Interesting… I have an Australian Cattledog (from reliable breeder.) I understand they’re “bred from” the dingo (and a few other interesting breeds of dog to combine with that).
He seems closer than other dogs I know to his wild beginnings. Actions certainly. Body-wise, he kind of looks like Whoopi Goldberg in Lion King. (I know she played a hyena in that, but the moves of a dingo look similar.)
If my Silas and sons were “bred back” toward the dingo, would you wish to speculate on what might happen?
Wolves will show submission to the alpha pack members my chihuahua never acts submissive, so I assume the first step would be to breed chihuahuas for submissive traits.
Indeed. The so-called Napoleon Complex should really be called the Chihuahua Syndrome. A casual gesture as if to pet a strange Chihuahua almost always get treated as some kind of showdown, as if this were the internal dialogue:
<Hey, little buddy!?>
“LITTLE? Who you callin’ LITTLE? And I ain’t your buddy, Buddy! YAP YAP YAP YAP”
<Hey, take it easy. I just wanted to know you a bit better.>
“What? BIT? Oh, it’s ON, man. You want to know BIT? YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP” CHOMP"
<What the --? Why you miserable little rat-dog!>
“YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP”
Working with the present genetic material of only a chihuahua I doubt it would be possible to ever return to something indistinguishable from a wolf. The genes simply are no longer present. A selective breeding program (wherein one picked desirable “wolf like” traits) would result in something based upon the present genetic material. Selective breeding narrows the gene pool, sometimes quite significantly.
Soviet-era scientist Dmitri Belyaev. He selected for tameness; one of the goals, IIRC, was to make it possible to farm silver foxes (a Russian variety of the red fox). One of the unintended (and unwanted) side effects was that the fur of the domesticated fox became more mottled than that of the wild foxes, making it less desirable for use in the fur industry.
Waiting around for novel mutation(s) that confers large size is likely to take a quite long time (in human terms), unless you want to breed up to a population size of several million chihuahuas (shudder the thought). While it might be theoretically possible, it might not be feasible in any practical terms (and certainly not something that could be done with “relative ease”).
Quibble: it was not actively bred to be “doglike”, but rather for domestication. The intent was selecting foxes that reacted less and less hostile to humans, until they would accept human handling, or even seek out human handling. While those are traits of domesticated dogs, they are also traits of other domesticated animals, like cats.
The “doglike” traits developed as side effects. Things like whining for attention, as well as physical characteristics like the mottled coat, and droopy ears.
Just wanted to clarify my comments about what Hari said. Foxes are canids, so in breeding for domestication one might reasonably if loosely describe that as breeding for more doglike traits. My point was to emphasize that the only trait the researchers were actively selecting was least negative/most positive response to human handlers. All other behavior and physical changes were not selection criteria, and were side effects to the breeding program.
That was, in fact, discussed by the research team.
