I don’t know if these are truly African dogs or not.
It is possible that Portuguese traders could have introduced hairless dogs from Latin America to southern Africa.
These dogs look very much like xoloitzcuintli.
And it is just as possible that these dogs are as African as the Chinese crested is Chinese.
I believe one of theories about the Chinese crested was that it was from Africa.
All hairless dogs of this type are derived from a single mutation that occurred in Mexico 4,000 years ago. All of them are derivatives of Mexican dogs. (The American hairless terrier’s baldness is caused by a different gene.)
The Messy Beast website has a discussion about “African hairless dogs“– including a taxidermy– but I think the information on the page is mostly inaccurate.
What part of “this gene comes from a mutation in Mexican dogs 4,000 years ago” do people not understand?
I wonder that people would persist in elevating the statements of ignorant people from the late 1800s over modern scientific fact and historic knowledge.
You may be right! According to the net the Chinese Crested is most likey from Africa. However, according to Discover Magazine, there is genetic evidence that shows a shared origin with the Mexican Hairless(Xoloitzcuintli) and Chinese Crested.[Random Fact: Gypsy Rose Lee (American burlesque entertainer famous for her striptease act, an actress, author and playwright) used to breed the Chinese Crested.
The net is often wrong… As are official breed histories.
I don’t think there ever was an African hairless dog as is implied by the name. There may have been xolos or South American hairless dogs in South Africa at some point, perhaps arriving on Spanish Galleons.
first off, the african hairless is ‘not’
extinct! 2nd,the chinese crested is asian and african hairless!
there also is an egyptian hairless!
as with all hairless/bald dogs,there’s
a recesive hairles gene for bald dogs
Oh, you’re such a moron.
You have no evidence for any of these claims.
Chinese crested is just a marketing name.
The breed was actually created in the United States in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, using xolos.
This is very well documented, unlike this stupid fantasy that you morons keep peddling.
Fantasies are so much fun!
Too bad when asks you for evidence, you give none– or crappy evidence that no serious historian would take seriously.
The hairless trait you’re talking about is dominant. It has been traced in to Mexico about 4,000 years ago. It’s very easily transmitted to unrelated dog strains, because it is dominant.
The recessive trait doesn’t exist in these dogs.
It exists in the American hairless terrier, which does not have origins in Latin America at all.
These are the facts.
What you just threw at me was nothing more than incoherent fantasy.
This blog does not allow incoherent fantasy to go unchallenged.
BTW, do not throw the mtDNA study on xolos at me. I’ve seen it before. All it shows is that xolos are mostly Western now, in terms of their genetics, but they actually do have a genetic trait that has its origins in Mexico.
There are no Egyptian hairless dogs. You are pulling that fact straight from your rectum or that of some nineteenth century dog dealer.
You seem rather certain that the African hairless dog is not extinct. Do you know any one with an African Hairless (African Sand)? I know someone who has these dogs. He got the original dogs in Botswana. They were very common in Angola before the bush war started there 40 years ago and in Zimbabwe.
If these dogs exist as sand terriers or whatever, they are going to be derived from dogs that the Portuguese brought to southern Africa from the Americas. They won’t be some endemic African breed, like the Africanis or the basenji. The hairless trait that exists in Chinese crested dogs, xolos, and Peruvian hairless breeds originated in Mexico 4,000 years ago.
Now, there might have been hairless dogs in Africa, but the African hairless from the nineteenth century have all been toy dogs that look very much like the so-called Chinese crested. There is very little evidence that these dogs ever existed in China. It’s kind of like the Russian circus dog origin story for golden retriever. It’s a nice story, but in golden retrievers, it was proven to be simply a fantasy.
There are lots of reasons why dogs can be hairless. The most common is this dominant hairless trait which originated in Mexico. Disease can also make dogs hairless– especially mange, and there are also other genetic mutations that cause hairlessness in dogs. The other one that has been documented is the recessive hairless trait that exists in the American hairless terrier, which is derived from an unusual rat terrier.
The Exact origin of the African hairles will never be known. It is highly likely that the hairless was introduced by Portuguese traders and these dogs crossed with the indigenous Africanus to give rise to the African Sand dog. They were used as hunting dogs by the African people and are still used in some rural areas. The hairless gene is dominant, not like the American terrier. They bear a strong resemelance to the Mexican Xolo, thereby strengthening the argument that they originate from the Xolo. The man who is breeding these African hairless is a vetranarian who was doing some work up north and came accross the hairless in one of the villages. We are trying to get a DNA breakdown from the specimen in the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum in England so that we can do a comparative. Just as ALL dogs originate from the early wolf, it is possible that all hairless originate from the Xolo. The African Sand dog is as extinct as the coelacanth.
The ridgebacked dogs of Southern Africa also could have been brought there by the Portuguese, who were traveling around southeast Asia, where there are several different ridgebacked dogs. I’ve seen photos of ridgebacked Africanis.
The interesting thing is with neither of these traits does it require large numbers of imported dogs to make an impact on a population. They are both dominant traits, and one can introduced the hairless mutation through just a single founding dog– and then it will spread through the population. This has confused people for decades. People have been looking for the origin of the dominant hairless, and it always turns out that Peruvian hairless dogs, Xolos, and Chinese cresteds usually have very different mtDNA. But if the trait originated in Mexico, it could have been introduced into these populations by just a few stud dogs. And because it was introduced by the male ancestor, it would have no effect on the mtDNA.
Same thing with the ridgebacks. The studies I’ve seen on African and Southeast Asian ridgebacks say they aren’t related, but they look at only mtDNA. It could have been that the Portuguese could have introduced a few Southeast Asian ridgeback dogs that mated with Africanis bitches.
No effect on the mtDNA.