In the Womb: Dogs

National Geographic’s In The Womb series has to be some of the most interesting television I’ve seen in a long time. I first watched the program a year ago just before Celeste gave birth to her litter and I was captivated by their use of computer generated images (which were so convincing I thought they had actually rigged up a dog’s uterus with back lighting and multiple mini-cameras) and actual “4-D” ultrasound.

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Although the 4D ultrasound is upstaged by the clarity and color of the CGI images, it’s a major improvement over traditional ultrasound. I, for one, find looking at the black and white patterns to be tantamount to reading tea leaves or deciphering the matrix.

Here’s a slide from Celeste’s ultrasound a little less than a month before she gave birth:

It’s decidedly not as easy to interpret as the 4D ultrasound demonstrated in the program.

But the real payoff is in the CGI. Through my amazing hookups with NatGeo insiders, I bring you high resolution screen caps of some of the show’s most interesting graphics:






The full program runs tomorrow, Sunday January 4th, 2009 at 9 PM on the National Geographic Channel.




It’s well worth a watch if you’re ever interested in breeding your dogs, getting a puppy, or just want a good DAWWWW session with some really informative information. Tune in 2 hours early if you want to learn about gestation in cats.

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About Christopher

Christopher Landauer is a fifth generation Colorado native and second generation Border Collie enthusiast. Border Collies have been the Landauer family dogs since the 1960s and Christopher got his first one as a toddler. He began his own modest breeding program with the purchase of Dublin and Celeste in 2006 and currently shares his home with their children Mercury and Gemma as well. His interest in genetics began in AP Chemistry and AP Biology and was honed at Stanford University.