Taimyr Wolfdogs

Taimyr Wolfdogs? What are those?

I admit: the name doesn't exist. Not yet, anyway. But, read on.

A 2015 genetic study of a 35,000-year-old, extinct wolf, whose DNA came from a rib found in 2010 in the Taimyr Peninsula in Northern Siberia (Russia) proved that up to 27.3% of the genome of today's Siberian Huskies and Greenland Sled Dogs actually comes from that supposedly "extinct" Pleistocene wolf.

As any dog owner knows, 27% of wolf genome is A LOT. Today's Czechoslovakian Wolfdogs, for example, often only have around 6 or 7% gray wolf content (the remaining 93% being German Shepherd)...and they're still called "wolfdogs."

Siberian Huskies and Greenland Sled Dogs are, of course, much smaller than that ancient Pleistocene Siberian wolf who hunted ice age megafauna, i.e. animals such as mastodons, lions, short-faced bears, camels, horses, and buffalo. On the other hand, most of the Pleistocene megafauna is gone from the northern hemisphere today--with the exception of the buffalo (also called bison).

Isn't it then conceivable that, in order to adapt, the Taimyr wolf would have also gotten smaller in size? After all, wolf size is well known to change and adapt depending on the climate and availability (and size) of its prey.

Every wolf alive today is essentially the same species (canis lupus)--but their sizes vary according to the region where they live and hunt. Some of the biggest wolves today come from North America and Siberia--with some of the smallest ones coming from the Middle East, India, or Mexico. As a matter of fact, today's Arabian wolves are often smaller than Siberian Huskies or Greenland Sled Dogs.

Long, long ago, some of the smaller (adapted) Taimyr wolves could have started following the nomads who had called Siberia home for millennia--perhaps the forefathers of the Chukchi, the native population of northern Siberia.

Incidentally, the "reindeer Chukchi," who are nomadic and who follow and breed reindeer, are also the people responsible for developing and breeding the Chukotka sled dog--known around the world as the--you guessed it--Siberian Husky.

And the Chukchi are also, incredibly, the closest living Asian relatives of the indigenous American people. In other words, Chukchi ancestors were probably the ones who had crossed the Bering Strait (into what is today known as Alaska) during, or right after, the last Ice Age. They had probably done so while following and hunting reindeer--without even knowing they were leaving their "old" continent.

Unwittingly, they had settled the New World...and their "Taimyr wolfdogs" came along for the ride.

Some of them would even cross Alaska and Canada and find themselves in what is today Greenland...

To read the study by Harvard's Pontus Skoglund et al., click the link below:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(15)00432-7.pdf