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by Scottie Westfall

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When the science bursts the fantasy about your favorite breed

July 17, 2019 by SWestfall3

xolo

The dog world is always an interesting place to observe human behavior.  A few days ago, someone posted a coated Xoloitzcuintli (“Mexican hairless dog”) on an FB group, and I happened to mention the new evidence about the genetics of this dog breed.

This breed has a strong connection to the Mexica/Aztec identity in Mexico. The dog has a Nahuatl name, and when we discuss the Americas pre-Conquest, the civilization that existed in Mexico  was certainly the equivalent of anything in the Old World.

The mutation that causes hairlessness in these dogs has been traced to Mexico around 4,000 years ago. It is conferred by an incomplete dominant allele, and thus, it was able to spread from Mexico into South America, where hairless village dogs still exist in some areas.  Later, these hairless dogs were crossed with various toy breeds to found what has (laughably) been called “the Chinese crested dog.”

Further, we have really good evidence that shows that the indigenous dogs of the Americas were replaced with a genetic swarm of European dogs. This means that the xoloitzcuintli, though it has this mutation that originated in the Americas, is mostly European dog in its ancestry.

What is even more shocking is that a genome-wide analysis that traced the origins of many dog breeds found that the xolo fits in a clade that includes the German shepherd, the Berger Picard, and the Chinook. When a prick-eared regional Italian sheepdog called a Cane Paratore is added to the analysis, the xolo and the Peruvian hairless dog fit closer to that breed than the GSD and Picardy shepherd.

If one thinks about the history of Mexico, the Spanish became deeply involved in turning Mexico into a great place for herding cattle, sheep, and goats, and it would make sense that the typical dog that would have been brought over would have been an Iberian herding dog that is probably quite closely related to the Cane Paratore.

So more analysis was performed with an emphasis on Italian dog breeds. Some of the clades changed position, but xolos and Peruvian Inca orchid dogs remained in this clade closely related to the German shepherd, the various Italian herding dogs, the Berger Picard, and the Chinook.  The Catahoula leopard dog, a celebrated cur dog from Louisiana that is said to have derived from French and Spanish herding dogs brought over by colonists, were found to be closely related to the xolos.

This means that the dog called the xoloitzcuintli is mostly rough pastoral dog from the Iberian Peninsula, and it is not an ancient American breed.

I mentioned all this information on that Facebook group, and it was as if I blasphemed against the Almighty.

Sadly, we have almost lost an entire lineage of domestic dogs. The Conquest of the Americas and the resulting Columbian Exchange changed the genetic fortunes of humans and animals on these continents.

And though people would love for the xolo to be this untouched pure strain of dog. It simply is not.  In fact, it is very heavily admixed with southern European herding dog to the point that the dog is almost entirely that in ancestry. If that hairless trait were not dominant, it likely would have disappeared in the Mexican village dog population, and there would not have been any suggestion that these dogs were anything special.

So by a fluke of the allele, a mostly European herding dog-derived village dog from Mexico became the ancient dog of the Aztecs.

Yep. I ruined that one, too.

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Posted in dog breeds, Uncategorized | Tagged Mexican hairless dog, Xoloitzcuintli | 14 Comments

14 Responses

  1. on July 17, 2019 at 4:01 pm dogsofwindridge

    To me the true history of the breed, and that dominant hairless gene surviving anyway, is just as fascinating! Thanks for sharing! I love dog breeds, even without magical stories attached to them.


  2. on July 17, 2019 at 4:34 pm Pai

    The truth of the hairless breeds is more interesting to me than the fairytales the Fancy spun up around them. The other sad part of these fantasies is that they deny shared genetic heritage that could be used for health-based outcrossing projects in the name of staying ‘pure’.


    • on July 20, 2019 at 2:45 am Melanie Laescura

      Agree!


  3. on July 18, 2019 at 6:40 pm baitedcrow

    I wouldn’t go blabbing about Catahoulas being descended from European herding dogs in a lot of Catahoula circles, either. They’re basically wolves bred by Native Americans, obviously, and no great-great-great-grandsire of any gritty hog dog ever moved an animal instead of just killing and eating it. ;)


  4. on July 19, 2019 at 1:45 am Terry Jenkins

    That’s fascinating! I wonder how the Carolina dog falls in the DNA studies. Is the any “American” ancestry left in them?


    • on July 19, 2019 at 11:23 am retrieverman

      Some but it’s not overwhelming.


      • on July 20, 2019 at 3:33 pm LaEscura

        Some Carolina dogs I’ve seen in pictures have a particular look that reminds me somewhat of a GSD or GSD mix, the ears too.


        • on July 20, 2019 at 3:39 pm LaEscura

          And some look a lot like Chinooks, which are in the same clade as the GSD, the Mexicand and Peruvian hairless breeds, Catahoula, Picardi shepherd and the Italians herders.


  5. on July 20, 2019 at 1:26 am Thomas Jones

    What does their skin feel like? Is it smooth or rough


    • on July 20, 2019 at 11:52 am retrieverman

      They feel like a hot water bottle. Very smooth to a bit like suede, depending upon what part you’re touching.


  6. on July 20, 2019 at 3:39 am LaEscura

    Considering how much Europe has conquered and expanded into the Americas and the fact that domestic dogs are such opportunistic breeders, it would be foolish IMO to think that Pre-Columbian dogs have remained absolutely free of European genes for so long. Even in the most remote indigenous villages of Guatemala the free-ranging dogs there likely have at least some Euro ancestry. The Asiatic village dog populations have remained a lot more uncontaminated because Europe hasn’t had as much of a foothold there.

    I hope that they include more of the Iberian dog breeds in future phylogeny dendrograms. There are many Spanish herding breeds/landraces left out here – the Leonese Shepherd (Carea leonés; the short haired merle variety looks a lot like the Cane d’oropa shown in the study), Galician Shepherd (Can de Palleiro), Carea Castellano-manchego, Catalan Shepherd, Can de Chira, the two types of Basque herders from the Spanish side – one mid-long coated and the other furnished (eyebrows, mustache and beard) and the Pastor Garafiano from the Canary Islands. I think there might be some other regional Spanish herding dog population that haven’t yet been identified. The Portuguese shepherd (Cão da Serra de Aires) likely also forms part of this cladistic continuation and perhaps the Spanish Water Dog, too.

    I suspect the Xolo and Peruvian hairless also have some Podenco/Podengo ancestry as well (I’ve seen some coated Xolos that can pass for such), and the Catahoula probably also has Alano/Dogo Español somewhere along the line.


  7. on July 20, 2019 at 3:30 pm LaEscura

    The only New World domestic dog lineage most likely to be free of European admix would be that of the Inuit dogs of the far Canadian arctic and Greenland.


    • on July 20, 2019 at 6:31 pm retrieverman

      And that’s exactly what the science says.


  8. on July 21, 2019 at 1:50 am L

    With such a strong signature, I wonder if a few of these little nudists don’t have a touch of herding instinct somewhere deep in them. Tri-al, tri-al, tri-al!



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