Dog evolution! Stroke surgery! Baby okapi! Computer hearts! Fast fish! Space gardens! Parkinson's treatment! Anthrax vaccine! And America loses the Red planet to the Reds! It's your Tuesday Science Watch, where we watch science—nobly!

Even though the cost of having a pet in the U.S. is skyrocketing, Americans aren't abandoning their cute little companions. In fact, many pets are now living more comfortably than unemployed humans and on tonight's Report, Stephen Colbert proposed a pretty unique solution to the financial problems plaguing so many Americans: If you can't beat the pets, be the pets.

Cover Miss Beasley's ears, because this might disturb her: pets simply are not affordable any longer. Dogs, cats—run free! And good luck out there.

According to Wendy Williams and this other lady whose parents must be very proud of her for becoming a "pet fashion stylist," it is very trendy and important to dress your dog up for Halloween because there are a lot of events you both should be attending.

What would cause a heartless jack-booted armed thug cop to heartlessly slap a tiny little bitty dog? (What!) A wee little Pomeranian mix, slapped out of a third story window? (No!) A tiny sweet little pet trying to protect his precious family, only to be heartlessly—heartlessly—slapped, by a cop, out of a window, falling three stories, its tiny body twisting as it plummeted to the hard, heartless ground below? (I never!) Outrageous!

Jill Abramson, the first female editor of the New York Times, is a capable journalist, a veteran editorial manager, and a crazy dog person. Guess which characteristic will be most important?

Today we said that your dog obsession is embarrassing. Which, OK, yes sometimes it can be. But dogs are also great! One commenter nicely reminded us of this fact.

Let's say you're a woman who's worked hard, climbed the ladder, and risen to the very pinnacle of your profession—a historic achievement. You're taken seriously as a writer, a thinker, and a boss; you alone have the power to set the agenda for how many of our most important issues are covered by the national and international media. You have made it. Why—hypothetically speaking—would you not shut up about your stupid dog?

Here's an interesting little "factoid," meaning "discriminatory outrage of Apartheid proportions:" in the year 2011 in the world's most free country (USA), many airlines do not allow bulldogs to fly. I mean, sure, those six bulldogs were indicted in connection with the 9/11 plot, but let's not paint the rest of them with such a broad brush, okay?

Meet Shalanon Brooks, the kind of functionally retarded person you encounter frequently in Southern California. Shalanon is the owner of a Pomeranian whom she named "Malibu." (See first sentence.) She didn't just buy Malibu, but was actually prescribed Malibu for "emotional support." (See first sentence again.) Shalanon went to spend a day riding roller coasters at Six Flags Magic Mountain, but when she realized the strap of her Louis Vuitton dog carrying-case had broken, she opted to leave Malibu in her car with the windows cracked open and some water and food. (See— Enh. You know the drill by now.)

Bears! Everyone agrees that they need to be put in their place. But only one woman in America is brave enough to do so: Brooke Collins of Juneau, Alaska, who punched a bear in the face to save her dog.

Earlier this week we learned that dogs are good for your respiratory system because they can smell your lung cancer. But are dogs also maybe bad for your lungs, because they manufacture poop that's loaded with airborne bacteria?

Lung cancer, a notoriously hard-to-diagnose and deadly disease, has a new enemy: dogs! German researchers have discovered that they can actually smell it on your breath.

We know that your child is not good enough to get into one of the finer preschools in the New York City metropolitan area. But perhaps you can get your dog into a nice kennel? Well... we'll see.

You'd think that the successful breeding of a dog that glows under ultraviolet light would be, more or less, the successful completion of science. Why bother doing anything else, now that you made a dog glow? But no! Apparently this dog actually furthers, rather than completes, scientific endeavor:

Fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who committed suicide in February 2010, designated 50,000 pounds ($82,000) towards the care of his three dogs — Minter, Juice, and Callum, pictured — according to the will made public on Tuesday.

Fertile China! Psychic dogs! Killer papaya! ADHD safety! Internet addiction! Breastfeeding asthma! Shrinking brains! Love psychology! And uncalled-for lizard posing! It's your Monday Health Watch, where we watch your health—out of sheer desperation!

It's never a good idea to drink and drive. But it's especially not a good idea when you are driving to the police station. To pick up your daughter's dog. After she was arrested for a DUI.

So it turns out that yappy little accessory dogs actually might be good for something! In today's wacky animal video, security camera footage from Ace Smoke Shop in Altadena, California shows armed robbers being chased out of the store by the shop owner's raging Chihuahua. The robbers did manage to make off with some cash, but the LA Times notes that it was "less money than they could've gotten."

Police in southern Sweden have a new tool for fighting sex crimes — a dog named Rapports Opus that is trained to sniff out sperm at crime scenes. According to English-language newspaper The Local, police in the town of Karlskrona have arrested a 23-year-old man and charged him with rape after Rapports Opus was brought to a park in the town where a woman was sexually assaulted: