Canis lupus hominis

Posted in dog breeds | 7 Comments

7 Responses

1. on February 23, 2011 at 12:49 am Pai

   Xolos (the type, not the modern breed) are everywhere. Sailors apparently collected them and shipped them around the same way they did parrots, monkeys, and other ‘New World’ curiosities. Hairless dogs were recorded in various places in Asia and Africa in the 1800s, but there is only solid proof of a stable, truly native population in South America.

   And genetically, it’s extremely unlikely that an identical hairless mutation would arise in dogs on opposite sides of the planet, let alone that it would be equally perpetuated and valued by the cultures in both places. For some reason, these hairless dogs ‘clicked’ with mesoamerican cultures in a special way that I don’t think would hold true for most other places.

   
   
   • on February 23, 2011 at 12:59 am retrieverman

     Well, the Portuguese could have introduced them, as could the Spanish.

     Manchuria is bit of a rough place for a hairless dog, though.

     
     
     • on February 23, 2011 at 1:06 am Pai

       Do you mean that hairless dogs could have originated from Spain and been exported to the New World/etc? I don’t think that is correct, since there are eyewitness accounts from conquistadors describing the bizarre, hairless dogs they saw when they were dealing with the natives. They were around before Western colonization.

       
       
       • on February 23, 2011 at 1:17 am Pai

         By ‘around’ I mean ‘established’, and an important part of religious life. That sort of cultural integration doesn’t happen overnight.

         
         
       • on February 23, 2011 at 9:32 am retrieverman

         No. I meant that the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, which were the first global super powers, were able to transport these dogs all over.

         The Portuguese brought the first pugs to Europe, for example.

         
         
         • on February 23, 2011 at 1:56 pm Pai

           Oh, then yes, you’re probably right.

           
           
2. on March 1, 2011 at 9:33 pm Pai

   Another thing that I think may be unrecognized by some people, is that the Xolo was originally just a Pariah dog without hair. You just have to look at the coated versions to see the traits clearly. Their hairless gene could easily be spread around to other ‘village dog’ populations, making many largely unrelated hairless dogs in scattered areas that still looked very true to one ‘type’. I don’t doubt this is what contributed to the persistant confusion about the real origins of these dogs for so many years.

   
   

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