12/21/2023 0 Comments Can i link my dna matches in ancestry![]() “Anything that changes a brain pattern that much is probably going to have negative effects in other areas.” Breeding for behavior could also have drawbacks, he says. Personalities aside, most breeds do have a distinct look-probably because breeding for appearance is much easier than breeding for behavior, says Adam Boyko, an expert on canine genetics at Cornell University who was not involved with the work. Each dog is an individual.” (A website the team set up shows just how hard it is to know what you might get.) The bottom line, she says: If you’re looking for a dog with a specific personality, “you shouldn’t shop out of a catalog. The results, Karlsson says, “match what the dog world has told us”-that the behavior of these animals is shaped by their environment, not their breed. Pit bulls, for example, (though not an official AKC breed) were not more aggressive than other dogs, despite their reputation in some quarters as dangerous. Some breeds even defied their stereotypes. Just 9%, on average, of the personality differences between pups were related to their breed, the team reports today in Science. German shepherds, easy to train-or impossibly headstrong. Labradors could be loving or standoffish. “That probably has a lot more to do with where you take your dog to poop,” says Elinor Karlsson, director of vertebrate genomics at the Broad Institute, who oversaw the study.Īnd when it came to dog breeds, personality varied widely within the same pedigree. The researchers speculate that retrieving may have helped dogs’ wolf ancestors hunt, and that humans likely selected for friendly pooches in the early days of dog domestication.īut most behaviors did not have a strong genetic component, including playfulness around other dogs and (yes, it was in the survey) whether a dog circles before it defecates. Some behaviors, like retrieving objects and human sociability, were more heritable. Less than one-quarter of the differences in personality from dog to dog could be explained by genetics. At least 80% of a dog’s appearance can be tied to its DNA, the team found.īehavior was another story. When it came to physical traits, such as size and floppy ears, genes ruled. The pups included mixes and purebreds, with 128 breeds represented. In the largest study of its kind, the team compared the genetic and survey data of nearly 2000 dogs-most of which had their entire genomes sequenced-and survey results from an additional 16,000 pooches. Owners answer more than 100 questions-ranging from how friendly their pups are with strangers to whether they like to chase squirrels-and then send in a cheek swab for DNA sequencing. So Morrill and her colleagues harnessed her lab’s own database, Darwin’s Ark, which has collected survey and genetic data on thousands of dogs across the United States since 2015. Previous work had found some genetic relationships between breed and behavior, but it looked at averages across breeds rather than comparing individual dogs. “If they are more prominent in particular breeds,” she says, “that hints they may be genetic.” Morrill wanted to better understand whether behavioral issues such as aggression and obsessive compulsive disorder in dogs are genetic or environmental. National Human Genome Research Institute who was not involved with the work. “It’s a major advance in how we think about dog behavior,” says Elaine Ostrander, an expert in canine genetics at the U.S. Aside from a few ancient traits, environment seems to play a much larger role than pedigree. In a new study, Morrill and her colleagues show that almost none of the behaviors we associate with dog breeds-from lovable Labradors to pugnacious pit bulls-are hard-wired. Now, she has the science to back that up. “Breed can be important,” Morrill says, “but it’s not the full picture of a dog’s behavior.” When Morrill’s family got another papillon, Rosie, a year later, she was entirely different: bold, outgoing, and adoring of all people. Tod was registered with the American Kennel Club (AKC), whose website describes his breed as “curious” and “friendly” with a “hardy constitution.” But the puppy was shy and scared of strangers, and he developed separation anxiety as he aged. And so, the family ended up with its first dog-a 2-month-old pup she named Tod. When her parents resisted, “I turned on the waterworks,” laughs Morrill, now a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Worcester. Not just any puppy-a pint-size papillon with a black button nose and bushy, perky ears. When Kathleen Morrill was 12, she decided she needed a puppy.
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