Canine Brain Structure Influenced By How We Raised Them

About the episode

While dogs today are largely bred for their looks, longer ago they were primarily bred for their behavior. And that’s reflected in the brain structures of dogs that have similar skills, according to a new study.

The study looked at the genes of 4,000 dogs. In between were domestic animals, semi-domesticated and wild dogs, such as wolves and coyotes. They could distinguish 10 different tribes or lineages, each with their own behavioral characteristics and specializations, such as hunting or herding. If you then look at what the dogs in these different tribes look like, not all breeds look the same. This suggests that breeding was primarily based on behavior and cognition at first.

In addition to comparable behavioral characteristics, they also found overlap between genes related to brain development within the different lineages. For example, in breeders of sheep such as border collies, they found that the process that ensures neurons in the brain connect well with each other was extremely powerful in this group. Some of the genes involved are also linked to anxiety and maternal behavior. Something that ensures the mice keep their young close to the nest. A still unproven hypothesis states that this is why sheep farmers naturally want to keep the herd together.

Well, as you can see, the study is pretty hard to explain in a minute, but one of the researchers’ hopes is that this new knowledge might also tell us something about the link between behavior and genes in other animal species – such as man.

Read more: Canine Brain Wiring Influenced by Human-Directed Breeding Practices. And here: Brain, muscle or both: what drove the creation of modern dog breeds?