It seems that although the Amerindians had dogs (after a while), those puppies did very poorly after Columbus. Modern dog breeds have slim-to-no ancestry of this kind ( from comparisons with ancient dog DNA) . You have to suspect infectious disease. However, one descendant is still going strong: it turns out that canine venereal sarcoma, the cell line infection or contagious cancer, originated in a North American dog: it’s closely related to those old Injun dogs and shows a bit of coyote introgression!
I had made a similar suggestion a few years back: I said that there still might be living Neanderthals ( contagious ones, I was thinking ) and challenged some readers to guess how. After two years, none had, so I relented and gave them a hint: “What for you bury me in the cold, cold ground?”
West Hunter 
Lord, libera nos a malo .
It was a good riddle, I came as far as Taz, but that was it.
Tasmanian devils have two different transmissible cancers!
As far as I can make out, the evidence for the origin of canine venereal sarcoma points to the ancestors of modern Spitz breeds somewhere in Siberia. See EA Ostrander et al, Trends Genet. 32(1), 1-15, 2016. Would these be related to your “old Injun dogs”?
There are no coyotes in Siberia. I’d bet on a local variant of dog, close to those examined, in North America.
Very true, there are no coyotes in Siberia, not arguing about that. But what makes you think there has been coyote introgression into the CVS cells? Recent geneticists don’t as far as I know think that, though they do agree CVS can be transmitted to coyotes (and foxes, come to that).
If you are right, then there should be coyote genetic elements in CVS cases in Eurasia, Africa, Australia. Has that interesting finding been published?
Because they found coyote introgression, in this new study.
Always happy to receive new information. Which referenced new study on coyote introgression, and into what individuals? I only ask because the most recent references I have been able to find know nothing of that. Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough, I’m far from infallible.
But to repeat: if there are CVS genetic studies outside N America, in regions where (as we happily agree) there have never been coyotes, that show coyote introgression, you are absolutely right. If not, not. Now: where are your references?
Máire Ní Leathlobhair et al. The evolutionary history of dogs in the Americas. Science, 2018; 361 (6397): 81 DOI: 10.1126/science.aao4776
Many thanks for a reference to a very recent and very interesting paper.
I was particularly struck by a sentence in their concluding discussion “Altogether, these results suggest a scenario in which CTVT [canine transmissible venereal tumours] originated in Asia from a dog that was closely related to PCDs [pre-colonisation dogs].” Asia would of course include Siberia, from which it is generally agreed PCDs originally came.
They also state that in their opinion there is “some weak evidence for coyote introgression”.
In short, it doesn’t look as if this paper proves what you thought it did.But thanks, all the same.
If Ötzi’s H. pylori strain is CagA-positive, it’s associated with gastric carcinomas and MALT lymphomas I believe.
Aren’t chihuahas a Native American dog?
In Australia, dingoes arrived about 5,000 years ago, and first saw competition with Eurasian dogs in the 18th century. Today, most “dingoes” are actually hybrids (about 87%) – it’s probably more accurate to talk about Australia having wild dogs, rather than dingoes.
On some isolated islands (Frasier) you still find near-pure dingoes, but on balance they’re gradually losing their identity. The same could be said for the native people of Australia.
Oddly chihuahuas nest within Old World dogs which sort of makes you think of people like Heyerdahl and Van Sertima. Though a lot of breeds today have mysterious origins so the stories about Mexican origins might’ve been invented later.
I thought Louisiana Catahoula Leopard dogs descended from a mix of native dogs and Spanish explorer dogs. That’s what’s claimed on the internet, anyway.
What about Carolina dogs? The look like dingos and other pariah types: its hard to believe there isn’t something precolumbian there.
So do the larger Xolos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Hairless_Dog
Catahoulas probably originated as a mix of curs (which are basically what you get from a sludge of coonhound and foundation-type Labrador and/or foxhound) and one of the breeds that produce merles, most likely a lurcher (herding/terrier mix) or possibly a German mastiff (what we now call a Great Dane).
Breed origin stories are usually just that, stories. Back before official registries became the norm, it was common to claim some wild tale about where the dogs came from, to prevent rivals from duplicating your efforts and to inflate your puppy prices. In the rare event that private stud books emerge and document the lineage, those origin tales have yet to prove anything but fanciful. Famously, Golden Retrievers were purported to descend from “eight Russian Trackers bought from a circus” but when the stud books were made public, proved to be off-colored Wavy-Coated Retrievers (ie. Flatcoats) with admixtures from other retrievers and spaniels, all local and very mundane.
When Darwin writes about evolved instincts, he writes that old world dogs have an instinct not to attack chickens and new world dogs don’t. If new world dogs were just a few generations removed from old world dogs, wouldn’t that be surprising? Might the old world stock have not yet been wiped out?
Pro dog trainer here. Darwin didn’t know what he was talking about. There are plenty of old world dogs that will cheerfully kill chickens at every opportunity. Cripes, we breed gundogs (of European origin) specifically to hunt birds, and chickens are sometimes used in training ’em, because chicken is close enough to pheasant, but a lot cheaper. I’d say rather that given old world hunting breeds are more likely to be selected for trainability, they’re easier to control around chickens.
The neighbor wasn’t amused when my parents purebreed German Shepherd ate her favorite hen. Maybe Darwin he had British breeds in mind.
Talked to an elder one time about the dog hair blankets his parents sold when he was a kid. They used to breed a white dog with fluffy hair and take apart the blankets white folks sold them and reweave them with dog hair to stretch them.
He said that when he was little there were some of those dogs still around but no one was raising them anymore and pretty soon, poof. Gone. All the dogs I have ever seen on a res are european types. Although I guess an alaskan husky must have some precolombian unless the goldrush days wiped them out.
Weaving was, and still is, sometimes done with Samoyed hair. (A white-coated breed, mostly.)
Not this tribe the dogs had flop ears and curly white coats. I don’t think samoyeds were even on the res then. Everybody made a big deal of my God mother’s samoyeds and that was fifty years later.
Anyway the elder said the dogs were a local breed.
Transmissible venereal tumors are unlikely to prosper in monogamous animals, as the Neanderthal probably was. STDs are more probable in sexually vibrant populations, say Pattaya.
A cell line infection might be spread another another way.
Right. Biting, scratching, licking, smelling, etc. De-ticking like chimps. Need to investigate in Pattaya or Phuket.
Sneezing. there are known cases of airborne transmission for HeLa ( from one cell culture to another).
Neanderthal cells in your sinus?
It is told that a dog’s dream was to become a wolf and it applied to a wolf pack to be accepted. The head wolf said: If you want to be one of us, you need to learn and follow our customs. For example, when we meet, we salute by sniffing the nose of the other fellow, not the asshole as you dogs do.
After a long time, the dog became a valued hunter and a member of the pack. Once he met the pack leader and approached him to greet him by ceremoniously sniffing his nose. The wolf said: “Dont bother dog, there is no one to see us, you may sniff my ass.”
How many known transmissible tumors are there? Only a handful, right?
Is it likely that there are a lot more that are undiscovered? How would we estimate how common they might be, given the small number that are known?
On an earlier post you mentioned that dogs’ association with humans should not increase the risk of developing a transmissible cancer, but I can imagine why it would. Care to take a guess?