Natl Geo dog DNA article and why I did not get the house clean yesterday
The Origin of Dogs The February 2012 issue of National Geographic has an article entitled What Dog's Tell Us: The ABC's of DNA.
The section about the three genes and their mutations that create different dog coats was surprising to.
Scientists analyzed the DNA of 85 breeds and discovered they could be placed into four categories, which they they named Wolflike, Herders, Hunters, and Mastifflike.
The top 8 of the 85 breeds that had mostly Wolflike DNA were, Shiba Inu, Chow Chow, Akita, Alaskan Malamute Basenji, Chinese Shar-Pei, Siberian Husky, and Afghan Hound. The vast majority of the remaining breeds had hardly any Wolflike DNA. Most dogs were in the Hunter category.
According to this, Jake our borzoi has Herding DNA! ( although he shows no herding instinct!
The GSD's DNA is mostly in the Mastifflike category.
They also talked about genetic disorders in dogs and how they have not been able to identify genes related to canine behavior except a "dog version of the gene for obsessive-compulsive disorder in humans
There was also a short article about village dogs. The scientist traveled to Africa and analyzed the DNA from 300 village dogs and found out that most of them were as closely related to wolves as they were to domesticated dogs.
It has some really cool pictures too.
Will try to read it all later, thanks for posting it.
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