No title question of an Imponderables book was harder to answer than Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses? A few vets I spoke to indicated that, as folk wisdom has it, the wet nose helps cool dogs off, for dogs don't have sweat glands and can lose moisture only through the pads of their feet. Alas, as I started consulting academics specializing in dogs, eventually talking to folks who researched the respiratory system of dogs, the answer became more and more elusive.

DOGS also contains such startling revelations as the answer to how the football got its strange shape, why woodpeckers don't get headaches, and why there is no channel 1 on television.