The canine is an intermediary between wolves and domestic dog breeds, research shows
The researchers compared Sandy’s genome to that of five domestic dog breeds – a basenji, a boxer, a labrador retriever, a German shepherd and a great dane – as well as a Greenland wolf., the researchers found distinctions between the dingo genome and that of domestic dogs.
Study co-author Prof Bill Ballard, of La Trobe University, said when humans first began domesticating dogs, they fed the animals rice products, which are high in starch – creating a selective pressure for dogs with multiple copies of the amylase gene. “Those dogs that did better with the rice were … more likely to be associated with humans over time,” he said.
The difference could have significant conservation implications, Ballard said. “If a pure dingo eats very different things to a wild dog, then it’s going to have a different position in the ecosystem and … be differentially attracted to different foods.” Dr Kylie Cairns of the University of New South Wales, who was not involved in the study, said the microbiome differences could “explain why we are not seeing feral dogs in Australia”. Her previous research has suggested that“[Dingoes] are older than the oldest domestic dog breed, which is the basenji. Their results clearly demonstrated that,” she said. “Dingoes are a wild canid that has been shaped by Australia’s climate and ecology over thousands of years.
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