We all know that dogs come from wolves – but that is maybe all we can agree on.
Today, researchers from Cornell University have released a report stating dogs’ origins can be traced to Central Asia.
Headed by Laura M. Shannon and Adam R. Boyko, scientists looked a huge sample of dogs – both purebreds and street pups. More than 4,500 dogs DNA was analyzed from 161 breeds and 549 homeless dogs in 38 countries.
While the street dogs only made up a small percentage of the sample. this group provided important data (Approximately 75 percent of the world’s 1 billion dogs are living on the street.) “The fact that we looked at so many village dogs from so many different regions, we were able to narrow in on the patterns of diversity in these indigenous dogs,” Dr. Boyko told BBC News.
Related: Are We Teaching Our Dogs to Be Lazy?
To get these samples, Dr. Bokyo traveled to all the countries and said that he usually didn’t have too much trouble street dogs.“The great thing about working with dogs is that if you show up with food you don’t usually have trouble recruiting subjects. Usually,” he told The New York Times. He added: “We showed up in Puerto Rico at a fishing village and the dogs turned up their noses at roast beef sandwiches. They were used to eating fish entrails.”
This latest research contradicts past finding, which have stated dogs come from a number of places – Europe, Siberia and Middle East to name a few.
Image via Flickr/Noah Wood
Related :Just Discovered: Dogs Ability to Scan Faces Is Similar to Humans
