Whether the chicken or the egg
came first depends on how we look at it. If the question refers to eggs in
general, the egg came first. The first amniote egg — that is, a hard-shelled
egg that could be laid on land, rather than remaining in water like the eggs of
fish or amphibians — appeared around 312 million years ago. In contrast,
chickens are domesticated descendants of red jungle fowl and probably arose
little more than eight thousand years ago, at most. Simple? Well no! If the question refers specifically to the chicken egg as it
exists today, the answer may be different. Chickens produce a protein,
ovocleidin-17 (OC-17), that is expressed in the uterus and causes the formation
of the thickened calcium carbonate shell around modern chicken eggs. Because
OC-17 is expressed by the hen and not the egg, the bird in which the protein
first arose, though having hatched from a non-reinforced egg, would then have
laid the first egg having such a reinforced shell: the chicken would have
preceded this first 'modern' chicken egg.
So what came
first the pedigree human controlled modern Canaan breed or the true natural
pure ancient free-living dogs found in the Arabian peninsula, north Africa and
eastern Mediterranean countries?
Unlike many people who have never
been to the areas where these dogs exist and yet make unsupported claims, I
worked in the middle east, in Saudi Arabia between 1990 and 2007 in a number of
wide spread places and travelled throughout the country and neighbouring ones. During
that time I spent most weekends cross country walking and driving off road to
remote areas that had no roads so have some first-hand personal experience of
the region and the pariah dogs found there. I have continued my strong interest
in these dogs ever since.
I noticed that everywhere I went in Saudi, within a few
hours walking time of human habitation, there were dogs to be found. While occasionally some were seen in towns, more
often at night when people were not around, most were around the outskirts or
near picnic areas, where they could scavenge for discarded food, and of course
near rubbish dumps. They were also to be seen with the still nomadic Bedouin at
their camp sites and with their goat or sheep herds. Not once did I see them herding, they were
watch dogs giving warning of the presence of strangers. No one breeds them. If
someone wants a dog they simply collect a pup from a den. Saudis were all aware
of these dogs and referred to them as their wild dogs that had always been
there and they were also aware that the Bedouin often kept them. Most of these dogs had the same overall appearance
of upright ears and curled tail, the typical appearance of Long Term Pariah
Morphotype (LTPM) wherever they are found. I do not believe they should be
referred to as “village dogs” since by far the majority were not to be seen
wandering the streets as do village dogs elsewhere. However call them what you
will desert dogs, wadi dogs whatever that is not important. They are not strays
since they have not strayed from homes, they are not mixed mongrels since there
are no other dogs to mix with. Many people were only aware of the relatively
few that were sometimes seen in the streets and the others kept a low profile
and were easily missed. While this general LTPM type is found on many
continents they are not all identical, having been separated geographically for
thousands of years and we know that not all genetic markers found their way to
all areas of the world. Those people who are familiar with them can recognise
the differences. For example I have sometimes been asked in Australia if my middle-east
dogs are dingoes but anyone who knows dingoes recognises immediately that they
are not. A less common type had floppy
ears but were otherwise similar. Colours were varied but mostly cream to brown
with some black or black and white. There have been claims that the black dogs
are predominant in mountain areas but this was not my experience. At any given
time the predominant colour could differ depending more on random breeding
patterns. Saudis have traditionally not kept dogs as pets and have been actively
discouraged from doing so in the past, although this is changing. Most of the
euro breeds of dogs in Saudi at the time I was there were brought in, owned and
re-exported by expats and were kept in closed compounds so there has been
little chance of any breeding between these free living pariahs and what
westerners know as dog breeds, unlike the situation in other nearby countries where
euro-breeds have now been popular for some time. This also is changing,
particularly in the large cities such as Jeddah and Riyadh.
Occasionally on our walks someone would want to take a puppy
from a den we found. I used to discourage this, particularly with Australians,
due to the difficulty of keeping them in apartments, for those not living in a
villa, and because of the quarantine requirements taking a dog to
Australia. On my last contract I
eventually took in some of these dogs myself after they found their way into
our compound and some people were calling for these “wild” dogs to be killed. One
of these dogs took 6 months of many hours spent each night in his presence,
coaxing and encouraging him before he would allow me to contact him. I had no
idea what sort of dog they may be until I chanced on an Encyclopaedia of dogs
while browsing in a Sydney bookstore and spotted a photo of what looked exactly
like one of my dogs. Armed with the name “Canaan” I then came across Myrna
Shiboleth, contacted her and sent her a number of photos and videos of my dogs
and described to her their behaviour. She acknowledged to me that if she was to
see them in a show ring she would consider them very good examples of a Canaan
dog.
Lady Anne Blunt, the granddaughter of Lord Byron, was one of
the first westerners to travel through the Jubbah area of Saudi Arabia, in
January 1879, with her husband, Wilfrid.
They were en-route to the city of Hail to see the famous horses of Ibn
Rashid, then ruler in Najd. In the 19th century westerners where
mainly interested in looking for writings on rocks but Wilfred noted that there
were “a few of those simple designs one finds everywhere on the sandstone,
representing camels and gazelles.” Fast forward to March 2001, when a Bedouin
told Mahboub Habbas al-Rasheedi, a teacher in the nearby town, about rock
images he had spotted while grazing his camels. Al-Rasheedi and his brother
went looking for them and found many others. They showed the carvings to the
school superintendent, Mamduah Ibrahim al-Rasheedi, who immediately reported
the find to the provincial director of antiquities in Hail.1
After initial reports of the re-discovery of extensive rock
carvings in Saudi Arabia and concerns of the wildlife authority that dogs could
be having a number of negative impacts on wildlife I pointed out to both the
Saudi archaeology society and the wildlife authority, as well as a number of
individuals, the similarity to the dogs now registered by breeders as Canaan
dogs. These petroglyphs have now been
carefully examined and documented in a book published by the Carnegie Museum of
Natural History in 2013 in conjunction with the Saudi Archaeology Society. 2
As well as other animals the petroglyphs depict dogs of the typical LTPM we see
in Canaan dogs as well as sighthounds.2
Photo below courtesy Lars Bjurstrom.
More recently a publication in the Journal of
Anthropological Archaeology has concentrated on the dog petroglyphs.4 These
are believed to date to times when man was still a hunter gatherer and are the
oldest known images of dogs and people anywhere. This article states: “All of the dogs display
characteristic pricked ears, short snouts, deeply-angled chests, and a curled
tail, appearing to be of the same type. These phenotypic traits were also noted
by Olsen and Bryant (2013). Like those authors, we suggest these canids bear a
close resemblance to the modern Canaan dog. This Levantine dog is also proposed
from archaeological (Wapnish and Hesse, 1993) and historical contexts (Stager,
1991) and has been identiļ¬ed as a basal dog breed (Larson et al., 2012;
vonHoldt et al., 2010). The previous earliest depictions of dogs in the
archaeological record come from two agricultural villages in southwestern Iran,
dated to around 6000 BCE (Delougaz and Kantor, 1996; Hole and Wyllie, 2007).
Both are painted on pottery and similarly depict dogs with short snouts,
pricked ears, and up-turned curled tails (Hole and Wyllie, 2007).” Dating rock
carvings is difficult but the scenes of dogs with hunters suggest a period
before the start of agriculture, often considered by some as when dogs were
domesticated. Archaeologists have found evidence of four
major periods of settlement at Jubbah stretching back through the Middle Palaeolithic
period, 80,000 to 25,000 years ago. 1
We may never be absolutely certain as to where, how or why
dogs were first domesticated but current genetic studies point to South East
Asia since that is where the greatest genetic diversity has been found. From there
it seems most likely that they spread to the rest of the world and through the middle-east into Europe and Africa. Most of what are now recognised by kennel clubs as
distinct breeds have come about only in the past few hundred years due to human
desire to produce dogs suited to particular work or simply for a certain
appearance. This selective breeding has resulted in breeds that have lost much
of the genetic diversity dogs had naturally. In some cases some breeds are in
reality deformed and should not be bred at all.
Today’s borders between countries of the middle-east are
very recent and in the Neolithic period and even before that people and dogs
moved freely throughout the whole region. More recently goods were traded along
well known camel train routes throughout the Arabian peninsula, north Africa
and the whole region. We know dogs accompanied Bedouin on long overland voyages.
Richard Minto, while not the first to
bring this type of dog into the UK, was given a wild born Canaan in Libya by
Bedouin. These Bedouin had moved from Jordan and were followed on their move by
a pack of free living dogs including the parents of the pup given to Richard.
This is a good illustration of how the dogs can and have moved around the
region. In the past, even more recently than the Neolithic times there were a
number of trade routes used by people and camels or donkeys. These routes
traversed the region and there was bi-directional trade between Egypt and the
land of the Canaanites during a period when Egypt controlled the area. To the
north the Nabateans controlled these routes at their cities of Petra, Mada’in
Salah and other smaller sites. The Nabateans expanded into the Negev desert and
Sinai prior to 200BC and Bedouin in these areas also trace their origins to the
Arabian peninsula. 6
Menzel, who wrote the first kennel club style description of
Canaan dogs, recognised more than one type of these dogs and initially both
types competed in show rings but later she decided to narrow in on the type now
considered Canaan dogs. Considering the
early history and migrations of humans it seems highly unlikely that the free
living LTPM dogs in this region are not all the same ancient type. The Canaan
dog breed was established by selecting a relatively small number of free living
dogs, mostly from what is geographically a very small area with a few added,
even recently by Myrna Shiboleth, from
Jordan.
We also know dogs were buried at Ashkelon in ancient times
but quite why is debated. 3 Also found in Ashkelon was this
sarcophagus that shows a dog of familiar LTPM appearance.
Israel's area is approximately 20,770 km2, which
includes 445 km2 of inland water. Israel stretches 424 km from north
to south, and its width ranges from 114 km to, at its narrowest point, 15 km.
So a total land area is 20,325 km2. Israel was established in 1948.
Kruger National Park is one of the largest game reserves in
Africa. It covers an area of 19,485 square kilometres in the provinces of
Limpopo and Mpumalanga in north eastern South Africa, and extends 360
kilometres from north to south and 65 kilometres from east to west. Areas of
the park were first protected by the government of the South African Republic
in 1898, and it became South Africa's first national park in 1926.
The pedigree Canaan dog was created and named by Menzel by
capturing a few of the free living pariahs in Israel. While it matters not to me what these dogs
are called it seems a strange choice considering that the original Israelis
were often at war with the Canaanites having invaded their land. Menzel also
wrote the kennel club description accepted by the Israel kennel club in 1953.
On a similar scale if someone collected a few lions in
Kruger national park caged them and started breeding them for sale, would the
lions in the rest of Africa then not be lions? It would of course be possible
that due to the human imposed selection, resulting in a genetic bottleneck, that these bred lions would show some difference in DNA analysis
compared with the rest of African lions, after some generations due to having
artificially limiting their genetic makeup. I suggest they would all still be
lions just as all these pariah dogs are the same whatever we call them. If
these ancient dogs are to have a long term future it is time to recognise the
reality and importance of them ALL. They
need to be recognised by the IUCN and we need to forget about the closed book
imposed on “breeds” by kennel clubs, and rely on DNA testing to choose dogs that
can be added. There are still thousands of dogs available and it should be
possible to completely eliminate all dogs with known genetic health issues,
including carriers, while still keeping and indeed concentrating on maintaining genetic diversity rather than what a judge in a show ring happens to like. After all
how difficult is it to win in a show where there are only 2 or 3 dogs shown?
Already there have been health problems passed on as a result of inbreeding
(called line breeding by breeders) by “famous” breeders. It may be that when
these pariahs were first bred for sale in Israel that having a dog claimed as
Israeli could have been a way of interesting Israelis to purchase them and that
they would not have wanted them if they were “Arabic”. I don’t know and am not nor ever will be a
breeder but I think there would be greater interest in them by telling the
complete story. It may also be that the best chance for long term survival of
these dogs would be to set aside a large area similar to national parks, where
these dogs could be allowed to continue to live much as they always have but
possibly assisted with food, water and basic health care. Such a park could
even become a tourist attraction. To have any hope of achieving that we need to
have genetic evidence published that can be presented to authorities in support
of such a park.
Among some registered dog breeds there are recognisable genetic differences in different continents.
Among some registered dog breeds there are recognisable genetic differences in different continents.
A number of claims are made relating to pedigree Canaan dogs without
supporting evidence.
“Canaan
dogs accompanied Moses when he and his followers moved from Egypt to what is
now Israel and introduced them to Israel where they were abandoned when the
Israelis were dispersed.” While it is possible dogs were with Moses it is thought he took some 40
years to reach Israel so the dogs reaching Israel would not be the ones that
were originally with them and would likely have bred with others along the
way. There are pariahs of the same LTPM
in Egypt today, known locally as baladi dogs, a term used in Egypt for a local
(non-euro breed) dogs but also for various other “folk” dances, music, bread
etc. However evidence also shows that similar dogs were already in the whole
region well before the time of Moses. Egypt ruled Canaan for 3 centuries after
defeating the Canaanites at Megiddo in 1458 BC. Egyptian trading posts existed
at Ashkelon, where a dog graveyard was found, and Gezer, 3 millennium BC.
Donkeys were being used to transport goods overland in trade between Egypt and
Canaan before sea routes were later established. It is likely dogs would have
followed in both directions.
Dogs
were indeed known in ancient Israel. In
fact, dogs are referred to forty-one times in the Bible. However, most times,
the word “dog” is used as a word of contempt. One of the few exceptions where
dogs are presented as a useful animal was when they were used to protect the
flock. Job said: “But now they laugh at me, men who are younger than I, whose
fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock” (Job 30:1).
In general, however, Israelites used the word “dog” as a word to express contempt. “You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a dog into the house of the Lord your God in payment for any vow, for both of these are an abomination to the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 23:18). The mention of the dog in this Deuteronomic legislation is a reference to the male temple prostitutes who served in the cult of Baal.
Isaiah scorns the leaders of the nation by calling them “dumb dogs” (Isaiah 56:10) and “greedy dogs” (Isaiah 56:11). The psalmist calls an evil man a “dog” (Psalm 22:20). Dogs were considered unclean animals because they ate the flesh of unclean animals (Exodus 22:31) and because they ate human flesh (1 Kings 14:11). The breaking of a dog’s neck was a pagan religious practice condemned by the prophet (Isaiah 66:3). This does not imply that all people at the time hated dogs as even today it is not uncommon for some people to refer to dogs in derogatory ways.
In general, however, Israelites used the word “dog” as a word to express contempt. “You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a dog into the house of the Lord your God in payment for any vow, for both of these are an abomination to the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 23:18). The mention of the dog in this Deuteronomic legislation is a reference to the male temple prostitutes who served in the cult of Baal.
Isaiah scorns the leaders of the nation by calling them “dumb dogs” (Isaiah 56:10) and “greedy dogs” (Isaiah 56:11). The psalmist calls an evil man a “dog” (Psalm 22:20). Dogs were considered unclean animals because they ate the flesh of unclean animals (Exodus 22:31) and because they ate human flesh (1 Kings 14:11). The breaking of a dog’s neck was a pagan religious practice condemned by the prophet (Isaiah 66:3). This does not imply that all people at the time hated dogs as even today it is not uncommon for some people to refer to dogs in derogatory ways.
Some Canaan websites state
that the name of Abel’s dog was Benoni. This
comes up in a fictitious book “The Book of Lies” by Brad Meltzer and there does not seem to be any
factual evidence of this.
“Canaan
dogs were selectively bred to herd.” There is no evidence today of these dogs being used to herd and genetically
they do not fit with herders. Bedouin,
who have been the people most commonly using these dogs more recently, laugh at the
idea of selective breeding. If they needed an additional dog they simply
collected a puppy from the den of a free living dog. Dogs living with Bedouin
and accompanying their flocks do so as watch dogs to alert to the presence of
intruders. In recent times Bedouin moved freely throughout the region and
dogs followed them with no regard to present day borders. Even earlier in
Neolithic times dogs with this same LTPM were living and moving around with man
and may have helped hunters to chase antelope into traps (desert kites)but this is not truly
herding.
“Canaan
dogs are the national dog of Israel.” No. To be officially a national dog, flower, bird, tree etc. there needs
government recognition. Sadly this has not happened. Israel does have an
official national bird, the Hoopoe, but no official national dog. This is an
un-official claim made by the kennel club and breeders.
“Canaan
dogs are an ancient breed, bred by nature as nature intended.” That is true of the free living pariah
landrace but the pedigree Canaan is one of the most recent breeds to be
accepted by kennel clubs. As with all kennel club breeds they are now bred
largely with a view to winning shows and mating’s are controlled by breeders
not nature. Bringing new freeborn stock into the genetic pool is, in general,
difficult and costly due to kennel club regulations. The dogs used were chosen purely
on looks so it is not known if they could have had any modern breed in them or
not.
“The free
living pariahs are genetically different to Canaan dogs.” No study has been published yet to support
that claim. It is possible there could be a difference but this is likely to be
due to the human created bottle neck effect of the small number of dogs used to
establish the breed.
From : Nature, April 2010. 5
“Applying the Bayesian clustering method implemented in
STRUCTURE we found strong evidence for admixture with wolves only in a minority
of breeds. Neighbour-joining trees reveal that most of these breeds (basenji,
Afghan hound, Samoyed, saluki, Canaan
dog, New Guinea singing dog, dingo, chow chow, Chinese Shar Pei, Akita,
Alaskan malamute, Siberian husky and American Eskimo dog) are highly divergent
from other dog breeds. These highly divergent breeds have been identified previously
and termed ‘ancient’ breeds (as opposed to ‘modern’) because, consistent with
their high levels of divergence, historical information suggests that most have
ancient origins (>500 years ago). The limitation of evidence for admixture
to only a few breeds is striking given that backcrossing between dogs and
wolves is known to occur and dogs and wolves coexist widely. Given that modern breeds
are the products of controlled breeding practices of the Victorian era (circa
1830–1900) the lack of detectable admixture with wolves is consistent with the
strict breeding regimes recently implemented by humans.”
Note
that this article seems to refer to “middle–east dogs” as Afghan hound and
saluki only and that Canaan dogs do not
group in the herding dogs.
We also know that as dogs evolved in parallel with man they
gained additional copies of the AMY2 gene enabling them to better digest starch
with Australian Dingos and New Guinea Singer, probably the last dogs truly
living completely wild, have the fewest copies. 9 Canaan and these
pariahs have yet to be analysed for this. As is often the case a look at the
map in this article shows a glaring absence of results for dogs of the Arabian
peninsula.
I have been trying to get these dogs DNA properly looked at
since 1990 by contacting geneticists whose publications suggested they might be
interested. The usual response was in general that they lacked the time and
resources. More than 3 years ago I finally received what appeared to be a
positive reply from Niels Pedersen at UC Davis. “We
have collected many dogs from Iran and have also received samples from
Saluki-like dogs kept by the Bedouins in Israel and Jordan. We would be
interested in working with you on sampling dogs from Arab countries.” He also stated that the reason was difficulty in getting samples.
Like many others their knowledge of geography seems limited at best. However
after further correspondence I purchased swabs he approved and travelled at my
own expense and with much appreciated support of others collected some samples from some 50 dogs, 3 swabs from each dog. Then followed an incredible amount of exchanges such
as that the swabs had not been received (they had been signed for and were
sitting in his office.) A heap of spelling errors that he blamed on writing not
always being clear, in fact all the information sent was typed not hand
written. Eventually after deciding to move the swabs to Elaine Ostrander at the
National Institute of Health I received some raw data and this note “Here is
the STR data for your dogs. We used amelonogen markers (AMELX;
AMELY) to identify gender, five Y-STR markers to identify
patrilines, 33 STR markers on 25 chromosomes to look at genomic
differences, plus 4 markers to identify DLA class I haplotype(DLA1-3cca,
4ac, 4bct, 1131) and 3 markers for the DLA class II haplotype (5aca,
5act, 5bca). The results in red indicate that the DNA we extracted was of
poor quality and/or the samples were either mold or bacterial and the
results of not much value. Samples in yellow had either poor quality DNA or
insufficient DNA, but did provide meaningful results for several of the genetic
parameters. We only kept one of the three swabs, so it is possible that
Dr. Ostrander fared better with her samples and her extraction
techniques. As expected, there is a great deal of heterozygosity at every
locus and in the DLA class I and II haplotypes. None of the alleles for
the 33 genomic markers were unique, i.e., they can be found sprinkled among a
number of modern breeds. Some of the DLA class I and II haplotypes have
not been seen among the 5 breeds we have looked at so far with this test
format, but they will almost certainly be found in our indigenous dog
collection when we get time to test them in the same manner. The Y
chromosome haplotypes were also varied in the group, as expected, and none were
unique. However, if this were 30+ dogs from any given pure breed, you
would usually see only one patriline. In brief, this was a very
heterogeneous group of dogs with a lot of diversity. Hopefully, Elaine
will be able to offer you additional information on these dogs. Thank you
for allowing us to complete our testing and we will add this information to
what we have already obtained for village dogs from this and other regions.
-Niels"
Some results were questionable since a
known male dog was marked as female and a female as male according to the
results provided. This was passed off as
“they must have been contaminated”. Since both dogs were the only animal in the
family this was not possible. He claimed it made no difference anyway!
So moving on it was agreed that we now
have a project in a collaborative study initiated by me with Elaine Ostrander
at NIH and Adam Boyko (who also runs the Embark program) and that we would all
be fully kept informed as work progressed. NIH received the swabs “in good
condition” but additional swabs were requested. Again a lot of people were
involved helping to comply and even some blood samples were collected. Having collected all the emails involved into
one continuous document I have some 77 pages (without the headings). Remarks
included were that the amount of DNA extracted was too little. I don’t
understand that since as an experienced laboratory scientist myself I know that
with modern PCR amplification even one strand of DNA can be copied to give as
much as anyone could want. Another remark was that cotton swabs are not good –
the swabs initially used were Dacron and designed specifically for forensic DNA
use, big difference. Also mentioned was that it does not store well, again hard
to understand since the swabs were “received in good condition” and I had been
told they were excited to do them, were fully funded and would do them
immediately. I of course am entirely reliant on NIH to come good and do this
and not in a position to do anything but accept what they say if I ever want
anything done in my life time.
After some time of zero replies to my
requests for information of what was happening I was contacted via someone
else’s FB with a request to email Carol Beuchet. She wanted to know where she
could get some Canaan type dogs other than from Myrna Shiboleth. Carol runs a
money making website and FB page offering genetic studies even though she is
not a geneticist. That in itself is not my problem, people have to make a
living and can set up websites and FB groups called anything they choose and
good luck to anyone willing to pay for such courses by an institute that
actually exists only on the web. In the real world I have been informed that
there is no registered “Institute of Canine Biology”. Attempts to register it
were not accepted by authorities. Be aware that any DNA tests collected by her
are not done by her. She also offers a certificate of the coefficient of
inbreeding (for a charge) to people who have done DNA tests via her. The Embark
program that does the testing already includes such data in their results. The
reason she contacted me via some other FB page was that I had long ago blocked
her for her rudeness I saw to many and her followers who dared ask or question
anything she said and her constant attempts to advertise on my FB groups,
despite my repeatedly asking her not to. She told me that the NIH was "fully
funded and ready to test immediately”. Heard that somewhere before. Anyway I
told her NIH already had some 50 samples from these dogs. She implied that she
thought they had been lost and told me I was not to contact NIH she would, that
NIH may know genetics but don’t know about dogs and that she intended to take
over MY project. Naturally I immediately contacted NIH.
The Canaan Dog Club of America made a
“substantial donation” to her “institute” back in 2014 and until now nothing
has been done.
From Elaine Ostrander at NIH on 5th
December 2017 “So I have no idea why on earth Carol would say you should not
contact me? That is so weird. Of course, you can contact us anytime. I love hearing about what you are doing. So I’ll double check with Heidi, the problem
was the swabs did not give us DNA or enough good quality to do anything. I’ve cc’d Heidi to respond. The samples were no lost or mishandled. They
simply didn’t give us DNA. In cases like
this where the samples have been stored this way---sometimes they work and
sometimes they don’t. We get swabs from
small dogs on occasion when the owner does not want to have blood drawn, but in
those cases we process them right away.
I think we might have gotten lost at my end in terms of communication
and not let you know right away. That is
our fault. But it is never (!) the case
that you should not contact us. I’ll follow up.”
From Dayna Dreger at NIH on 8th December
2017 “We’ve done a few things with the latest pariah dog samples that you have
sent us. We were able to get sufficient DNA from approximately 47 of them,
enough to run on the 170K SNP chip. When we added these dogs to a phylogeny
tree that includes 161 other breeds, most of the pariah dogs cluster into two
separate groups near some of the Asian/African sighthounds (Basenji, Saluki,
Afghan Hound, Azawakh, etc.). One appears very similar to a Saluki, and one
clusters with the Siberian Huskies.
When we have additional relevant dogs
from the area, we will include the pariah samples in further haplotype and
geographic ancestry analyses.
Unfortunately, we haven’t done much
extensive analyses with the samples, as we are still actively collecting
relevant populations from that general area of the world.”
I asked what other relevant dogs they are
actively collecting as I could probably arrange some and received no reply.
Now suddenly Myrna after only a few weeks
ago telling people DNA testing to identify breeds is a waste of money, is
offering to swab Canaan dogs of anyone who attends her paid weekend and has
confirmed to me that this is in response to Carol having contacted her. From Myrna: “21/5/2018 We are now working on developing a project to
research Canaan DNA and to see if it is possible to find identifying markers in
the Canaan which would help to identify free born dogs as Canaans. This is
possible, for example, with the Australian dingo. I tried to start this project
several years ago, but unfortunately the lab that was supposed to do the work
stopped working with animal DNA, and the many samples I had collected were
lost. But we now hope that we can go on with this project. This will be one of
our topics at the Canaan Dog Weekend, so we hope many people will be interested
in attending.” I think this weekend is
not until September 2018!
“Pedigree” Canaan dogs already can be
identified in more than one good company (Not MARS Wisdom panel). Yes
numbers of Canaan dogs that have been tested are small so it would be good to
see more done. A publication co-authored by Elaine includes Canaan dogs (see
the above chart). And Embark also can do this already. Breeders can get the
full Embark test for (from memory) about $100 about 85euro. In my opinion a lot
better value than getting individual genetic issues looked at. My suggestion is
to either do that or contact Elaine directly as she may well send you the swab
at no charge. Eostrand@mail.nih.gov IF this is
to be a part of the project I initiated it would be good if it had been
discussed and I and Adam had been informed. Anyone chooses to send swabs to NIH
don’t expect results in a hurt if at all for individual dogs. If After the
amount of effort and cost put into this by myself and others it is really poor
if anyone is now trying to muscle in without any prior discussion and perhaps
as a way to make money out of it by attracting people to their own money making
projects.
Three desert dogs or village dogs tested
by embark for me were 100% pure. Of other results available publically that I have
seen the most mixed one was actually from Israel!
Australian dingoes are a totally
different case. They have very limited genetic variation and only one
haplotype.
References:
5: Genome-wide SNP and haplotype analyses reveal a rich
history underlying dog domestication
Bridgett M. vonHoldt, John P. Pollinger, Kirk E. Lohmueller,
Eunjung Han, Heidi G. Parker,, Pascale Quignon, Jeremiah D. Degenhardt, Adam R.
Boyko, Dent A. Earl, Adam Auton, Andy Reynolds, Kasia Bryc, Abra Brisbin, James
C. Knowles, Dana S. Mosher, Tyrone C. Spady, Abdel Elkahloun, Eli Geffen,
Malgorzata Pilot, Wlodzimierz Jedrzejewski, Claudia Greco, Ettore Randi, Danika
Bannasch, Alan Wilto, Jeremy Shearman, Marco Musiani, Michelle Cargill, Paul G.
Jones, Zuwei Qian, Wei Huang, Zhao-Li Ding, Ya-ping Zhang, Carlos D.
Bustamante, Elaine A. Ostrander, John Novembre & Robert K. Wayne
