The size and head shape of your dog can give you clues as to how long they’ll be around
NATURE
Researchers, ahem, pawed over data on the lives of half a million dogs in the UK to find out which sort of dog is likely to live the longest.
The result? Whippets and dogs with similar physical characteristics to them. The study found that small, long-nosed dogs have a median life expectancy of 13.3 years.
But how do other dogs compare? To find out, the study, published in Scientific Reports, investigated data collected on over 580,000 dogs, which were classified as either one of 155 official pedigree breeds or as a mongrel.
As well as the dogs’ breed, the researchers collected data on the dogs’ sex and date of birth – plus the dogs’ date of death if applicable. In fact, just under half (49 per cent) of the dogs had already died before the study began. This helped researchers determine the death rates.
Using official descriptions of the pedigree species, the researchers categorised each of the dogs according to size (small, medium or large) and head shape (short-nosed, medium-nosed or long-nosed). However, the researchers didn’t have this information for the mongrel dogs, so results concerning head shapes were restricted to the pedigrees.
With all this data, the researchers then calculated the median life expectancies for different categories. For example, female dogs, according to the study, have a life expectancy of 12.7 years, compared to 12.4 years for males.
The highest life expectancies were associa
