Because of Dollo’s law of irreversibility, it is impossible to “breed back” a domestic animal in such a way that resembles its wild ancestors if those domestic animals have since lost the traits of those wild ancestors.
However, in domestic dogs, there are still breeds that have roughly a similar phenotype to that of wolf, and if they have a similar phenotype, it’s actually possible to selectively breed from breeds with that phenotype until we get something that approximates a wolf.
That’s what these black canids are. The official name is the Alaskan noble companion dog.
They do look very much like black wolves– and yes, black wolves can have a white spots on their chests.
Now, it should be well-known that no domestic dog breed has all the wolf-like traits. Malamutes are too robust and stocky. German shepherds have sloping backs. Siberian huskies are too small.
So the breed’s founder, Ann Dresselhaus, used a variety of dog breeds to introduce certain lupine traits that typical wolf-like dogs don’t necessarily have.
This breed has Siberian husky, German shepherd, and Alaskan malamute in it, but other traits have been added through adding Great Pyrenees, the border collie, the Labrador retriever, and the greyhound. The greyhound would, of course, be useful in adding a more graceful, wolfish form to this cross, and the Labrador and border collie would introduce higher levels of trainability into the strain.
This is currently a “breed in progress.” My guess is that because of Dollo’s law and the desire of the breed founder to have dogs that have passed health screenings, rigorous temperament tests, and even pass the AKC’s Canine Good Citizen test, it is quite difficult to get this breed established. The fact that this breed includes ancestry from such diverse dog stocks also means that throwbacks to one of the less wolf-like breeds are going to be commonplace in the earlier generations.
The goal is to produce a docile and biddable animal that looks like a wolf:
These animals are also a major affront to some of Coppinger’s theories about the correlations between phenotype and behavior in domestic dogs.
These dogs look a lot like wolves, but they are as tractable as any easily trained breed of dog.
Dogs and wolves have been exchanging genes ever since there were dogs.
We’ve bred lots of wolfdogs in the past, but it’s only now that we’re starting to try to breed dogs that look like wolves simply by using the diversity that already exists within domestic dog breeds.
This is not the only project that is trying to a wolf-like dog without doing outcrosses to actual wolves, but this is the only one I know of that has placed such an extreme emphasis on trainability and temperament and also includes a large number non-wolf-like breeds in the program.
You cannot breed back wolves through crossing domestic dogs, but you can select for the wolfish phenotype through selective breeding.
But if one could not find dog breeds with wolfish traits, this project would simply be impossible.
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Nice looking dogs.
“Laws” in biology aren’t like laws of physics. SJ Gould did a nice job of showing this for Dollo’s ‘Law’ a few decades ago. See, eg., https://wiki.umn.edu/pub/IBS8102/022010…/Dollos_Law.pdf
If I remember right, Dollo asserted that octopus evolved from nautilus, and once uncoiled, could not go back to coiled again. Gould showed that in some mollusks, flat forms have evolved from coiled forms, only to re-evolve coiled forms.
Oh yeah. There are no laws in other sciences like those in physics.
Social science, in particular, has a severe physics envy, and many of the laws have exceptions.
Also if you have mutations that “switch off” certain genes, you can have a “re-evolution” of the old form.
How does Dollo’s premise hold up in re “breeding-back” of wild forms of horses such as the Tarpan, Konik, Heck Horse etc. If the animal in question looks like the original, acts like the original AND fills the same ecological niche, is it really all that important whether it carries the exact same genetic package?
It really doesn’t.
However, it’s pretty hard to make the case that feral horses on public lands, even though they are the same species as a horse that lived in Canada and Alaska during the Pleistocene, are native animals.
I was thinking more of the efforts in Europe.
Indeed a very exciting new breeding development. I have read the standard being compiled and find this a very interesting topic for alot of discussion.
It might be possible for breeders to reconsider present breeding programs?
Well I hope they do better than the farce that is happening over here in the attempt to make wolfy looking dogs with infighting resulting in splits so there become more and more different ‘breeds’ and badly kept records and downright lies about what dogs have been used.
Personally I am against trying to breed a dog just to look like something, stunning tho they are
p.s. On rereading the Gould paper, his development of ideas is more subtle, and conclusions depend on definitions. I loved this part (which followed discussion of whether more specialized, complex organisms ever evolved back into more plastic, generalized forms):
‘Irreversibility, as most of the vernacular words we borrow for scientific jargon, is not blessed with the unambiguity of a single meaning. As we have been using the term, irreversibflity is a function of the complexity of a series of independent events. There is, however, another sense of irreversibflity exemplified by a notice I once found tacked to a coffee machine: “Irreversibflity: you can’t get your dime back, by pouring the coffee back into the machine.” ‘
As applied to the dog -> wolf, Dollo’s law would seem to read that the specialized domesticated form we call dogs cannot re-evolve into the generalized plastic predatory animals we call wolves. Feral dogs show this untrue.
But in the end, it comes down to definitions.
The thing is that dogs really haven’t lost all their wolfishness, so really Dollo wouldn’t apply here necessarily at all.
But if someone was hoping to breed a population prick-eared wolf-like dogs, you could not do so from a population of drop-eared, freely breeding Labradors, bassets, salukis, and beagles.
The statistical Improbability via evolution/natural selection (implied in Dollo’s Law) ‘evolves’ to a Possibility via artificial selection, which is of course what is happening when humans chose the parents of each generation in the goal organism.
Reference:
According to Richard Dawkins, Dollo’s law is “really just a statement about the statistical improbability of following exactly the same evolutionary trajectory twice (or, indeed, any particular trajectory), in either direction.”
Let me give you a better example of when Dollo’s law would apply.
There have been at least two attempts to “breed back” the European aurochs, the ancestor of taurine cattle. (There are three if you count English park cattle).
There are primitive cattle breeds that they’ve tried to use, but the biggest problem they’ve encountered is that no domestic cattle breed is as large as the aurochs. The huge size has been lost from the domestic cattle gene pool. Unlike dogs, which have some wolfish traits established across several breeds, there is no way to breed back the aurochs. The closest they can get are some really interesting cattle with big horns.
If the trait is gone from the gene pool, you can’t re-evolve it and select from it.
(The aurochs breeders might want to try adding some gayal blood to their lines. Gayals/cattle crosses aren’t always fertile, but they are more fertile than cow/bison crosses. Gayals also look like big cows, and you could introduce the large size into the potential bred back aurochs programs).
There is also another breeding back project in which they are trying to breed back the dire wolf. Dire wolves, as far as anyone knows, didn’t contribute to domestic dogs at all, but they are producing a very robust, large shepherd-type dog.
Cross breeding in my analysis of the past has had limited success due to the lack of today’s knowledge through new technology. Yes, we could consider this Sci-Fi … The new scientific knowledge in micro-biology alone certainly holds the promise. It would appear this breeding program has been ongoing for what 20 years? It would appear more than three generations on the ground?
http://www.dogresources.com/alaskan-noble-companion-dog/ Now if one has read how this dog was created and read this site?
They state the dog is a hybrid wolf. The three different cross breedings chosen plus the Lab and Border collie hardly make this dog a hybrid wolf breeding. This breeder chose three breeds that genetically have been identified as the closest wolf hybrids in pure bred dogs in modern times. I think it is perfectly obvious …do you not believe what your eyes can not deny? This breed looks like a wolf.
Indeed the writer of this link states can not find a Standard? Oh Please
http://www.dogresources.com/alaskan-noble-companion-dog/ Retrieverman has had this link up…got a specific kick of “Overview” of the Standard…
That cannot be the same dog. Here is the standard for the dog referred to in this post:
http://alaskannoblecd.weebly.com/breed-standard.html
That standard says:
Serious Fault: over 17 inches in height.
Disqualifications: Over 18 inches in height.
Her standard says:
The ideal Alaskan Noble Companion Dog is between 26″ and 33″ tall and weighs 60-110 pounds. The females may be much smaller than the males occupying the lower end of the weight and height spectrum, however large height and weight in females is not considered a fault.
Yes, push the wrong link. You had it up a few days ago. Love the Overview comments.
One also can read must pass OFA and so forth and so on. A sound foundation for a new breed in my studies and opinion
I was hoping someone would note that of the seven breeds three Siberian Husky, German Shepard and Alaskan Malmute all carry the a^w allele. The Agouti signal peptide that causes wolf or coyote to have yellowish hair with black tip and base still exist in these breeds. It is believed that all dogs carried this wild type or now called sable wolf at one time. Scientific evidence now concurs only less than a handful carry.
no domestic cattle breed is as large as the aurochs.– if Wikapedia is correct, that isn’t entirely true. “In Europe, aurochs populations of the north were bigger on average than those from the south. …during the Holocene aurochs from Denmark and Germany had an average height at the shoulders of 155–180 cm (61–71 in) in bulls and 135 to 155 cm in cows, while aurochs populations in Hungary had bulls reaching 155–160 cm (61–63 in).[18] The body mass of aurochs appeared to have showed some variability. Some were comparable to the weights of the Wisent or the Banteng, reaching around 700 kg (1,500 lb), whereas those from the late-middle Pleistocene were estimated to measure up to 1,500 k (3,300 lb), the top mass of the gaur (the largest extant bovid)
The Maremman would appear to reach the required size: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maremmana –They are long-legged and large cattle, with bulls reaching up to 170 shoulder height.
The Chianina is both the tallest and the heaviest breed of cattle. Mature bulls stand up to 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in), and castrated oxen may reach 2 m (6 ft 7 in).[11] It is not unusual for bulls to exceed 1,600 kg (3,500 lb) in weight
Also omits the occasional oversize of more standard breeds: http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/chilli-the-worlds-largest-bull.html
http://icepice.blogspot.com/2009/12/britains-biggest-bull-mammoth-of-bulls.html
It’s true that on a DNA level, one would not find a labrador/beagle, etc that matched exactly say, the MTDNA of a Romanian wolf. But I’ll bet prick ears DO occur on the very rare occasion, just as “legs” occasionally occur on the very rare dolphin as a result of a Hox gene “reversal”. If there were active SELECTION (either in nature or by man) in favor of that prick ear, you probably COULD get prick ears out of your proposed mix. Would it be exactly the same SNPS, etc? probably not, but Nature is messier than we think it is. It’s unlikely that whales would ever revert back to a legged form, but there isn’t any pressure for them to do so and other animals now occupy those niches (sea lions, seals, etc) to preclude the attempt. Dingos come pretty darn close to a reversion to the wolf, and that’s with a relatively short period of time and at best, “mixed” selection (since they are occasionally kept by Aborigines).
Actually there are dogs that have Romanian wolf mtDNA. It’s in Coppinger’s book.
The Maremma cattle are being used in the most recent aurochs recreation.
I know that there are dogs that have Romanian wolf MTDNA. It’s the W6/D6 group, which includes Belgian shepherds. I don’t think Retrievers or Beagles were in the group. But it points out that a “reversal” to a MRCA of the predomesticated wolf is not necessarily all that impossible. They wouldn’t be the same as the modern wolf since as you’ve noted, the modern wolf is the result of selection for fear of men, among other things.
It seems they must be looking for those mutations and in attempts to correct. I note a disqualification in this Standard is the presence of dogs with obvious eyelid conformation. defects It is my understanding the complex and combination of genes where no one gene controls the eyelid conformation has been revealed. It is stated that if eyelid conformation defects are to be eliminated ….only dogs without these conditions should be bred. ectropion ..droopy lower eyelids and entropion cogenital disorders.
So far I like what I see of this breed. I love the fact that health testing is mandatory in breeding animals. If we breed for just pets its hard to naturally test for soundness (in a working capacity ) so health testing of hips, hearts etc is good. I wonder though, if I were to purchase one and ship it to my state where wolves or hybrids are not legal, would my dog be taken and killed? Even if I had all the paperwork to prove there was no wolf in it? Most bsl states if the animal appears or looks predominantly (insert breed) then it is one…
That’s one thing that worries me about this breed, as well as kennel club wolf dogs, like the Saarlooswolfhond and the Czechoslovakian wolfdog. The other thing is that someone might lie and say this is a wolfdog, and then their friends go out and get a real wolf hybrid that happens to be quite reactive.
So there are concerns.
BTW, you won’t be shipping dogs anywhere if this new APHIS regulation goes into effect (I plugged it for you, Jess!).
You also have a lot of breeds that have wolf ancestry that you wouldn’t think about as being wolves, like Finnish spitz and Norwegian elkhounds.
Living in MD and knowing the disaster our new “pitbull law” is, this would be a big concern for me.
Yikes that is a very sound concern. Unfortunately, too many folks have never seen a wild wolf.
Guess the first step would be to take paperwork and the dog to authorities along with a copy of this great web site. Extra insurance make copies of the video.
I’d also get the breeder to sign an affidavit that says that this animal has no wolf in it.
This is a breed in progress so to speak. It would be a great opportunity to have this breeder on a breeder discussion. IMO
Well, I think she was a subscriber to this blog at one point. I don’t know if she is now.
But it doesn’t look like a wolf to me. It has a kind of droll expression that I find funny, as in LOL. In the eye of this beholder the bones of the face are not wolf-like. Just sayin’.
I think they look more like wolves than that Italian wolf that Scottie featured in an earlier post.
That wolf was crossed with dogs. I thought that that was the point. That “wolf” had rear dew claws.
If you note the attention to bite in the standard and do some skull study the expression of a brain is certainly apparent. The depth of the eye socket, size and shape of eye and head conformation and amount of facial skin all lead to better sight. Likewise equally note attention to tail set…a dog without a proper croup and too square…a tail functions much like a rudder on a boat from my observations. Again, all this leading to a higher quality of life.
As you state …beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Where did you find the info about the skull? I don’t know how to express this or even if it’s real, but I see pix of wolves with head down, nose to the ground, eyes forward, apparently focussed on the distance. The one picture I’ve seen of a snarling wolf it was with head up looking along its nose, apparently focussed close. Seems to me that dog, by comparison, does not look that way. When dog’s nose is to the ground his eyes are down, also. At the opposite extreme from the wolf look, I see sight hounds, head up, focussed on the distance. They look to me perfect for spotting far-away game and chasing long distances. In the wide open spaces of Asia or Arabia, they probably run circles around wolves.
I’ve been told that this difference is not real. Any comments?
To me, the standard of this projected breed is sensibly worded and the required medium size and wolflike appearance will meet a lot of people’s naturalistic aspirations, provided of course the typical temperament is pleasant.
Of course there are those who might like to pretend to themselves and the world that they own a wolf/dog cross. Well that’s okay, why not, we all have fantasies. One of the nearest experiments of this nature which I meet up with on a regular basis is the Northern Inuit. There are two of these being walked near here in Buckinghamshire along the chiltern hills trail, but when I say “walked” these two seem to run everywhere off the lead.
If these two are typical then I think it’s a lovely breed. I understand that german shepherd and siberian huskey were two breeds prominent in their development. On tops of chiltern hills around here there are some large open areas of plateau where these inuits can charge off into the distance yet still just be seen by the owners. What amazes me is that they are so biddable, returning, admitedly after thinking about it for a while, when the whistle is blown, and they are so friendly towards the people and dogs up there. If only we were younger, Mary and I, we might have had one or two! They are very wolflike in appearance except maybe having a kinder face than your actual brer wolf, so maybe not ‘menacing looking’ enough for purists. I gather from the owners that their home gardens (yards) are surrounded by very tall fences, so maybe not a choice for those living in the neat suburbs.
For me, though, the siberian huskey would have been wolflike enough maybe. If only I thought I could control them enough off the lead, as we don’t much like walking dogs on leads in the British countryside.Therefore the other day I was amazed to be met by a whole team of five siberians, all walking loose but controlled by an electronic recalling device attached to the collar of each. The owners carried what looked like a mobile phone which had buttons to be pressed giving various instructions, for example, to stop or to return and even one to stop a fight. I was informed that this device is produced in America so maybe some of you know more about it? The owners of these radio controlled huskies said that it took them many months of training to get the dogs all used to the system, but they were glad they persevered. The leader of this little pack was an older bitch to whom all the others deferred and sometimes got their ears boxed for any misbehaviour, much like in a real wolf pack.
The device would be an e-collar. It delivers small electric shocks, at levels from so weak the dog can barely feel them, to so strong they hurt. Often they also have a vibration option. They can be very effective for off-lead training. Some people swear by them for training working retrievers and dogs, such as huskies, that love their independence but tend to take that independence too far. They are controversial, and used wrongly, no question, they can be crues. They and have been banned in some places (eg, Victoria, Australia). There are many brands. Some better than others. There’s also a new GPS driven version that 1) allows you to track where your dog is and 2) allows you to set up an electronic ‘fence’ with a warning area to keep your dog within a certain radius . . . as well as serving as a training collar.
Thanks for that info, Jen.
The biggest pluses are that they’ appear to be breeding these dogs to resemble wolves in an effort to reduce many of the unintended consequences associated w/ many of the traits we’ve bred into our dogs and that their first concern is health, increased longevity and temperament.
You hit the focal point of the day first concern of a breeder should be health, increased longevity and temperament. Indeed like Peter Dawson states if we were younger would be more than willing to give this dog a chance as tour chosen breed. We who have had numerous experiences certainly recognize the judious manner in its development.
I see this breeding program format taking the Quantum Leap into the 4th dimension of dog breeding.
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Another plus is furthering the notion that new breeds can, and should be created. It really pisses me off that the high and mighty of the dog world seem to thing we should stick with the breeds created at the end of the 19th and early 20th century. The world that dogs live in has changed a whole lot since then, and many of the breeds have been driven up genetic one way streets by inbreeding for show traits. I’m not keen on F1 hybrids created in semi-industrial puppy farms. But I love the idea of new breeds, created for health, temperament, and looks that agree with some group of people’s idea of what they want for a dog. (Love those yellow eyes!)
agreed
Jen what amazed me the most can be seen in description of eye color preference. In collie history amber and gold eyes was a horror to them. Now we come back to the basics?
“The ideal eye color is yellow, green, grey, or blue with amber (or gold) being common.”Dark brown eyes being considered a minor fault. “…..if the 2 eyes are different colors or if one eye is bi-colored, it is considered a minor fault”
Ridiculous name though, imo
Overly long and a little pretentious, but at least it’s descriptive. Now, recent housecat breeds, on the other hand…you can’t make a move without tripping over some “exotic” name that’s actively misleading about the animal’s ancestry or history.
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By the time it is being sold to the public a new breed may have lost the initial advantage of hybrid vigour and by the time that litters are being sold the emphasis may have been on consolidation of type for several close bred generations.
I rather like the situation here in the UK (and probably elsewhere) where a breed goes in several directions: for example that wonderfully intelligent Britsish breed the border collie (or working sheepdag) where some are worked with sheep, others are general farm dogs, a few bred within a closed stud book for showing and the majority, these days, living as companion dogs for mainly active people.
Pedigree show spaniels may be having genetic problems but the increasingly popular so called ‘working’ spaniels are healthy active examples of what these breeds were originally all about. Yes a few are actually worked but not the majority which are simply loving companions.
The ubiquitous jack russell terrier continues to do well being informally bred for the many who are up to its challenging and amusing ways.
Various informally bred gundogs are the companions of many thousands of people walking in the British countryside today.
Increasingly the British are taking to crossbreds and mongrels of various sizes and types to accompany them on part of their journey through life.
The breeders of exaggerated and cruelly designed show dogs are in a small minority as they struggle with their issues. A lot of people breed and own dogs inappropriately, but also vast numbers of people have their lives enhanced and prolonged by owning a dog.
I rather like the situation here in the UK (and probably elsewhere) where a breed goes in several directions: for example that wonderfully intelligent Britsish breed the border collie (or working sheepdag) where some are worked with sheep, others are general farm dogs, a few bred within a closed stud book for showing and the majority, these days, living as companion dogs for mainly active people.
Except that tends to narrow the gene pool of each subset of the breed. If the showdogs don’t breed with the working dogs don’t breed with the trial dogs (as sheep trials are very much a separate thing from actual sheep work), then all the groups genetically suffer some as a result.
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Xena is a wolfdog, and she’s the mother of Cola and Pepsi (it’s Pepsi, Cola and Xena in the picture you show), two breeding females in the ANCD, who both look very wolf-like. (You should see a full body-view of Pepsi, but Xena’s face says enough.)
As far as I know, the other dogs, not with any of these females in their heritage, are all dogs. But the puppies and “grandpuppies” of Xena definitely have wolf content.
Many have tried – and failed – to breed a wolf-lookalike with no wolf. Even with careful selection of the most wolf-like huskies, shepherds and different sled dogs, nothing as wolflike as this has ever come up. Even the Saarloos and Czech wolfdog – which do have some wolf content in them – don’t look as wolflike as these.
And she didn’t even breed Xena, she bought her.
Also, Pepsi is a black phase (while the others appear more “plain” black) – a color I’ve never seen in any *dog*.
I see nothing wrong with wolf content in a breed or with the ANCD, but yes, the breeder is lying if she’s saying there is no wolf in Xena or her offspring.
Ann is correct that wolf was not used in the creation of the breed-none of her foundation animals are wolves-and unless a dog is an F1 cross between a pure wolf and a dog, can it really be called a wolfdog?? All breeds “sprang from the wolf”, some have been crossed back to wolf after domestication. Besides the obvious by appearance relatively recent wolf crossbacks(German Shepherd, Alaskan Mal), there are breeds of livestock guarding dogs that were developed by crossing back to wolf in their development.
I generally avoid reading readers’ comments, it usually just irritates me; however, there are a lot of smart folks or folks that think like me commenting. Funny with the “physics envy!” I’m a PA/Epidemiology educated closet paleoanthropologist and yes evolution, mutation and expression of recessives can manifest in morphology at any time in a species time line.
BUT! More importantly I would love to have one of these pups! I read the blog about the race that the dog accompanied the runner in and that sold me. But if it gets too difficult to find one, such as the case with state side tamaskans I will be just as happy with a GSD.