The ultimate fluffy boy: New study delves into extinction of a long haired & 'woolly' dog breed
Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest until its rapid demise following European colonization, a study in Science showed Thursday.
The new research was based on a genetic analysis of 'Mutton' one of the last surviving Coast Salish woolly dogs whose pelt was sent to the nascent Smithsonian Institution in 1859, only to be largely forgotten until the early 2000s.
Interviews contributed by Coast Salish tribal co-authors, meanwhile, revealed the dogs occupied a previously underappreciated high-status in Indigenous societies, which revered the animals as members of the family and adorned their most treasured items with their emblem.
The dogs' fleeces were shorn like sheep, with Coast Salish weavers using the wool to craft blankets and baskets that served ceremonial and spiritual purposes.
«I was always curious about why and how the pre-colonial indigenous dogs in the Americas had gone extinct after the arrival of the Europeans,» lead author Audrey Lin, a molecular biologist currently at the American Museum of Natural History, told AFP.
Where and when dogs were first domesticated remains murky, but it's clear that some of the first people who settled in the Americas brought their canine companions with them from 15,000 years ago.
Within the span of a few centuries of Western settlers, however, these breeds were all but wiped out — and modern American dogs contain exceedingly little genetic material of their lost cousins.
Genetic Analysis
Lin first came across Mutton when she was working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian, and was both surprised and excited to learn that virtually no work had been done on the genetics of woolly dogs, which disappeared around the turn of the 20th century.
Based on the
