Commonly heard is the saying “Dogs are a man’s bestfriend”,
but what if that saying actually has some scientific reasoning behind it.
Animal behaviorist, Monique Udell and geneticist Bridgett vonHoldt took matters
in their own hands to see if the friendly behavior of dogs is rooted in their
DNA. Their research consisted of comparing behaviors between 18 dogs, ranging from
purebreds to mixbreeds against 10 wolves that were captive and hand-raised. The
dogs were found to not only greet but also interact longer with humans while
the wolves were more common to just greet humans. These scientists began
looking at the gene variations for answers by first looking at how in humans
with Williams-Beuren syndrome have a partial lost of chromosome 7. This
syndrome was relevant since humans with it show very friendly and trusting
personalities. From past research vonHoldt has found how the partial loss of
chromosome 7 in humans was found to be quite similar to the make up of
chromosome 6 in canines, which played a pivotal role in the evolution of dogs.
The scientists manipulated this gene by adding, doubling, or removing it in
both the dogs and wolves to look for behavioral changes, which did occur. They
pinpointed the protein GTF21 that is able to disrupt that gene to be found in
higher contents in dogs that showed more social personalities, however, dogs
and wolves that had the gene that was not changed by the protein were found to
be less social. There were doubts on whether this project would not reach
expectations by vanHoldt and Udell, but in the end the information and data
gained showed that their minds were in the right direction on hypothesizing
that genes played a role in increased hypersocial tendencies in some dogs more
than others.
I guess that would make sense as to why some dog breeds are more social than others. Like a golden retriever compared to a terrier. They definitely, typically, have a predisposition to different social tendencies.
ReplyDeleteThis study is really interesting because it not only compares dogs to wolves, but also dogs to humans. I did research on dog behavior for a prior class on things such as ability to learn and how affectionate dogs are based on their breed so reading about the cause of friendliness is neat.
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