date:

28 minutes

Featured in...

Podcast