On the Antiquity of Dogs

I read a very interesting article in bbc.com today and after reading it, remembered having written a post about the antiquity of dogs and the peopling of America.

In it I questioned the authors point of view and wrote: "In my opinion what is missing in the charts is the growth and transition phases of the "S" curve. Dogs did arrive in the New World, but not 9 kya, they arrived 20 or 30 kya, or probably earlier; they probably even originated there and spread to Asia.".

I am a "dog person" and enjoy their company greatly, and most of all, that of my boxer "daughter" Kika. So when the antiquity of dogs is discussed, I have the gut feeling that dogs and humans have enjoyed quite a long and fruitful relationship, not one just 15 ky old, but something much older, in the tens of thousands of years.

The article I read today in bbc.com (DNA hints at earlier dog evolution By Pallab Ghosh) says: "A genetic study indicates that dogs may have begun to split form wolves 27,000 years ago.". It cites a paper by Skoglund, Ersmark, Palkopoulou and Dalén, which can be read in full, has some very interesting findings:

We find that calibration using the most commonly assumed mutation rate of 1 × 10−8 per generation and a 3-year gray wolf generation time would imply that the Taimyr wolf diverged from the Chinese wolf 10,000–14,000 years ago (Figure 3), which is incompatible with its calibrated direct radiocarbon date of ∼35,000 years BP. Instead, the mutation rate must be substantially slower in order to be compatible with the age of the Taimyr individual, and we find that the Taimyr divergence can be accommodated by a mutation rate of 0.4 × 10−8 per generation (Figure 3). However, it should be noted that this assumes that the Taimyr wolf is directly ancestral to the Chinese gray wolf. If there was structure between the ancestors of the Chinese wolf and the Taimyr wolf, the mutation rate would have to be even slower, and as such a rate of 0.4 × 10−8 per generation is conservative. We emphasize that this mutation rate is for non-CpG sites, since SNPs in CpG dinucleotide context were excluded from the variants called in the present-day genome. Alternatively, our results could indicate that the generation time is longer than 3 years, or some combination of slower mutation rate and a longer generation time. Regardless, this direct evidence suggests a longer timescale of wolf-dog population history and thus implies that the 11,000−16,000 years ago wolf-dog divergence inferred in a previous study [15] should be recalibrated to ∼27,000–40,000 years ago.[1]

So they question the mutation rate (the molecular clock that I have criticised so often) and suggest it should be slower. They also question generation length.

They conclude that dogs and wolves split 27 to 40 kya. That is much older than the mainstream 15 kya.

They add that: "Such an early divergence is consistent with several paleontological reports of dog-like canids up to 36,000 years old, as well as the evidence that domesticated dogs most likely accompanied early colonizers into the Americas".

And that is what I believe and surely we will find more proof of an early presence of dogs in America. By the way, the tree published as part of the paper shows American dogs closer to the root of the tree than other Old World ones...

Sources:

[1] Ancient Wolf Genome Reveals an Early Divergence of Domestic Dog Ancestors and Admixture into High-Latitude Breeds (2015), Pontus Skoglund, Erik Ersmark, Eleftheria Palkopoulou, Love Dalén, Current Biology. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.04.019

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2015 by Austin Whittall © 

On the antiquity of dogs in America

Always on the look out for evidence on an early peopling of America I stumbled upon a recent paper by Witt et al. (2015) [1] which looks into the origin of Native American dogs through the genetic analysis of the remains of ancient and contemporary dogs.

The paper is very interesting and is based on the usual orthodox assumptions on the peopling of America: that is, that the ancestors of native Americans reached the New World 15,000 years ago. And this in my "unorthodox" opinion leads to conclusions which the authors find "unexpected" but actually are the outcome of those erroneous orthodox assumptions.

Science builds on the successive discoveries of scientists, different branches borrow the findings from others and this results in the continuous growth of human knowledge.

That is why the scientist studying dogs takes the data from humans at its face value and does not question the figure of 15 ky for the initial peopling of America. It would be quite silly if each scientist had to validate the data borrowed from other fields of knowledge.

But if knowledge is incomplete or mistaken, then the conclusions are also incomplete or mistaken. I remember reading as a teenager about the efforts of a Victorian scientist, Lord Kelvin, to calculate the age of the Sun. He used the knowledge of his days and found it to be not older than 50 - 100 My. (Read his paper), which seemed to be in contradiction with the age of the Earth.

But of course nineteenth century science did not know about nuclear fusion reactions and Kelvin based his calculations on correct and sound chemical reactions, and instead of an age of +5 billion years, he obtained a figure two orders of magnitude smaller than the actual value.

A similar situation arose when Hubble calculated the age of the Universe it was only 1.5 Bn years old, younge than the Earth. It took another discovery (Baade and the Population II stars) to fix the mistake.

Having said this, let's look at Witt et al.'s paper and its assumptions and conclusions:

EBSP and its shortcomings

Witt and his team calculated the Extended Bayesian Skyline Plot (EBSP) for humans and dogs in America. And while humans showd the classic "S" or sigmoid curve in the time ⁄ popultion size graph, dogs did not.

The dog population plot is a line with an almost nil gradient, in other words: their population appeared suddenly 9 ky ago and did not grow over time, it remained stable.

The expected graph for a group peopling a new territory is the one observed in humans (an "S"): initially the migratory population is small, and it gradually enters a period of growth when the new territory's resources are exploited; this allow an increase in natality over mortality rates. All members of the new population have abundant food (a critical resource for hunter - gatherer populations), also predators are rare or not accustomed to the new expanding population.

This growth period is followed by a transition phase when either mortality grows or natality falls due to the decrease in resources or contact with new diseases or a limitation to expansion in a finite territory (deserts, mountain ranges, limited landmass -islands).

As growth slows it finally reaches a period of plateau, stability: there is no more growth. Population stabilizies. Birth and death rates are equal. Resources are scarce and parasites & disease are taking their toll. There is an equilibrium: more births means less resources and therefore more deaths. Which pushes the population downwards for a while, but this frees some resources and this leads to less deaths and more births pushing population up a little. The outcome of these ups and downs is stability.

In other words, the carrying capacity of the environment has been reached.

But what did Witt et al. find? Human population evolved as per the "S" curve but dogs did not. This is very odd. They attempt to explain things as follows (bold highlighting is mine):

"The EBSP of the dogs shows a relatively stable population from the present to the time of the most recent common ancestor, ~9000 years BP..."
"When considering both the human and dog EBSPs, the population stability found in the dog plot is unexpected, as one would expect the dog population to increase in size over time, as the human population did. Intriguingly, this unexpected finding might indicate that humans were controlling dog matings and effectively breeding them, or that the population of dogs in the Americas quickly reached long-term carrying capacity. The stable population of dogs had a median effective population size of ~1000 female individuals at the time of the first dog burial in the Americas. This is consistent with other estimates of dog effective population size that suggest a global population of roughly 10,000 female dogs at the same time (Thalmann et al., 2013).
Additionally, the coalescence date estimate for our dataset of American dogs is also surprising, given that by ~9000 years BP dogs should have been established across the Americas as they are thought to have arrived in the Americas ~15,000 years BP with humans. However, it is interesting that from 9000 years BP to the present, the population of dogs in the Americas roughly mirrors that of humans, in that both are stable for long periods of time." [1]

See their graph below. The blue curves (A) and (B) are for DOGS, the red ones (C) and (D) are for HUMANS. The human plot displays the "S" curve (well it is inverted because of the X axis position) the dogs is flat.

Well, (B) is quite flat and so are the median dashed and solid blue lines in (A). But look at those error bars (the violet shaded region in (A)), that does not give me much confidence in the Confidence Interval of that EBSP.

Could these large CI mask some incorrect assumptions? and, just how reliable is a EBSP?

Heller R, Chikhi L, Siegismund HR (2013) have their doubts about the widespread use of this method under all circumstances, and they caution:

"The intuitive, visual appeal coupled with a real risk of erroneous demographic inferences make BSPs vulnerable to misinterpretations. It should be underlined, however, that this is not a shortcoming of the methods themselves, but rather an under-appreciation of the dynamics of coalescent intervals in structured genealogies.
... Demographic inference methods based on the coalescent usually assume panmixia, i.e. the absence of population structure, although this is not a realistic assumption in many biological situations. A number of recent studies have investigated the effect of violating the panmixia assumption for inferring population size changes. These studies suggest that population structure can lead to erroneous conclusions about demographic changes in a population that in fact has remained stationary through time." [2]

EBSP for dogs and humans.Witt et al., [1]

So, it seems that Bayesian Skyline Plots have to be used with care and the population structures taken into account.

Another look at the data

Why would dogs suddenly appear 9 kya? Humans came to the New World 15 kya without dogs? Why is the human curve an "S" and the dogs' appears suddenly and with a stable non-growing population?

In my opinion what is missing in the charts is the growth and transition phases of the "S" curve. Dogs did arrive in the New World, but not 9 kya, they arrived 20 or 30 kya, or probably earlier; they probably even originated there and spread to Asia.

An early arrival date gives us room for the "S" curve to develop. Below I have extended the EBSP back in time, with two different options (yellow and organge curves) with different growth rates, just as examples.

Another proposed population chart for American Pre-Columbian Dogs. by Austin Whittall from Witt et al., [1]

Why would their most recent common ancestor date to only 9 kya? Does the fact that dogs and wolves interact and mate affect the validity of TMRCA calculations?

The interesting point in Witt et al.'s paper is that wolves and dogs are an intertwined family, that did not evolve separately like humans and chimps did. No; wolves and dogs mated repeatedly over time, exchanging genes and probably that too alters the conclusions of any EBSP.

The scientists write that the unusual ancient dog haplotypes that they found could have been the result of any of three possibilities [1]:

"Overall, the wolf and dog haplotypes seem to be mixed throughout the tree. The haplotypes from the ancient dogs that are identified as outliers in Fig. 2B are likely (i) founding haplotypes present in the dog population, (ii) haplotypes that show admixture with North American wolves, or possibly (iii) the result of a separate domestication of dogs in the Americas.
Notably, multiple outlier haplotypes are more closely related to wolves than dogs, suggesting admixture or independent domestication. One haplotype from an Alaskan dog is not closely related to modern dog or wolf haplotypes, whilst two other outlier haplotypes cluster more closely with modern dog haplotypes than wolf haplotypes. Interestingly, the latter two outliers cluster with some haplotypes that are only found in Siberia, the Americas or eastern Asia (Pang et al., 2009), possibly indicative of a Northeast Asian origin, consistent with the origin of Native Americans." [1]

Very interesting: dogs could have been separately domesticated in the New World, and some dogs are not even close to modern dogs or wolves... but we are expected to believe that they arrived "late" in America, only 9,000 years ago and that the human hand guided their breeding to keep their population stable...

This seems to contradict the explanations given by Witt et al.: (bold is mine)

"There are a total of eight outlier haplotypes shown in Fig. 2B that differ significantly from other ancient dog haplotypes, and there are multiple reasons why such outliers might be present in our dataset.
First, these haplotypes represent dogs that came to the Americas via Siberia that exhibited haplotypes different from the other founding haplotypes, and represent additional founder lineages.
Second, these dog haplotypes are shared with wolf haplotypes that have either gone extinct or have yet to be sampled and published in the literature. If they are shared with wolves, admixture or separate domestication are both viable possibilities.
Interestingly, some of these haplotypes cluster more closely with dog haplotypes, suggesting that these dogs represent different founding haplotypes – they are likely too distantly related to the other haplotypes in the Americas to have diverged from another founding haplotype, but are more closely related to contemporary dog haplotypes than wolf haplotypes. Notably, some of the modern dog mtDNA haplotypes that are most closely related to the outliers in Fig. 3, such as A31, A121, and B28, are exclusively found in Asian dogs, further suggesting that these were founding haplotypes

...
However, it is surprising that wolf and dog haplotypes are so thoroughly intermixed in Fig. 3, when in Fig. 2 the wolf haplotypes seem far more distant from the dog haplotypes." [1]

What is clear is that dogs and wolves are really mixed up, that Asian dogs share mtDNA haplotypes with American ones. The outliers are always interesting, and are always brushed aside as "exceptions" when they usually are the key to understanding the problem. What is not clear in this paper is how could dogs have originated in only 9 ky.

Ancient Dogs

Which brings us to the antiquity of dogs. The oldest "dog" is the famous Goyet dog. A skull found in Belgium which as dated at 31.7 -36 kya, it seems to be that of a prehistoric dog. But it is not ancestral to modern dogs or contemporary wolves, it is a line that died out, an ancient domestication event [3]. Alternatively it may belong to a new gray wolf population that has not yet been described.

Belgium is far from America, but Altai (home to the mysterious Denisovans, home to Neanderthals and crossroads of Asia and Siberia) has produced the remains of another ancient "dog". Ovodov et al., (2011) [4] report the finding of a 33,000 year old dog skull found at Razboinichya in Altai.

They did some bone comparisons and found that the skull is within the range of Neolithic and later dogs, that its teeth are large and wolve-like, they concluded that "this specimen may represent a dog in the very early stages of domestication, i.e. an “incipient” dog, rather than an aberrant wolf." [4].

But they assume that the Altai dog is a dead end because "this canid material pre-dates the LGM and additional putative dogs are not found until thousands of years later, in the late Glacial – early Holocene (ca. 14,000–11,500 cal BP), we conclude that the lineage represented by the incipient dog from Razboinichya Cave did not survive the LGM" [4].

I am surprised that they consider this dog a dead end. The lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. These dogs could have moved on, into America or evolved into later dogs. The lack of bones may simply mean that they have not yet been found.

Druzhkova et al., (2013) [5] took another look at the Altai dog and conclude that it is a "Primitive dog" and they included a comparison with different canids in their paper:

"In order to further evaluate these close relationships we analysed the pairwise genetic distance, assuming a Kimura 2 Parameter substitution model (Figure 4) and found that haplotypes clustering in Clade A had the smallest genetic distance (2–5 differences on an alignment of 413 nucleotides) followed by the second smallest distances existing in comparisons to pre-Columbian dogs (1–9 differences), and the largest distance to contemporary wolves (4–26 differences). Moreover, when comparing distances derived from all dog haplotypes to that from all wolves, we found a significantly smaller genetic distance of the Altai specimen to modern dogs...[5]

There is a figure in their paper which is startling: this 33,000 year old Altai dog is placed in a branch of the tree with Pre-Columbian dogs and Beringian Wolves, some of which branch off before the Altai dog does! The Clade A dogs which has almost all contemporary dog sequences and "contains the majority of dog haplotypes (45 out of 72) including diverse breeds such as Tibetian Mastiff, Newfoundland, Chinese Crested, Cocker Spaniel or Siberian Husky" [4] is on that same "branch", but is slightly older.

Altai dog and other canids. From Drushkova et al., [5]

There is another Pre-Columbian dog (Clade B) as an outlier on a branch with Old and New World Wolves, isolated from all other dogs.

Druzhkova et al. conclude that: "...this preliminary analysis affirms the conclusion that the Altai specimen is likely an ancient dog with a shallow divergence from ancient wolves. These results suggest a more ancient history of the dog outside the Middle East or East Asia, previously suggested as centres of dog origin. [5]

Ancient American dogs with Asian roots

van Asch et al., (2013) [6] corroborate the Asian ties of American dogs and find that a haplotype (D28) which was believed to be 'Ancient America-specific' was also detected among East Asian dogs and therefore "all ancient American sequences except one (D40; possibly the result of dog–wolf crossbreeding) can now be linked to haplotypes present in East Asia or Siberia. We also note a large proportion of unique haplotypes among the ancient [American] samples." [6]

The "uniqueness" of American dogs appears time and time again in these papers as does the "dog-wolf crossbreeding" episode. These events, in my opinion, point towards a very ancient origin for American dogs, opposit to what Witt et al. suggest. [1]. Furthermore, van Asch state that "the American dog population was not formed through a severe genetic bottleneck, but that several lineages were brought to America from Asia in the pre-Columbian era, probably in several waves of migration." [6] , which contradicts a recent 9kya origin for these dogs.

A recent paper by Freedman et al., (2014) [7] comes up with some dates that differ from those given above (i.e. the +30 ky for the prehistoric dogs of Altai or Belgium):

"Our divergence time estimates imply that dogs and wolves diverged 14.9 thousand years ago (kya) with 13.9–15.9 kya Bayesian 95% credible interval (CI), assuming an average mutation rate per generation of µ = 1×10-8 and three years per generation (Figure 5A). Divergence times between wolf populations were tightly clustered at 13.4 kya (11.7–15.1 kya), and divergence between dogs was estimated to have occurred slightly more recently, at 12.8 kya (11.8–13.7). [7]

In other words, dogs only evolved 12.8 kya... so did the Early Americans (15 kya according to Orthodoxy) enter the New World without dogs? and, Witt et al., were right, dogs reached the New World 9 kya (and very likely distant parts of the Old World at the same time)? It seems unlikely. The culprit for a recent divergence date may lie in the generaton lenght or the "molecular clock" ticks assumed by the authors.

This paper was trying to find out if dogs arose from multiple domestication events (i.e. the Australian dingo from Asian wolves and the basenji in Africa from some west Eurasian wolf). Instead they found that dogs are very closely related to each other (may I add, the outlying Pre-Columbian dog is an exception) and arose from a now extinct ancestor of modern wolves. They also frolicked in the bushes with wolves during the initial domestication period, thus genes were swapped and this makes their exact history difficult to understand.

Closing comments

We have reviewed several recent papers that propose: dogs appeared 30 kya and became extinct. American dogs appeared 9 kya, suddenly, as a stable population. American dogs are closely related to East Asian ones. Dogs as a group appeared 12.8 kya. Domestication took place once but wolves admixed early on in the process with dogs. Domestication may have taken place separately in America....

Confusing? yes indeed.

What is clear is that Pre-Columbian American dogs cluster together with the 30 kya Altai dog and East Beringian wolves. That the only outlier among dogs is a Pre-Columbian dog (Clade B) in [5]. That all other dogs are close to, but not in the same branch as Altai, Pre-Columbian dogs and Berigian wolves.

What if dogs originated earlier, in isolation in the New World, and then moved West, across Beringia into Eurasia. A band of Neanderthal or some other archaich human reached America, domesticated New World wolves and created the first dog. Dogs dispersed form there to the rest of the Old World.

Sources

[1] Kelsey E. Witt, et al., (2015) DNA analysis of ancient dogs of the Americas: Identifying possible founding haplotypes and reconstructing population histories. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.10.012. Journal of Human Evolution Volume 79, February 2015, Pages 105–118
[2] Heller R, Chikhi L, Siegismund HR., (2013) The Confounding Effect of Population Structure on Bayesian Skyline Plot Inferences of Demographic History. PLoS ONE 8(5): e62992. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062992
[3] O. Thalmann et al., (2013). Complete mitochondrial genomes of ancient canids suggest a European origin of domestic dogs. Science, doi:10.1126/science.1243650
[4] Ovodov ND, Crockford SJ, Kuzmin YV, Higham TFG, Hodgins GWL, et al. (2011) A 33,000-Year-Old Incipient Dog from the Altai Mountains of Siberia: Evidence of the Earliest Domestication Disrupted by the Last Glacial Maximum . PLoS ONE 6(7): e22821. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022821
[5] Druzhkova AS, Thalmann O, Trifonov VA, Leonard JA, Vorobieva NV, et al. (2013) Ancient DNA Analysis Affirms the Canid from Altai as a Primitive Dog PLoS ONE 8(3): e57754. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0057754
[6] Barbara van Asch, Ai-bing Zhang, Mattias C. R. Oskarsson, Cornelya F. C. Klütsch, António Amorim, Peter Savolainen (2013), Pre-Columbian origins of Native American dog breeds, with only limited replacement by European dogs, confirmed by mtDNA analysis. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2013.1142Published 10 July 2013 PubMed 23843389 The Royal Society
[7] Freedman AH, Gronau I, Schweizer RM, Ortega-Del Vecchyo D, Han E, et al. (2014) Genome Sequencing Highlights the Dynamic Early History of Dogs. PLoS Genet 10(1): e1004016. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004016

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

Cryptid on Phoenician - Tehuelche carving

 
A cryptid on a Tehuelche engraved stone with Phoenician symbols.
 
See Index on all my posts on Phoenicians in America.
 

Stone with an engraving of a Patagonian cryptid (and some Phoenician characters).
Is it a guanaco (left), wolf (center) or horse (right)? Copyright © 2011 by Austin Whittall

The strange "engraved stones" of Patagonia, which are unlike any other artistic expression of the Patagonian natives, besides having odd symbols that seem to be of Semitic (i.e. Phoenician or even Hebrew letters) origin, also depict animals. Some stones portray snakes (we will post on them separately, from a cryptozoological point of view) which I have already dealt with from a historical point of view (celtic or phoenician intertwined snakes)

The image shown above is form one of the stones from the Museo Salesiano at Rawson, Chubut, Argentina.

The stone, is a round boulder, which has several engravings. In its central part, a mammal, of unknown origin. Just above it, three symbols or letters. Above right an arrow head and below it, a geometric fringe or border with triangles.

This is not the usual native style, as already mentioned (Genuine Tehuelche inscribed stones), and all these "Phoenicians in Patagonia" posts aim at trying to validate if they are genuine, and if so, are they native or made by ancient Mediterranean mariners.

The Cryptid

The animal is shown sideways, only one fore leg and one back leg are depicted. It has a triangular shaped head with upright ears. Its legs are short in comparison to its body, and its tail is also short and bulky.

The local fauna, includes pumas (which as the engraving is definitively not a feline, we will discard), foxes (the animal seems dog-like), and guanacos.

I have included, just because the creature also has a horse-like air, an image of a Trapan (a rare Eurasian wild horse), officially there were no native horses in Patagonia until the arrival of the Europeans who brought horses with them to America, however I have posted elsewhere about the possible survival of prehistoric native American horses, so I decided to include one, just in case. (Also see: Patagonian donkeys)

I also included a wolf (nowadays there are no wolves in Patagona, and the maned wolf has long legs, so it is not the animal portrayed on the stone), because it may be a representation of an "Andean Wolf", another Patagonian cryptid.

In my opinion, the animal is some kind of canid. It may be an Andean Wolf, or even a variety of "warrah" (Falkland Islands / Malvinas fox-wolf).

The stone was apparently found in Chubut province, in the northern part of Patagonia. It is unusual for the Tehuelche to depict a dog. They usually painted guanaco or hunters, as well as pumas of feline looking animals. I have not seen any dog - wolf - fox in their rock paintings. So, this is indeed a very peculiar stone which differs from the standard native artistic expression.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall © 

New World Dogs and Homo erectus

 

Homo erectus and the first dog. Copyright © 2011 by Austin Whittall [*]

There is evidence at Zhoukoudian, China, that our ancestor Homo erectus shared its “time and space, food and shelter with wolves”[1] half a million years ago.

A similar association was found in Boxgrove, Kent, UK, (400,000 years ago) and in Lazeret, France (150,000 years ago).

All of these three sites predate modern men, and indicate that "archaic" forms of humans were capable of domesticating wolves. Note that wolves are not dogs, they are (Canis lupus variabilis), but this gives us an idea that “old” erectus and wolves lived side by side.

On the other hand, perhaps the bones found together are just a casual accumulation of remains and not proof that they lived together.

However, an article by Stanley Olsen [2] reports that “the genus Canis […] is reported from the Villafranchian (it spans a period from 3.6 to 1.2 Million years ago) or lower Pleistocene levels in North China at the archeological site of Chouchia-yu-fang.”, these may be a “small wolf or an early domestic dog (that is, a tame wolf)”.[2] This is long before modern men appeared on Earth.

Erectus and dogs

Regarding domestication of dogs, something which has been attributed to modern humans (H. sapiens), it is possible that wolves domesticated themselves, attracted by the food and shelter that small roving groups of hominids could have offered them.

Humans would also have benefited from this association as the tame wolves would have provided defense, an alarm system against predators or intruders and, food (in the form of pups).

Susan Crockford, a University of Victoria noted that dogs may have “undergone "self-domestication" from wolves more than once over history, which could explain why the animals appear and then seemingly disappear from the archaeological record”. [3]

So, it is probable that erectus domesticated wolves into dogs in Asia. But, what if they brought them with them into America, or, domesticated local American breeds into their own variety of dogs?

In previous posts I have mentioned the mysterious Falkland Islands warrah, a mammal that lived on those isolated islands, hundreds of kilometers from the continent, and nobody know how they got there.

At one time it was believed that they reached the islands on some native canoe, but, as we will see below that option is not possible. Alternatively they could have walked across the continental shelf when the sea levels were lower during the Ice Ages.

A recent study of their mtDNA [4], has given us a timeline for this strange wolf: the time of the most recent common ancestor (tMRCA) for the Falkland Islands wolf is 330,000 years, while its 95% HPD (Highest Posterior Density) is between 70,000 and 640,000 years respectively. [4]

The study notes that though “the maned wolf is the closest extant relative of the Falklands wolf, a morphologically similar species, Dusicyon avus, survived in South America until the mid-Holocene [7]. This species may have an even closer relationship with the Falklands wolf” [4]

However, as the researchers assume that modern humans appeared in America not earlier than 15 to 20,000 years ago, they conclude that “ a human-mediated origin of the Falklands wolf is unlikely” [4] and give it a natural origin.

So, considering their peculiar features, I wonder if it could have been "mediated" by H. erectus before the arrival of modern man in America?

The timeline fits a plausible time range for erectus to have selectively bred the warrah from maned wolf stock. The divergence age corroborates this. Perhaps they worked with the now extinct Dusicyon Avus or even the mysterious cryptid, the Andean Wolf.

Sources.

[1] Mark Derr, (2004). Dog's best friend: annals of the dog-human relationship. Univ. of Chicago Press. pp. 19.
[2] Olsen, Stanley. J. & Olsen, John.W., (1977). The Chinese wolf ancestor of new world dogs. Science, 197: 533-535. Aug. 5, 1977.
[3] Jennifer Viegas, (2008).World's first dog lived 31,700 years ago, ate big . Online.
[4] Slater G.J., Thalmann O., Leonard J.A., Schweizer R.M., Koepfli K.-P., Pollinger J.P., Rawlence N.J., (...), Wayne R.K., (2009). Evolutionary history of the Falklands wolf Current Biology, 19 (20).
[*] Cartoon by Austin Whittall, derived from two Online Cartoons (See them here and here).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall © 

Chono and their "big woolly dogs"

 

"Big woolly dogs" and "blond indians". From [1]

Reading, always reading, I found a comment regarding Chono dogs. It was written by a catholic priest, Juan Bautista Ferrufino who visited the area (as a missionary) in 1611 and again in 1613.

He wrote that those who lived on the "Guaiteca Island" knitted coarse clothes from the wool and for this purpose they did not use goats or sheep or llama wool (like the Incas and the Andean cultures did), they used something very unusual; they:

Breed some big woolly dogs, which they shear in time and with that wool they knit their clothing [1]

He added that "they have blond hair", a very strange feature since all American natives have jet black hair. Perhaps it may be due to intermixing with foreign sailors (i.e. English or Dutch). Or could it be due to intercourse with the inhabitants of the mythical City of Caesars?

The fact that their dogs were "big" and "wooly" may indicate some relationship with the Andean wolf or the oop, which according to the natives of Northern Patagonia had a long shaggy coat: "the wool that covers it is like that of a sheep, a span or more in length, very soft and of a bright yellow color".

Now, the neatness of this is upset by another chronicler, Francisco Cortes Ojea, who in 1558 stated that:

they dress in wool of some small woolly dogs they breed [2]

So, big dogs or small dogs?. Maybe both. Did Ferrufino and Ladrillero meet the same natives? A mystery that, alas, will remain unsolved because both Chonos and their dog are extinct.

Sources.

[1] Martinić Beros, Mateo (2005). De la Trapananda al Áysen: una mirada reflexiva sobre el acontecer de la Región de Aysén desde la prehistoria hasta nuestros días. Pehuén Editores. pp. 38+
[2] Gay, Carlos (1852). Historia física y política de Chile: segun documentos adquiridos en esta republica durante doze años de residencia en ella y publicada bajo los auspicios del Supremo Gobierno, Univ. de Gante. vol.2 pp. 96.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall © 

The ‘native’ Patagonian dogs

 

Before the arrival of the Europeans, the Patagonian natives had their own domestic dogs, which may have derived from a local species of canid. The remains of a rare prehistoric dog Canis (Dusicyon) avus have been found in southern Patagonian Paleo-Indian sites.

Avus is a big and wolf-like animal that shares several features with the warrah to which it was probably related. Maybe it was also connected to the mysterious Andean wolf.

FitzRoy's description. 1833.

The Aonikenk’s (Austral Southern Tehuelche) dogs of Avus origin were fierce; according to FitzRoy they had a “wild wolfish appearance [...] a wild wolf-like look”. They were also quite big, having the size of a large English fox-hound.[1]

Muster's description. 1869-1870.

Coinciding with FitzRoy, English explorer Musters noted during his 1869-1870 trip from Punta Arenas to Carmen de Patagones, that the ancient Aonikenk before they adopted the horse, “formerly hunted on foot, with a large sort of dog, which […] must have resembled a deer hound”.[2]

Scottish Deerhound. From [5]

Deer hounds are a very big Scottish breed similar to a rough-coated Greyhound but larger. They weigh up to 50 kg (110 lb.) and they are up to 80 cm high (32 in). They were used to hunt deer, so they had to be enormous.

Sarmiento de Gamboa's description. 1579.

The first European to come upon them was Sarmiento de Gamboa, during his expedition to explore and settle the Strait of Magellan in 1579.

He described these dogs as having a brindled coat, and bigger than Irish Wolfhounds. These are enormous dogs nearly 1 meter high (40 in.) and 70 kg (154 lb.) in weight. They were bred to hunt and kill wolves.

Notice the similar appearance of deerhound and wolfhound. Shaggy coat and big size.

He was shaken by the first encounter between his savage European war dogs and the local ones; he wrote about it in his journal:

It was noteworthy that our dogs, and those of the natives, flew at each other until the came within four paces, when they turned round without touching, and we could never get them to attack again.[3]

Irish Wolfhound. They are very big dogs. From [4]

This was the first time that dogs separated by tens of thousands of years of separate evolution had bumped into each other. They probably found themselves very alien, totally different, and scary.

Note that the Spanish war dogs were vicious creatures, trained to attack, disembowel and kill natives, it is surprising that they cowed when confronted with the native dogs.

These Patagon dogs disappeared with their masters, the free roaming Tehuelche groups when Chile and Argentina occupied Southern Patagonia in the last decades of the XIX^th century. They were replaced by sheep-dogs brought by European settlers who filled the Patagonian steppe with sheep farms soon after it was occupied and its natives assimilated.

Bibliography.

[1] Hamilton Smith, J., (1840). The Natural History of dogs: Canidae or Genus Canis. London: W.H. Lizars. v.ii:213.
[2] Musters, C. Op Cit. pp.131.
[3] Sarmiento de Gamboa, P. Op. Cit. pp. 322.
[4] National Army Museum. Wolfhound, a mellow mascot.
[5] Deerhound Club. Official website.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity
 
Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall ©
 

“Lobo-Toro” or wolf-bull

 

Continuing with the feral (wild) cattle entry posted earlier today, we will now look into another monster, the wolf-bull.

The “Chupeitoro” or “Lobo-Toro” (some write it Lofo-Toro or Quenpeitoro) myth of the Mapuche is a patent example of the assimilation of wild cattle into the native’s lore.

The Mapuche used the Spanish words “lobo” and “toro” (wolf and bull respectively), to name it.

It was bull-sized and had long hair very similar to that of the feral (wild) cows found at Lake Argentino (we mentioned them in our last post on Wild Cattle)- it roared and howled like a wolf yet it was herbivore. It could be found all over Patagonia.[1]

Perhaps the large European dogs or a now extinct local Patagonian wolf may have inspired the wolf part of this weird hybrid (see our post on Patagonian wolves).

Regarding its bovine part, the myth may have included wild European cattle or taken a much older tradition, the one that refers to a mysterious horned being in southern Patagonia, on which I have posted separately.

Anyhow, the “wolf bull” amalgamates the worst features of both beings.

Lobo Toro (wolf bull). Online source, unknown author.

Mrs. Juana Puel, wife of Mapuche Chief Vicente Maripán of the Gramajo reservation at Barda Negra (39°11’ S, 70°05’ W) recalled a “Quenpeitoro” describing it as “a big bull that kills tigers and lions: well-known for its spear-like horns”.[1]

Lobo-toro is incorrectly mistaken in some texts for Elengassen (see my post on Elengassen); but they are very different beings, one, Elengassen, a stone throwing monstrous cave dweller, the other a wolf-like bull.

Bibliography

[1] Rothschild, D., et al., (1996). Protegiendo lo nuestro: Pueblos indígenas y biodiversidad. Quito: SAIIC. pp. 43-44.



Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters

Patagonian wolves?

 

We have already mentioned the "warrah" or Malvinas-Falklands fox-wolf and the "wolfish" appearance of the Fuegian dogs.

Could there have been other warrah-like ‘wolves’ in Patagonia?

Perhaps. Magellan’s chronicler, Pigafetta mentions the word wolf (“ani”) in his vocabulary of Patagon (Tehuelche) words recorded at San Julián. Did he mean a sea wolf or a real wolf (i.e. warrah)?

Captain FitzRoy (who sailed around the world in the 1830s taking Charles Darwin with hm) was intrigued too; he wrote “what the Patagonian animal is which the Blanco Bay people called ‘wolf’, […] I cannot say: I was inclined to suspect an equivoque arising out of the word ‘lobo’, which means seal as well as wolf; but Lieut. Wickham says he saw a wolf near the Colorado River”.[1]

What Wickham probably saw was an aguará guazú whose habitat in those days extended well into northern Patagonia. Though, there is the intriguing possibility that the cryptid Andean wolf may have lived in Patagonia.

The Andean wolf

This creature was described based only on one skin found by a German named Lorenz Hagenbeck in 1927. Inspected in 1940 by Dr. Ingo Krumbiegel, he at first though it was a domestic dog gone wild, but later, after relating it to some large canid skulls that he had examined, became convinced that it was some kind of wolf so he published a paper naming it the Andean wolf (Dasycyon hagenbecki).

Below is a copy of Hagenbeck's book in which he describes his discovery:[7]

The thick and long fur, its large size and short legs were very unlike those of a dog or an aguará guazú.[2] It seemed an animal adapted to live in cold and extreme environments, could it have moved down the Cordillera into Patagonia? Could it be related to the warrah?

Read more on the Andean wolf and see a photograph of its pelt in my post on Punalka.

De la Cruz, who crossed Patagonia in 1806 from Concepción in Chile, to Buenos Aires in Argentina, recorded that in Neuquén the native Peguenches [sic] told him that “there are other animals they call oop, whose body is shaped like a dog, which it resembles with its head, snout, legs and tail and with the ears of a cow; they state that the wool that covers it is like that of a sheep, a span or more in length, very soft and of a bright yellow color”.[3] It was named after its high-pitched yell –perhaps the howling of a wolf.

Regarding this creature, Argentine naturalist Estanislao Zeballos writing about it in 1870, called it “huamil” (did he mean huemul which is a variety of deer that lives in Patagonia?) and said that it had a “mysterious shout that sounded oop, name by which it was known by some Indians and under which they professed a religious respect”.[4]

Nowadays there are no wolves in Patagonia, only foxes. Furthermore, the "Andean wolf" should not be mistaken for the "Lobo Andino" (Spanish for "Andean wolf"), which is a species of fox (Pseudalopex culpaeus) whose geographic range extends from Colombia to Tierra del Fuego along the Andes and is also known as "Red fox" or "Andean fox". See photograph below.[5][6]

Pseudalopex culpaeus. From: [6] Copyright © Fiona Reid

Bibliography.

[1] FitzRoy, R. Op. Cit. vii. pp. 251.
[2] Krumbiegel, I., (1950). Von neuen und unendeckten Tierarten. Stuttgart: Franckh.
[3] De la Cruz, L. (1835). Descripción de la naturaleza de los terrenos que se comprenden en los Andes, poseídos por los peguenches… B. Aires: Imprenta del Estado. pp. 25-26.
[4] Zeballos, E., (1958). La Conquista de quince mil leguas. B. Aires: Hachette. pp.230-231.
[5] The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Online Here.
[6] Sistema de Información de la Biodiversidad, which displays an image from: Redford, K., H. and Eisemberg, J., F., (1992). Mammals of the Neotropics. The southern cone. Vol. 2. Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.
[7] Hagenbeck, L., (1956). Animals Are My Life London: The Bodley Head. pp. 126.



Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters

"Trehuaco" the Mapuche water dog

 
Trehuaco is a Mapuche word, which in their language (Mapudungun) means “water dog” (“trehua” = dog and “có” = water).

They are fierce, strong and big dog-like animals that live in lakes and rivers. Their dark fur is shiny and abundant and some believe that it was inspired by the Patagonian otter or huillin.

Trehuaco.[4]

Folklorist Bertha Koessler-Ilg recounts a story about a “a strange dog” that some natives noticed:

swimming in the river […] that hunted fish and drove them to an opening in a rock that was placed above the river […] they had never seen a dog like that one […] it was a big ‘Trewa’”. When they tried to capture it and one Indian caught it by its foot, but the dog “bit him strongly and disappeared in the [deep] rapids

The unfortunate Indian later died from his wound.[1]

It was also called a river dog (“Leufu Trehua”) and known as “Ngaqiñ” in the north and “Ponono” in the south of Chile. Chilean folklorist Guevara described it as a mythical creature that snarled and barked, making a noise that sounded like “hera-cac”; it lived in underground caves close to the water.

Its bizarre appearance was, according to the Mapuche, “perimontun”; against the laws of nature.[2]

It was also seen in a lake by Yaldad, in the south of Chiloé Island, and described as a dark dog-like creature, with shiny hair and powerful muscles that came out of its aquatic domain to seduce and mate with the women who happened to come too close to the magic lake.[3]

Bibliography.

[1] Koessler-Ilg, B., (2000). Cuentan los Araucanos: Mitos, leyendas y tradiciones. B. Aires: Del Nuevo Extremo. pp. 116.
[2] Guevara, T., (1925). Op. Cit. Chap. I.
[3] Cárdenas, R., (1978). Apuntes para un diccionario de Chiloé. Ediciones Aumen. pp. 85.
[4] Source Internet. Author, unknown.

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Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters

The enigmatic Malvinas (Falklands) fox-wolf or warrah

 

The Malvinas (Falkland) Islands fox-wolf, was unique, it lived cut-off from the world on a remote group of islands.

Charles Darwin surprised by its isolation, wrote that “as far as I am aware, there is no other instance in any part of the world, of so small a mass of broken land, distant from a continent, possessing so large a quadruped peculiar to itself”. [1]

It also holds the sad distinction of being the only species of canid to have become extinct in modern times (Canidae are a family that includes wolves, jackals, foxes, the domestic dog and the coyote).

Warrah. A 1838 engraving from Darwin's Zoology of the Beagle. From [7].

Known as warrah or guará (Dusicyon australis) the fox-wolf of the Malvinas (Falkland Islands) belonged to the same genus as the domestic dog, the wolf and the coyote.

A veritable Patagonian wolf, it probably evolved from a now extinct South American wolf taxa, the Theriodictis and Protocyon.[2]

Though slightly smaller than a wolf, it was much larger than the Patagonian fox, measuring 1,2 to 1,6 m (4 to 5 ft.) from the tip of its snout to the tip of its tail. Its legs were also shorter than those of a wolf, measuring 60 cm [24 in.] at the shoulder. It had a large wolfish head and thick fur to protect it from the islands’ harsh cold weather; it barked just like a dog.

It was named by the Argentine gauchos who lived on the islands until they were forcefully occupied by the British in 1833. They found it similar to northern Argentina’s Maned wolf or aguará guazú (Chrysocyon brachyurus), an unrelated canid species. The name was later corrupted into its Spanish (guará) and English names (warrah).

Their isolation was, in the end, their downfall. Being the only predator on the islands, and lacking human contact, they were fearless and curious. Their scientific name Dusicyon australis reflects this, as it means in Latin “foolish dog of the south”, alluding to its lack of fear of man, who first arrived at the islands in the early 1600s.

Captain FitzRoy who visited the islands in the 1830s remarked about their daring “all who have seen these animals alive have been struck by their eager ferocity and disregard of man's power”, as did Byron (of Wager Island fame) “four creatures of great fierceness, resembling wolves, ran up to their bellies in the water to attack the boat!”.[3]

Darwin’s prophetic words “Within a very few years […] this fox will be classed with the dodo, as an animal which has perished from the face of the earth”,[1] were fulfilled in less than half a century.

The warrah was hunted to extinction by the island’s shepherd settlers who considered it a predator of their herds of sheep. The last one is said to have died in 1873.[4]

All that remains of them are a couple of jaws, eleven skulls, six stuffed furs and two embalmed foxes stored in different museums around the world.

Its origin. Unsolved mystery.

A mystifying point is how a large wolf-like predator could have evolved on the small and isolated Malvinas Islands more than 450 km (280 mi.) from the Patagonian mainland, completely surrounded by the icy and windswept waters of the South Atlantic Ocean.

Several theories have been put forward.

One proposes that its ancestors somehow drifted across the ocean on icebergs from the Patagonian ice fields.

A second theory suggests that it is the only survivor of the well-stocked pre-glacial forests that once covered the islands. At that time, about 2 million years ago, during the Pleistocene, when the islands were joined to the mainland by a land bridge, because the sea level was lower, the Warrah’s ancestors could have simply walked across. This does not explain why other animals (ñandú, guanaco or puma), or even humans did not also cross to the islands. Though, perhaps they did and died out.

A more likely option is that a group of Paleo-Indians that would later evolve into the Fuegians, who had domesticated these Patagonian foxes, took them on their canoes to the Islands. Some of these fox-dogs may have stayed behind after their masters departed or died out, and somehow adapted and survived there. However there is no evidence of the Patagonian boat people having visited these islands.

Their origin is still debated though recent DNA studies have found that its closest relative is the coyote and that it is quite distant genetically from the other South American foxes and the Aguará guazú.[5]

Read my post on Patagonian wolves.

Extinct?

An unreferenced Online source[6] mentions “news notices” during the 1982 Malvinas (Falklands) war between Argentina and Britain that spoke of a living canid that attacked the islands’ sheep.

So it may be barely possible that some of the warrah’s genes have survived through interbreeding between the last of the fox-wolves and the Border Collie type of sheep dogs brought to the islands by the Scottish shepherds.

UPDATE - Sept. 20, 2010.

Today I posted on some recent findings regarding the warrah's origin and a possible tie to the Maned Wolf and the Dusicyon avus.

Bibliography

[1] Darwin, C., (1987). The Voyage of the Beagle. Ware: Woodsworth Editions. pp. 185.
[2] Berta, A., (1987). Origin, diversification, and zoogeography of the South American Canidae. Fieldiana: Zoology 39, 455-471.
[3] FitzRoy, R. Op. Cit. vii. pp. 251.
[4] Skottsberg, C., (1911). The wilds of Patagonia; a narrative of the Swedish expedition to Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands in 1907-1909. New York: Mac Millan. pp. 13.
[5] Serpell, J., (1995). The domestic dog: its evolution, behaviour, and interactions with people. Cambridge University.Press. pp. 13.
[6] Drinnon, D., (2007). Honshu Wolf Survival? (Comments). Cryptomundo.com. Online.
[7] Darwin, C., ed. (1838). Mammalia. The zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle... Part 2 No. 1. Plate depicting the: Falkland wolf (Dusicyon australis). Original description: Canis antarcticus.


Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters

The Fuegian “dog”

 

Another incredible and real creature was the Fuegian or Yagán “dog”. It was a small fox-sized “dog”, which is now extinct but, and this is the only case in the whole world, this “dog” resulted from the domesticaton of the culpeo; a type of South American fox (Pseudalopex culpaeus).

All other dogs around the world descend from domesticated wolves dating back several thousand years ago, the Fuegian case is different, they descend not from wolves but from foxes.

Lucas Bridges described them as “a very stunted cross between an Alsatian police dog and a wolf”.[1]

In the words of French Captain Marital who headed the 1883 scientific expedition to Cape Horn, it was “ugly, with long tawny hair and a sharp snout, it looks quite like the fox […] mainly when hunting otters is where this dog is very useful to its master”.[2]

They were big dogs, and weighed up to 35kg (77 lb).[3]

Stuffed Fuegian dog. At the Museo Mayorino Borgatello, Punta Arenas, Chile.[6]

Julius Popper –infamous for his massacres of Selk’nam people (at that time known as Ona), said that it had upright ears and thick tail, looking quite like the fox, although its color is sometimes totally white”.[4]

He pointed out its lack of loyalty to men “I never saw them, no matter how large their number, take an aggressive attitude or defend their masters when these were in danger”.[4]

He also noted that they were useless to hunt guanaco. Yet, he thought that he had found their usefulness:

the dogs placed themselves in a group around the small Onas, taking the shape of a kind of wrapping […] my opinion is that the fuegian dogs are only useful to complete the defective garment of the Indian, or better, as the Ona’s heating furniture.[4]

When Salesian father Gusinde began visiting the Yagans in 1919 their dogs had disappeared, they had been exterminated because they “were dangerous to men and cattle”.[5]

Their fierce nature had also been noticed by Reverend Thomas Bridges in the 1880s, who wrote that they attacked his Mission’s goats.[5]

Bibliography.

[1] Bridges, L., (2008). Op. Cit. pp.97.
[2] Martial, L., (2005). Mision al Cabo de Hornos, la expedición científica francesa en la Romanche Julio de 1882 a setiembre de 1883. Ushuaia: Zaguier & Urruty Publications . pp. 225.
[3] Emperaire, J., and Oyarzún, L., (2002). Los nomades del mar. Santiago: Lom Ediciones. pp. 195
[4] Popper, J., (1887). Expedición Popper. [Conferencia]. Instituto Geográfico Militar. 05.03.1887. Museo del Fin del Mundo, Biblioteca Virtual.
[5] Orquera, L. and Piana, E. (1999). La vida material y social de los Yámana. B. Aires: EUDEBA. pp 178-180.
[6] El diario de Camilongo. Online.

Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters