Dalmatian (Canis familiaris)
Dalmatians are spotted canines ready to sound the alert.
The hairs in a Dalmatian's coat are barbed, making them stick to almost any type of fabric.
- Conservation Status: Domesticated (DO)
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Dalmatians are named after the region they're from -- Dalmatia, an area in Croatia along the Adriatic Sea. Puppies are completely white when they're born. They develop their own unique pattern of dark brown or black spots within a few weeks. Eye color may be brown, blue, or a combination thereof. Ten percent of Dalmatians are born deaf, but that doesn't stop them from doing their jobs: for thousands of years Dalmatians worked as carriage dogs-they walked alongside horse-drawn chariots and then carriages, encouraging the horses to move forward. Before the motorized car was invented, fire trucks were actually just horse-drawn vehicles, and the Dalmatian urged the horses to run as fast as they could to the blazing fires. Nowadays, they're just along for the ride.
