If you think your dog is a champion howler, please meet the New Guinea singing dog, a rare breed that until recently was thought to be all but extinct. This doggo, who can awoo with the best of them, is known for their unique communication style. These singing dogs make harmonic barks and howls that some have compared to the calls of humpback whales.
Sadly, as with a lot of breeds that researchers have tried to preserve, the small population that exists in zoos and sanctuaries has become inbred. From a small cohort of 8 dogs who were captured by researchers in the 1970s, the captive singing dogs are severely lacking in genetic diversity, and it’s starting to show. (1)
Singing Dogs Spotted In The Wild?
But in 2016, after no singing dogs had been spotted in the wild for more than 50 years, an expedition located and did some preliminary study on a pack of 15 wild dogs in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea, Indonesia. In 2018 they returned again, this time with more purpose: they wanted to collect DNA and other biological samples in an effort to confirm if these wild dogs are in fact related to the singing dogs, thought to be extinct from the area.
Turns out, while it wasn’t an exact match, researchers do believe that these highland dogs are the original predecessors of the singing dogs. Blood collected from three of the dogs indicated a very similar genome sequence to that of the singing dogs, making these two dogs far more closely linked to each other than any other member of the canine family.
“They look most related to a population of conservation biology New Guinea singing dogs that were descended from eight dogs brought to the United States many, many, many years ago,” said Elaine Ostrander, a distinguished investigator at the National Institutes of Health. “The conservation dogs are super inbred; (it) started with eight dogs, and they’ve been bred to each other, bred to each other, and bred to each other for generations — so they’ve lost a lot of genetic diversity.”
But now that this wild dog population has been located, there are new possibilities. Researchers are hopeful for new breeding opportunities, perhaps reviving this species that had been thought extinct, lost to the hills of Papua New Guinea. (1)
Special Things About Singing Dogs
It’s not just vocal gymnastics they excel at… they also have extremely flexible spines which allow them to climb and jump like a cat. There is so much more to learn about the New Guinea singing dog, and ways they can help fill in knowledge gaps in our understanding of dogs before they became domesticated.
New Guinea singing dogs and the highland wild dogs that the researchers have been studying are both part of the dog species Canis lupus familiaris. Researchers found that each of these dogs contain genomic variants that do not exist in other dogs that we know today. These two are also in the same branch of the dog family tree as wild dingos, suggesting that the three genetically split a long time ago… very early in the development of the dog family tree as a whole. (1)
This is all great information for researchers, and for all of us, in developing a deeper understanding of where dogs came from, and our relationship with them throughout time.
