130 Fun Facts About Veterinary

The world's first veterinary school opened in 1761 in which city?

A second school followed at Alfort near Paris in 1765, and the model spread across Europe within decades.

Which French horseman founded the world's first veterinary school?

He ran a riding academy and turned to animal medicine after watching cattle plague devastate French herds.

The word 'veterinary' comes from the Latin 'veterinae', meaning what?

The earliest vets were essentially horse and ox doctors, which is exactly what the Latin root implies.

Which 17th-century English writer first used the word 'veterinarian' in print, in 1646?

The physician-author of Religio Medici coined dozens of English words, including 'electricity' and 'hallucination'.

The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons was established by royal charter in which year?

The London veterinary college itself had been running since 1791, but it took another half-century to get a professional body.

In 1922, who became the first woman recognised as a veterinary surgeon by the Royal College?

She had completed her training in Edinburgh decades earlier but was barred from sitting the exams until the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act.

The oldest veterinary college in the United States, established in 1879, belongs to which university?

The land-grant school in Ames had been teaching veterinary science to seniors since 1872 before offering degrees.

The first D.V.M. degree granted in the United States was awarded in 1876 by which university?

The graduate, Daniel Elmer Salmon, went on to a USDA career and lent his name to the genus Salmonella.

The American Veterinary Medical Association was founded in which year?

Forty delegates from seven states met in New York during the Civil War to create it; today it represents more than 105,000 vets.

The earliest surviving veterinary text, the Kahun Papyrus, comes from which civilization?

It dates to the Twelfth Dynasty and deals mainly with cattle ailments.

What was the cattle illness caused by Brucella abortus long called, after its Danish discoverer?

In people the same bacterium causes undulant fever, and Bernhard Bang's bacillus is still a headache for dairy herds worldwide.

What was the name of the 9-year-old boy first given Pasteur's rabies vaccine in 1885?

He received 13 inoculations over 11 days and later worked as a caretaker at the Pasteur Institute.

Pasteur risked prosecution for treating that boy because he was not licensed as what?

He was a chemist and microbiologist by training, so he had colleagues who were doctors administer the injections.

Which cattle plague became in 2011 only the second disease ever declared eradicated worldwide?

It joined smallpox on the list; the virus is a close relative of measles and canine distemper.

The word 'rabies' comes from a Latin word meaning what?

The disease was historically called hydrophobia because throat spasms make victims panic when offered a drink.

James Herriot was a pen name. What was the Yorkshire vet actually called?

Born in Sunderland and raised in Glasgow, he practised in Yorkshire for almost 50 years.

The real James Herriot ran his practice in which North Yorkshire market town?

The surgery at 23 Kirkgate is now the World of James Herriot museum.

In the Herriot books, the fictional town where the practice is based is called what?

The author described it as a composite of several market towns plus a fair chunk of his imagination.

The Herriot pen name came from a Scottish footballer playing for Birmingham City in which position?

The vet was watching a match on TV when he needed a pseudonym, since British vets were not allowed to advertise under their own names.

The real James Herriot qualified in 1939 from a veterinary college in which city?

He took six years to finish the five-year course, having decided on the career after a school lecture by the college principal.

The eccentric senior partner Siegfried Farnon was based on which real vet?

He was reportedly offended by the portrayal, telling the author the book was 'a real test of our friendship'.

Who played James Herriot in the original BBC series of All Creatures Great and Small?

He described the real vet as having a soft, lilting Scottish accent.

Which actor plays James Herriot in the 2020 revival of All Creatures Great and Small?

The Scottish newcomer kept his own accent for the role, a nod to the real vet's Glasgow upbringing.

The 2020 All Creatures Great and Small premiered on which UK broadcaster?

In the US it airs on PBS Masterpiece, and neither this version nor the BBC one was filmed in the real town because it had grown too big.

Reality TV vet Dr. Jan Pol was born in which country?

He emigrated to the US after vet school and his show ran for 24 seasons on Nat Geo Wild.

The Incredible Dr. Pol is filmed at a rural practice in which US state?

He opened Pol Veterinary Services in Weidman in 1981 after a decade working for another practice in Harbor Beach.

Which author created Doctor Dolittle, the country doctor who learns to talk to animals?

The first book appeared in 1920, set in the fictional village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh.

The TV series Bondi Vet follows veterinary surgeon Chris Brown in which city?

The show splits time between a Bondi Junction clinic and an emergency hospital in North Ryde.

From 1982, Bob Barker ended which game show by urging viewers to spay or neuter their pets?

Drew Carey kept the sign-off when he took over in 2007, and Barker left millions to animal charities.

How many teeth does an adult dog normally have?

Puppies start with 28 baby teeth, and the big carnassials at the back are used to shear meat.

How many permanent teeth does an adult cat have?

That is twelve incisors, four canines, ten premolars and four molars; kittens have 26 baby teeth.

Which is the largest compartment of a cow's four-part stomach?

It works as a giant fermentation vat where microbes break down grass the cow could never digest alone.

Which compartment of a cow's stomach works most like a human stomach, secreting acid and enzymes?

It is often called the 'true stomach' and is the last stop before food reaches the intestines.

Horses are physically unable to do which of these?

That one-way gut is why digestive upsets so quickly turn into colic.

A mare's pregnancy lasts approximately how many days?

The range runs roughly 320 to 370 days, and twins are rare and risky.

Vets often remove a horse's small vestigial 'wolf teeth' because they interfere with what?

They sit just in front of the molars, exactly where the metal mouthpiece rests.

In horses, 'colic', the leading cause of premature death, is a general term for pain located where?

It is a symptom rather than a diagnosis and can range from mild gas to a fatal twisted gut.

What is the colloquial term for a horse whose coffin bone has shifted after severe hoof laminae inflammation?

The bone can eventually push through the sole, which is why the condition so often ends in euthanasia.

Triple Crown winner Secretariat was put down in 1989 after developing which hoof condition?

He was 19 and was buried whole at Claiborne Farm, an honour usually reserved for just the head, heart and hooves.

The pathologist who necropsied Secretariat estimated his heart weighed roughly how many pounds?

That is about two and a half times the average horse's 8.5-pound heart, and a big part of the 'super horse' legend.

A giraffe's 11-kilogram heart must generate roughly how much blood pressure compared with a human's?

It has to push blood up a two-metre neck, and a rete of vessels stops the brain from flooding when the head drops to drink.

Elephant pregnancies typically last how long?

It is the longest gestation of any land mammal, and the mother will not calve again for at least four years.

Like humans but unlike most mammals, guinea pigs cannot make which nutrient and must get it from food?

Without it they develop scurvy, so pellets are fortified and vets recommend fresh peppers or greens.

Unlike rodents, rabbits have how many sets of upper incisors, one behind the other?

The little 'peg teeth' behind the front pair are one reason rabbits are classed as lagomorphs, and all their teeth grow for life.

Which of these animals has the highest normal body temperature?

Birds run hot: a hen's normal reading can top 43 °C, while a horse sits nearer 38 °C.

Which range is a dog's normal rectal temperature in Fahrenheit?

That is a full two degrees warmer than a person, so a dog that feels hot to the touch is usually just being a dog.

Heartworm larvae are passed to dogs by the bite of which insect?

Four genera carry the parasite, and dogs show no sign of infection during the six-month prepatent period.

Despite the name, adult heartworms most often live in which vessels?

The damage to lung vessels is what eventually leads to congestive heart failure.

Canine parvovirus was first recognised in which year, spreading worldwide within two years?

It appears to have jumped from a closely related cat virus, and a modified live vaccine from Cornell is still in use.

Canine parvovirus is 98 percent genetically identical to which cat virus?

The two differ by just two amino acids in a capsid protein, which is why the dog virus can also infect cats.

Which bacterium is the most common cause of kennel cough?

It is a close cousin of the whooping-cough bacterium, and canine parainfluenza virus is the usual co-conspirator.

Canine distemper virus belongs to the same family as the virus that causes which human disease?

A telltale complication is 'hard pad', where the paw pads and nose thicken.

Which breed is about ten times more likely than average to suffer gastric dilatation-volvulus, or bloat?

One study put its lifetime risk at 42 percent, and many owners opt for a preventive gastropexy that tacks the stomach in place.

The sweetener xylitol is dangerous to dogs because it triggers what?

A dose of 100 mg per kilo sets off a flood of insulin, and symptoms can start within 30 minutes of eating sugar-free gum.

Which compound in chocolate is toxic to dogs because they metabolise it far more slowly than humans?

Cocoa powder is about 2 percent of it by weight, which is why baking chocolate is far more dangerous than milk chocolate.

Collie-type dogs with an MDR1 gene defect can be poisoned by which antiparasitic drug?

The mnemonic 'white feet, don't treat' warns vets about the risk in Scotch collies.

Satoshi Ōmura isolated the Streptomyces strain behind avermectin from soil near what kind of site in Japan?

The 1970 sample from Honshu led to a 2015 Nobel Prize shared with William Campbell of Merck.

Ketamine, a staple veterinary anaesthetic, was extensively used for surgical anaesthesia in which war?

It keeps the airway reflexes and blood pressure up, which makes it ideal for field surgery without ventilators.

Spaying a female animal means surgically removing which organs?

The technical name is ovariohysterectomy when the uterus comes out too, and many countries require it before adoption.

Declawing a cat, or onychectomy, involves amputating what?

Because the claw grows from tissue inside the third phalanx, the bone has to go, which is why many countries ban the procedure.

'Cherry eye' in dogs is a prolapse of a gland attached to which structure?

The nictitating membrane produces a large share of the eye's tears, so vets prefer to tuck the gland back rather than remove it.

The 'cone of shame' is formally an Elizabethan collar, named after which item of Tudor-era clothing?

It has also been called a treat funnel, a radar dish and a lampshade, and soft fabric versions now exist.

Where is an identification microchip normally implanted in a dog or cat?

The rice-grain-sized RFID tag has no battery and is read by a handheld scanner.

Cat-scratch disease in humans is caused by which bacterium?

Kittens are the likeliest carriers, and the cat was identified as the natural reservoir in 1950.

The parasite Toxoplasma gondii can only reproduce sexually inside which animal family?

That is why pregnant women are told to hand off the litter-box duty, though undercooked meat is the more common route.

What is the most common hormonal disease diagnosed in cats?

Weight loss despite a ravenous appetite is the classic sign, and radioactive iodine is a curative treatment.

Feline immunodeficiency virus was first isolated in 1986 at the veterinary school of which university?

It was originally called feline T-lymphotropic virus and spreads mainly through deep bite wounds.

The Coggins test, a blood test developed in 1970, screens horses for which disease?

A negative result is still required to move horses across many borders and onto showgrounds.

Which of these is one of the four abnormalities of brachycephalic airway syndrome in bulldogs and pugs?

Surgery to shorten the palate and widen pinched nostrils is now routine in flat-faced breeds.

Mad cow disease, or BSE, is caused by what kind of infectious agent?

The misfolded protein turns the brain spongy, and the UK outbreak of the 1980s and 90s led to a human form, vCJD.

Which livestock outbreak led to millions of animals being culled in the United Kingdom in 2001?

The 'Type O pan Asia' strain cost Britain an estimated £8 billion and shut down much of the countryside.

Myxoma virus was deliberately released in Australia in the 1950s to control which introduced pest?

It was the first virus ever released into the wild to wipe out a vertebrate pest, and it was spread by fleas and mosquitoes.

The North American Veterinary Licensing Examination consists of how many multiple-choice questions?

Candidates get eight hours, and the paper includes images to test diagnostic skills.

Roughly what share of students admitted to US veterinary schools are women?

The profession flipped from overwhelmingly male within a couple of generations.

The Shalihotra Samhita, an early Indian veterinary treatise, dates from the time of which emperor?

His edicts boast of providing two kinds of medicine, for people and for animals, and of planting healing herbs where none grew.

The Hippiatrica, a 5th- or 6th-century compilation on horse medicine, comes from which empire?

Horses dominated early animal medicine because of their economic value; medieval horse-shoers doubled as 'horse doctors'.

A 1356 push by London's Lord Mayor to regulate horse-shoers led to which livery body in 1674?

Sir Henry Picard wanted every farrier within seven miles of the City to join a fellowship to improve horse care; the Worshipful Company followed three centuries later.

Which Frenchman became the first professor of London's new Veterinary College in 1790?

Granville Penn's campaigning persuaded him to accept, and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons followed by charter in 1844.

A Brazilian zoo made the first recorded use of stem-cell therapy on a wild animal in 2011. Which species?

Zoo Brasília treated the animal after a car hit it, and it was later returned fully recovered to the wild.

Per the AVMA, roughly what share of U.S. veterinarians work in private practice treating animals?

The rest work in research, public health, industry, government and academia.

The verb 'to vet', meaning to check someone thoroughly, began as slang for health checks in which sport?

Horse racing required a veterinarian to pass every runner as healthy and sound before it could start, and the word later took on the general sense of checking anything.

The word 'vaccine' comes from the Latin for cow, after which English doctor's use of cowpox against smallpox?

Edward Jenner named cowpox Variolae vaccinae, 'smallpox of the cow', and in 1796 used pus from a milkmaid's cowpox sore to protect an eight-year-old boy against smallpox.

The first pet insurance policy issued in the United States, in 1982, covered which famous screen dog?

Lassie, the TV collie, got that policy almost a century after the world's first pet insurance, which Claes Virgin wrote in Sweden in 1890.

To prevent hardware disease, caused by swallowed nails and baling wire, what do farmers feed their cattle?

A magnet fed to the animal at about a year old settles in the reticulum and holds stray metal there, so sharp pieces cannot pierce the stomach lining.

A mutated taste-receptor gene, shared by wild and domestic cats, leaves them unable to detect which basic taste?

Sweet is lost on cats because they lack the TAS1R2 protein, one of the two needed to build the sweetness receptor, which is why sugar holds no appeal for them.

Which fruit, toxic to dogs fresh or dried, can cause sudden kidney failure, possibly because of its tartaric acid?

Grapes puzzled vets for years because only some dogs fall ill; a 2023 study found that tartaric acid poisons dog kidney cells but not human ones.

Despite the name, ringworm, which pets can pass to their owners, is caused by what kind of organism?

A fungus causes ringworm by infecting skin, hair and nails; no worm is involved, and the name comes from the red, circular rash it leaves.

Frenetic random activity periods, or FRAPs, is the scientific name for which familiar behaviour of dogs and cats?

The zoomies have no known cause, though vets notice these sudden bursts of frantic running often come at moments of transition, such as an owner's return home.

Which marsupial is endangered by contagious facial tumours that spread when the animals bite one another?

Tasmanian devil numbers have fallen by more than 80% since the disease was first seen in 1996; the tumour cells themselves pass from one animal to the next.

Which popular cut flower can cause fatal kidney failure in cats that merely lick its pollen off their fur?

Lilies are so toxic to cats that vets treat any contact as an emergency, yet exactly how the plant wrecks the kidney tubules has never been worked out.

Ethylene glycol, a chemical that poisons pets which lap up spills, is the main ingredient in which car fluid?

Antifreeze sometimes has a bittering agent added to put off animals and children, though it has not been found to work; kidney failure can follow within three days.

Which is the only US state free of rabies, a status protected by strict quarantine rules for arriving pets?

Hawaii can hold an arriving dog or cat in quarantine for up to 120 days, and because the virus is absent, resident pets are not required to be vaccinated against it.

White cats with blue eyes are far more likely than other cats to be born with which condition?

Deafness in an odd-eyed white cat, which has only one blue eye, is more likely to affect the ear on the same side as that blue eye.

Dogs cool themselves mostly by panting, but through which part of the body do they also sweat?

Paw pads do the sweating because the rest of a dog's skin has few sweat glands; panting sheds far more heat by moving air over the moist tongue and lungs.

Many churches hold a blessing of pets each 4 October, the feast day of which patron saint of animals?

Francis of Assisi is said to have preached to the birds and tamed the wolf of Gubbio, and Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican churches all mark his day with animal blessings.

Psittacosis, which caused a worldwide human outbreak in 1929–30, is a bacterial fever nicknamed after which pet birds?

Parrots imported for the pet trade were linked to the 1929–30 outbreak, and the scare that followed pushed scientists into serious research on the disease.

A male cat is a tom, but what do breeders and vets call an unspayed female cat?

A queen carries her kittens for about 65 days, and once spayed she is sometimes called a molly instead.

Nine-banded armadillos are among the few mammals other than humans that can catch which ancient disease?

Leprosy is thought to have reached armadillos from early European explorers of the Americas, and people can now catch it back by handling the animals or eating their meat.

Lyme disease, a bacterial illness that vets vaccinate dogs against, is named after a town in which US state?

Connecticut's towns of Lyme and Old Lyme gave the illness its name in 1975, after a cluster of cases there was first mistaken for juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

An unmated female of which pet can die of anaemia simply by staying in heat too long?

Ferret females only come out of heat once mated, so an unbred jill's own oestrogen builds up until it shuts down her bone marrow.

White-nose syndrome, first photographed in a New York cave in 2006, has killed millions of which animals?

Bats show the pale growth around their muzzles and wings during hibernation, the very time their resistance to the infection falls to almost nothing.

Chronic wasting disease, first identified at a Colorado research station in 1967, attacks which animal family?

Deer with the disease lose weight, drool and stop fearing people, which is how it picked up the nickname zombie deer disease; elk, moose and caribou catch it too.

Milk fever, which strikes dairy cattle just after calving, is caused by low blood levels of which mineral?

Calcium pours into the first milk faster than the body can release it from bone, and despite the name the animal's temperature does not usually rise.

At Pouilly-le-Fort in 1881, Louis Pasteur publicly vaccinated a flock of sheep against which livestock disease?

Anthrax left the unvaccinated sheep dead or dying within two days, while every vaccinated one survived, proving the first effective vaccine against a bacterial disease.

Which fatal brain disease of sheep, known since at least 1732, is named for how sufferers rub off their fleece?

Scrapie drives affected animals to rub compulsively against rocks, trees and fences until the wool comes away, yet it does not appear to pass to people.

Onions, garlic and chives are dangerous to dogs and cats because they damage what in the bloodstream?

Red blood cells are damaged by every member of the Allium family, which can leave a pet anaemic; cats are more susceptible than dogs.

Which nut can leave a dog too weak in the hind legs to stand within 12 hours of eating it?

Macadamia poisoning remains a puzzle, since nobody knows which compound is to blame, yet most dogs recover fully within 24 to 48 hours.

Which fruit contains persin, a toxin that can fatally damage the hearts of caged pet birds?

Avocado carries the toxin in its fruit, leaves, stems and seeds; caged birds are especially sensitive, while the ripe flesh is generally considered harmless to people.

Which charity, begun at a London coffee house in 1824, is the world's oldest animal welfare organisation?

RSPCA supporters at that first meeting in Old Slaughter's Coffee House included William Wilberforce, better known for his campaign against the slave trade.

Which award, first given in 1943 to honour animals serving in war, is nicknamed the animals' Victoria Cross?

The Dickin Medal was created by Maria Dickin, who also set up the veterinary charity PDSA, for animals showing conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty.

Irish vet Noel Fitzpatrick operates on pets thought beyond saving in which long-running British TV series?

The Supervet has been filmed since 2014 at Fitzpatrick's own referral hospital in Eashing, Surrey, where his team attempts surgery on pets other clinics cannot help.

The American Veterinary Medical Association's emblem features the single-serpent rod of which Greek god?

Asclepius and his staff are today's predominant symbol of medicine; the similar caduceus, with two snakes and a pair of wings, is sometimes used in its place by mistake.

Which machine, invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, sterilises surgical instruments with steam at 121 °C?

Autoclave cycles hold the steam on the instruments for 15 to 60 minutes; Chamberland was building on Denis Papin's steam digester of 1679.

Dogs, with only two types of colour-sensing cone in the eye, struggle to tell apart which pair of colours?

Red and green look alike to dogs, whose world is made up of yellows, blues and greys, much like that of a person with the commonest form of colour blindness.

Which lip-curling grimace do cats and many hoofed mammals pull to draw scents into the vomeronasal organ?

Flehmen comes from a German word meaning to bare the upper teeth, and was coined in 1930 by Karl Max Schneider, the director of Leipzig zoo.

What is the mirror-like layer behind the retina that makes the eyes of cats and dogs shine in headlights?

Tapetum lucidum tissue bounces light back through the retina for a second pass, boosting night vision at the cost of a slightly blurred image; humans have none.

Which instinctive mid-air twist, perfected by kittens at six to nine weeks, lets a falling cat land feet-first?

The righting reflex works because cats have an unusually flexible backbone and no working collarbone, while the inner ear tells them which way is down.

On a pet's prescription, the Latin abbreviation PO, short for per os, means the medicine should be given how?

By mouth is the literal meaning of per os, and the related chart note NPO, nil per os, orders that a patient be given nothing to eat before an anaesthetic.

Which Australian marsupial is threatened by a chlamydia epidemic that inflames its eyes and urinary tract?

Koala admissions at one New South Wales rehabilitation centre over 30 years were led by trauma, with signs of chlamydia the next most common cause.

Which painkiller given to cattle is blamed for the collapse of South Asia's vultures, which fed on treated carcasses?

Diclofenac in a carcass destroys a vulture's kidneys, and modelling showed that fewer than 1% of carcasses carrying it were enough to crash the population.

Which opioid, sold as M99 and over a thousand times stronger than morphine, is used to immobilise elephants?

Etorphine is so potent that the veterinary-strength drug is fatal to humans, which is why it is legally available only to vets and strictly controlled.

Which German pioneer of cellular pathology coined the term 'zoonoses' for infections shared by people and animals?

Rudolf Virchow was the first to establish the link between infectious diseases of people and animals, and he launched comparative pathology to study the two side by side.

Which Ivy League university awards its veterinary graduates the Latin-titled VMD degree rather than the usual DVM?

Penn opened its school in 1884 as the only veterinary school developed in association with a medical school; VMD stands for Veterinariae Medicinae Doctoris.

Which Alabama university opened the first veterinary school at a historically Black college?

Tuskegee added the school in 1944 under its president Frederick D. Patterson, himself a veterinarian, who launched the United Negro College Fund that same year.

CC, the first cloned pet, was a kitten born in 2001 through work at which American university?

Texas A&M scientists produced a kitten that looked nothing like her calico genetic donor, Rainbow, because coat pattern depends on X-inactivation, not on DNA alone.

Salmonella is named after vet Daniel Salmon, but which research assistant of his actually discovered the bacterium?

Theobald Smith isolated the bacterium in 1885 while working under Salmon, yet in 1900 Joseph Lignières named the whole genus after Smith's boss instead.

American foulbrood, caused by the spore-forming bacterium Paenibacillus larvae, is a disease of which farmed animals?

Honey bees catch it as grubs under three days old by swallowing spores in their food, and burning the infected colony is often the only way to stop it spreading.

The Q in Q fever, a disease people catch from sheep, goats and cattle, stands for which word?

Query was chosen while the cause was still unknown, in preference to names such as abattoir fever that might have tarnished the cattle industry or the state of Queensland.

Which confectionery giant, owner of Pedigree and Whiskas, also runs the Banfield and VCA animal hospital chains?

Mars is far better known for chocolate bars, yet its Banfield chain alone has more than 1,000 clinics, many of them inside PetSmart stores.

Which wild mammal was culled in parts of England from 2013 in a bid to stop tuberculosis spreading to cattle?

Badger culling was wound down after 2024, when the government stopped granting new licences and turned to vaccination to stop the disease spreading.