Natural History

Posted in wild dogs, wildlife | Tagged black-backed jackal, white jackal | 15 Comments

15 Responses

1. on May 22, 2012 at 9:25 am massugu

   The white coloring certainly makes it look more like a dog doesn’t it?

   
   
2. on May 22, 2012 at 12:07 pm Kate Williams

   Trippy photo. White color, blue eyes? Is it in the wild or a preserve? Maybe we will get updates as it matures.

   Wondering, if a jackal in the Pleistocene had white hair and blue eyes, could humans have grabbed just that gene? Over time, of course. What that leads me to think is maybe there are single genes from jackals or coyotes that made it into some lines of dogs and were kept? Just tripping…if not in the past, it is happening now, but with shortcuts in the lab making it more sure than breeding for it over generations….

   Closer to the present, how did the white gene get into German Shepherds? Spontaneously or from another breed, ie Samoyed? How did it get into the Samoyed? Now I am wondering how knowledgeable those Ice Age people were about breeding for the traits they wanted. Probably pretty clever… Dog breeding wisdom could date back to the Pleistocene, no?

   
   
   • on May 22, 2012 at 12:25 pm retrieverman

     These white ones are in a game park, which is wild but managed.

     The black-backed jackal isn’t the source for any dog breed. They are more distantly related to domestic dogs than African wild dogs are.

     
     
     • on May 22, 2012 at 1:58 pm Kate Williams

       OK I got the jackals mixed up, I keep forgetting some are other species, but the idea of getting, say, a white gene, from one canine of any compatible species, keeping that, and losing the rest by breeding away from the original donor? Doable? Would geneticists know which canine the one gene was from? Or even notice?

       
       
       • on May 22, 2012 at 2:05 pm retrieverman

         It’s much more likely that white color in dogs, which comes in several different flavors, just resulted from novel mutation.

         We know the black color in wolves comes from domestic dogs.

         I’m sure we could do some genetic engineering with dog colors, but I don’t know of anyone who has performed these kinds of experiments.

         
         
         • on May 22, 2012 at 2:58 pm Kate Williams

           I picked color arbitrarily because it is what got me started thinking about the principle involved. I think that in the dogwolf period, which went on for eons there was a lot of hybreeding and experimentation as well as natural “accidents” that may have resulted in one gene or maybe a few, being retained until the present. Maybe not visual, as in coat color, but something impacting fitness or temperament. Well, now I am getting too vague.

           But you are too. Dogs are from wolves. All dog colors must have been in the wolf- carried by dogs, then reintroduced to the wolf after having been sifted for color, by people. Or are you saying that the black in wolves that came from dogs was a mutation in the dog? Is it a dominant color? Or did the wolves have two black descendents of the dog that bred with them? I have heard you say that before, and just wondered how it came to be. And whether black will take over, or disappear back into recesses of the genome?

           Did you already write an article about they knew the color was a from dog gene? That one has me curious on how it happened and how it will be transmitted.

           
           
           • on May 22, 2012 at 3:10 pm retrieverman

             http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/science/06wolves.html

             
             
   • on May 23, 2012 at 12:55 pm M.R.S.

     “White” in the White German Shepherd, Kuvasz, some Samoyeds and some other breeds is basically a very pale form of the yellow (ee) coat color. It’s ee plus some other factor that affects the pigment of the hair. You’ll see pale yellow on the backs of the ears in many individuals. Other breeds including some Samoyeds and Great Pyrenees, appear white because of extreme white-spotting; the white markings have extended to cover the whole (or nearly whole) dog.

     All these white dogs mentioned can have dark skin pigment and dark eyes. A true albino will have pink skin, blue eyes, no pigment in skin, hair, or eyes. The Dobermans are called “albinoid” as they don’t quite fit the definition of a true albino, which has pink eyes because there is no pigment in the iris of the eye. And dogs of almost any color can have blue eyes, which can be independent of coat color.

     
     
3. on May 22, 2012 at 5:58 pm Kate Williams

   Thanks. Derr says the mutation arose between 12 and 121k years ago and they couldn’t say for sure which canid, dog or wolf, however they said it was dogs that brought it to the new world for the first time. That seems to be a case in point if it arose in dogs, got into NW wolves, and it still is in wolves, it sounds like an example of my question, except black not white and going from domestic to wild instead of wild to domestic. In any case, I see it can happen, has happened and probably happens all the time, but we can’t tell until geneticists can see it in action.

   That hairless gene could be another example. It bops all over any breed. I think those chupacabras in Texas are coyotes with the restricted hair gene. Maybe they aren’t really adaptable, so the ones who are noticed end up dead. If they aren’t trumped up videos.

   
   
4. on May 22, 2012 at 7:08 pm chervilmeadow

   Can it be confirmed by definitive process that the same black gene common to all three species was acquired through historically recent interbreeding and not possibly inherited during much earlier evolution and before divergence into separate species had taken place?

   
   
   • on May 22, 2012 at 7:21 pm retrieverman

     Yes. But only in New World Wolves.

     However, it very likely that black wolves in Italy got their black coloration from crossing with dogs. They also got dewclaws on the hind legs from domestic dogs:
     http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3602741.stm

     
     
     • on May 22, 2012 at 7:48 pm Kate Williams

       So, the black is recessive and may have been carried in some lines of dogs and or wolves since the Pleistocene. Thus a lot of wolves may have lost it, then got it back, even lost it again, over time and space. Derr’s Times article indicates it is expected to disappear in the current population of wolves, too. As a recessive, it has to be selected for to be maintained in a manifested form.

       In any case when people saw it they kept it going, no matter how far back in time it occurred/showed up. A recessive mutation has to occur at some point, but it may not show up for a thousand years if it never meets another recessive copy of itself, but when some inbreeding occurs through a shrinking gene pool or something, It pops up for the “first” time.

       
       
       • on May 22, 2012 at 8:24 pm retrieverman

         I don’t know if there is recessive black in wolves. I’ve never heard of it.

         Recessive black is related to sable.

         
         
5. on May 22, 2012 at 7:53 pm Peggy Richter

   the K dominant black is probably dog to wolf. However, the a recessive black is probably ancient. People keep saying “black” as if there is only one type of black in canids, when there isn’t. Given that white lions and white crows also occur, it’s likely that color morphs occur occasionally and need not be a single point of origin. With dogs and other domestic animals, a novel color would have been preserved and perpetuated because humans like to have things that are different and might have simply “liked” the color. In the wild, a novel color would only be preserved and perpetuated if it was at least benign, and probably only if it were advantageous.
   I question the asumption that various color morphs “must” be a result of inbreeding. Obviously, in domestic animals and in some animal populations, a color morph appears because of a limited gene pool, but I believe that sometimes one just happens to “win the lotto”. However rare the odds might be, it does happen.

   
   
   • on May 23, 2012 at 12:45 pm M.R.S.

     that’s exactly what happened with the “white” (albinoid) Dobermans referenced with the photo. All are descendants of one female that had a mutated gene. This gene also is responsible for some associated defects, including vision problems– so may be somewhat self-limiting for wild animals.

     
     

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