New Guinea Singing Dog, Thought To Be ‘Extinct’ In Wild, Still Thrives
NEW GUINEA SINGING DOG – The New Guinea singing dog, which is said to have been extinct in the wild for 50 years, still thrives.
Also known New Guinea Highland dog (Scientific name: Canis hallstromi), this species are known for its unique barks and howls as well as its ability to make harmonic sounds.
According to Panay News, there are about 200 captives of these species that live in conservation centers or zoos. They are descendants of a few wild dogs that were captured in the 1970s. They are severely inbred due to a lack of new genes.
No one has ever seen a natural habitat for half a century until an expidition in 2016 spotted and studied 15 wild dogs in the remote highlands of the western side of New Guinea in Indonesia.
Another new expidition returned to the study site in 2018 in order to collect detailed biological samples to confirm whether or not they are legitimately the predecessors of the singing dogs.
A comparison of extracted DNA from the blood collected from three of the species shows that they have similar genome sequences and are closely linked to each other than any other canine.
Albeit having unidentical genomes, the researchers believed that these are the wild and original New Guinea highland dogs only with physical separation for many decades and inbreeding among the captive ones, based on the report.
“They look most related to a population of conservation biology new guinea singing dogs that were descended from eight dogs brought to the United States many, many, many years ago,”
This came from a statement from Elaine Ostrander, a distinguished investigator at the National Institutes of Health and senior author of the paper that was published on Monday in PNAS.
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