Brian Hare is a professor in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University, where he founded the Duke Canine Cognition Center.

Vanessa Woods is a research scientist at the Center as well as an award-winning journalist and the author of Bonobo Handshake. Hare and Woods are married and live in North Carolina. They are the authors of The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think.