The New Guinea Singing Dog, also known as the singing dog, is a species of dog originating from Papua. As the name implies, a singing dog does not make a barking sound like other dogs, but rather sings or howls rather.
Singing dogs have rarely been seen since the 1970s. They estimate that only about 200 or 300 of the singing dogs were protected.
However, recent studies suggest that these wild dogs are still found and breed in the interior of Papua. The researchers found the genetic singing of dogs near the Papuan gold mine.
"Locals call them upland feral dogs," said James McIntyre, president of the Papua New Guinea Highlands Wild Dog Foundation. “New Guinea's Singing Dog is a name given by foreigners. Since I don't know what they are, I just call them upland wild dogs.
To find out what the upland wild dog is, McIntyre conducted an expedition in the highlands of Papua in 2016. At that time, they managed to find a population of ancestral dogs that were still roaming the Indonesian province.
From the study, the researchers also managed to collect 149 photos of singing dogs, 15 photos of dogs that looked like singing dogs that were thought to be extinct and fecal samples similar to those of an extinct singing dog breed that had lost their genetic diversity.
In 2018, researchers returned to Papua to collect three blood samples from 15 highland wild dogs found there. They will compare DNA from caught singing dogs with highland wild dogs.
Based on the results of these comparisons, the researchers said that the animals that live in the highlands have a genetic profile that is almost identical to the Papuan singer dog. In conclusion, the two dogs belonged to the same species.
Papuan Singing Dog Photo: New Guinea Highland Wild DogThe findings from the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will also make singing dogs a spectacular population for biological conservation.
"The New Guinea Singing Dog, really does provide us with fantastic opportunities for conservation biology," said Elaine Ostrander, a geneticist at the National Institute for Human Genome Research. "This will give us the opportunity to reintroduce the original genetics of these dogs into the conservation population."
Both the wild dog and the captive singing dog are close relatives of the Australian dingo, and distant relatives of the domestic dog. The closest relatives of the New Guinea singer dog are East Asian breeds including the chow chow, Akita and shiba inu.
This relationship suggests that the singing dog may have split from this ancestor of this Asian breed some 3,500 years ago, when humans and some of their domesticated dogs migrated to Oceania.
***
Source:
kumparan.com
Tags:
Animal World
science
Sun
Papua
Dog
Animal
extinct animals
Endangered animals
Kirim masukan
Histori
Disimpan
Komunitas
0 Response to " 50 Years Missing, Papuan Singing dog has been found"
Post a Comment