According To Scientists, The Earliest Native American Dogs Are The “Black Wolves”
Some North American wolves have black fur as a result of ancient liaisons with domestic dogs, who were likely the first Native Americans’ pets.
Additionally, wolves that live in forests appear to benefit from having black coats, indicating that canines contributed some beneficial genetic variety to their wild cousins.
Tovi Anderson, a biologist at Stanford University and the study’s principal author, stated, “This is really unusual. Typically, one would anticipate that domestic to wild animal gene flow would not be advantageous.
The genes of wolves from Yellowstone National Park and the Canadian Arctic were compared to those of domestic dogs and coyotes by Anderson and her team. They discovered that the black people in each species have the same mutation, which initially appeared around 45,000 years ago. Additionally, a molecular clock analysis revealed that the mutation was oldest in dogs, indicating that dogs were where it first appeared and that wolves and coyotes later caught it through interbreeding.
Due to the absence of black wolves in Europe or Asia, everything that happened took place in North America (except for an Italian population that has hybridized very recently with dogs). In the distant past, wolves acquired the black-coat mutation.
