Woolly dogs of the Pacific Northwest

December 14, 2023 2:23 PM

Naturalist David B. Williams first wrote in his newsletter about the recently extinct woolly dogs of the Salish Sea last year. In June of 2023, he wrote about some of their current depictions in Skokomish art and current Pacific Northwest design. Now, he reports on the DNA analysis of Mutton, the only known specimen of the breed, released today in Science (full article).
posted by bq (12 comments total)

This is fantastic and heartbreaking. I have loved learning about these wooly dogs since I first heard about them (probably here on Mefi) and that Science article is full of good tidbits. And the illustration and photo of Mutton’s pelt really puts into perspective how dear these dogs would have been. Small wooly doggies that make amazing blankets!

The systematic destruction of the ways my neighbors’ ancestors worked with the land and the animals here always hurts when I learn more about it, but it’s still so wonderful to learn these ways in the first place. The end of the Science article mentions how women were forced to get rid of their dogs, how their tools were stolen and destroyed and their skillset devalued. I’m so grateful that they persisted and survived and shared history and traditions despite the assault.

A few weeks ago I was at a native art market at a local longhouse and it was full of women and men with specialized skills and tools making beautiful art and functional objects brimming with personality. It’s amazing to think about how some of the modern textile art there had roots in the ways these beloved dogs’ fur was best handled and shaped. I’m not a spinner but I’ve tried it here and there and the different fibers I’ve tried were all drastically different to work with. I can only imagine how the wooly dogs grew a fiber that spun differently still, encouraged different tool design. How it took dyes and varied between seasons and dogs and their diets. Maybe we’ll be able to figure out some of it soon, and my neighbors will be able to incorporate that back into their art.
posted by Mizu at 3:13 PM on December 14, 2023 [12 favorites]

I want to snuggle with a woolly dog - dangit. My long hair chihuahuas don't quite cut it. (although the old man generates a crazy amount of heat)
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:40 PM on December 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Washington Post had reporting on this story today: Extinct woolly dog was carefully bred for weaving, ancient DNA confirms. Including two links to previous reporting on New World dog DNA: America’s first dogs vanished after Europeans arrived, study finds and Bones of ancient native dogs found at Jamestown (the latter is rather grim.)

I think it's interesting there was a whole set of New World dogs with distinct genetics and their DNA is almost, but not entirely all gone. These wooly dogs were alive in the 19th century with their unique preserved genetic heritage. And now they're gone. That's awful. They're just dogs, it's not comparable to what we did to the people and civilizations here, but its still awful.
posted by Nelson at 4:24 PM on December 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

This is a cool bit of history, and it's sad that this part of human culture has disappeared.

But as for the dogs themselves, it seems clear from the article that the breed "died out" because the dogs interbred with village dogs and European imports. I also wouldn't imagine that their highly selective breeding -- not to mention isolation from other dogs -- was all that healthy for them. So as a fan of mongrels (aka. the "doggiest" of all dogs) I can't really be too upset about this.
posted by bjrubble at 5:20 PM on December 14, 2023

That's the weird thing bjrubble, it's not clear that the New World dogs really did interbreed with our main-line European dogs. See America’s first dogs vanished after Europeans arrived, study finds for details.

“This paper makes really clear that the ancient American dog appears to have almost entirely vanished ... The researchers analyzed genetic material from 71 “pre-contact” dogs, whose remains spanned 9,000 years, and compared it with the DNA of 145 modern dogs. Just five of the modern samples contained even a hint of ancient dog — at most 4 percent. ...

“If there were millions and millions of dogs all over this continent, and a small number of European dogs came in, there would have been plenty of time for them to do what dogs do, which is mate with each other and leave their DNA behind,” Karlsson said. “At the same time, there was actually a big thing that was killing off all the humans at the time — infectious disease. That seems a much more likely explanation to me.”

posted by Nelson at 5:52 PM on December 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

On the contrary the Science article includes testimony that the dogs and their ownership were deliver destroyed in the same way as many other native practices.

“Stó꞉lō Elder Rena Point Bolton, 95 years old in 2022, recalls how Th’etsimiya, her great-grandmother, had kept woolly dogs, but was forced to give them up: “They were told they couldn’t do their cultural things. There was the police, the Indian Agent and the priests. The dogs were not allowed. She had to get rid of the dogs” (9). The dogs represented high status and traditional practices that threatened British and later Canadian dominion and as such were removed through policies of assimilation ”
posted by bq at 7:22 PM on December 14, 2023 [7 favorites]

On a side note, I thought I had read somewhere that a sweater made of dog hair would be unwearably hot as dog's hair is much better at retaining heat than that of, say, a sheep. Online articles suggest it is "80% warmer" but is that unwearable? Apparently "chiengora" (dog's hair wool) is similar to angora in texture and the way the fibers mesh.

To this cold old man, 80% warmer sounds pretty good.
posted by maxwelton at 9:12 PM on December 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

They should clone this dog since they have the DNA and we have the technology. They could also use those dog dna registries to try to find relatives of these dogs and do some cross breeding to attempt to bring back the wool.
posted by interogative mood at 9:50 PM on December 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

I first learned about such dogs when visiting the Makah Cultural Center in Neah Bay, Washington.

Neah Bay is pretty far off the beaten track (unless you happen to be heading out to Cape Flattery or to the wilderness beach areas of Olympic National Park) but if you are anywhere in the area it's a really well done local museum and worth a stop to learn about the cultural history and geography of the northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula.
posted by Nerd of the North at 9:51 PM on December 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

This paper makes really clear that the ancient American dog appears to have almost entirely vanished ... The researchers analyzed genetic material from 71 “pre-contact” dogs, whose remains spanned 9,000 years, and compared it with the DNA of 145 modern dogs. Just five of the modern samples contained even a hint of ancient dog — at most 4 percent. ...

“If there were millions and millions of dogs all over this continent, and a small number of European dogs came in, there would have been plenty of time for them to do what dogs do, which is mate with each other and leave their DNA behind,” Karlsson said. “At the same time, there was actually a big thing that was killing off all the humans at the time — infectious disease. That seems a much more likely explanation to me.”

There is actually DNA from ancient American dogs circulating in modern dogs — only not in the genomes of modern dogs.

Instead, it’s in the form of a transmissible venereal tumor which infects modern dogs, and about which we had an interesting thread awhile back.

But if modern dogs had enough sex with ancient American dogs to pick up a tumor which is still circulating today, surely that would be enough to also transmit more genomic DNA than we see today.

In that thread I suggested a possible mechanism that I thought could account for the lack of genomic DNA:

I’ve been trying to think of a way the transmissible tumor itself could have prevented those dogs from having any surviving progeny.

The tumor isn't often fatal to modern dogs apparently because their immune systems learn to recognize it and cause it to go into remission, but evidently not before it has a chance to be passed on in enough cases that it's still circulating around.

But since the tumor has DNA unique to the PCDs, it probably has antigens unique to them as well, and that would mean a European dog's immune system, unlike a PCD dog's immune system, could mount an attack against the tumor that did not involve collateral damage to heathy tissues, because none of the European dog's healthy tissues would display the antigens unique to the PCDs.

But once a European dog was immune to the tumor, it would also have an immediate immune response to tissues of PCD dogs which bore the tumor antigens, and if one of those tissues happened to be sperm cells of PCD dogs, that could turn out to be a very effective way of blocking a European female from being impregnated by a PCD male.

On the other hand, if the seminal fluid of a European male immunized against the tumor contained antibodies to the unique antigens of the tumor, or immune system cells sensitized to those antigens, then it seems possible that those antibodies and immune cells could cause enough inflammation in the reproductive tracts of PCD females to block pregnancy in that case, too.

If something like this is true, I'd imagine there were hybrids at first, but as immunity against the tumor spread among strictly European dogs, hybrids could have had a harder and harder time reproducing.

posted by jamjam at 10:43 PM on December 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

I’ve heard about these dogs ever since I’ve lived in Washington State. The Cowichan people made black and white sweaters. They kept the white woolly dogs, but had black woolly dogs as well. So they had distinctive white sweaters with black patterns.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 4:30 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Dog Island Project
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 10:22 AM on December 18, 2023