A few weeks ago, my friend received her rescue dog’s DNA test results. Her dog Dexter is a medium-sized very floofy Border Collie-looking dog so when we both saw the results, our first reaction was: “They must’ve made a mistake. This can’t be right”. Rat Terriers are tiny dogs! And Basenji? How is this possible?

After talking to a few dog scientists, everything now makes sense. 

25% of “unknown mixed breeds” is a huge percentage in terms what we don’t know about Dexter’s breed ancestry. All we know for sure is that he is a Rat Terrier mix.

There is a famous study by scientists Scott and Fuller from the 1960′s that I first read about in Bronwen Dickey’s book, Pit Bull. The scientists bred a 100% Cocker Spaniel and a 100% Basenji and found that the 1st and 2nd generation Cocker-Basenji pups looked nothing like the parents - they looked more like pit bulls, labs, hounds, and other mutts. The study showed very clearly that we can never know for sure what breed a dog is by visual appearance only. 

Regardless, we predict so much about a dog’s behavior based on the “breed” we think they are, which we usually guess based on how they look. 

A dog that looks like a pit bull will be instantly discriminated against in today’s society. Many people who don’t know any better will expect him to be dangerous. Should a pit bull-looking dog get upset and growl or something, he might get dumped in a shelter or killed. (A small growling fluffy dog will probably become an internet meme)

A dog that looks like a lab will be expected to be a good family dog - relaxed and good-natured with kids even if the kids do shitty things to the dog. The stereotypical labrador retriever is supposed to be more tolerant than other breeds.

#GUESSTHEMUTT

A really cool new canine science survey launched yesterday - The Mutt Mix Project. This is put together by Darwin’s Dogs, a team of scientists who want to know how good people are at guessing breed mixes by looking at photos and videos of selected dogs.

“we need your help in finding out how well people are able to guess these breed mixes based on appearance. For each image, you will be asked to guess the top 3 breeds contributing to the mix. For the first few examples, we’ll show you the results right away, so you can see how everything works. Following that, we’ll hold off on giving you results until the study is over, at which point you’ll be able to see all of the dogs’ genetic results.“( from this page.)

I did the survey yesterday and it was fun but hard! I think I got almost all of them wrong. :)

You can participate in the survey here: www.muttmix.org

Do it for science!

- Lili x

New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/science/dogs-mutts-genes.html

Updated to add that we cannot know that these dogs are PIT BULLS based on appearance alone.