I have a “dog” my wife adopted in Africa that looks almost exactly like an Ethiopian wolf. When I read about the temperament and behavior of wolves kept as pets, he checks every single box to a T. We love him, but he is far more intelligent and challenging than any dog I have ever known. He cannot be near anyone he does not know well, and negative discipline of any kind does not work at all on him, and would be dangerous to even attempt. We joke that he is a wolf, but sometimes I wonder if it is literally true.

Hybrid wolf dogs are a thing. I've seen YouTube videos of people who have one as a pet (usually along with regular dogs).

If not a pure wolf then quite possibly a hybrid.dd

you should send off for genetic testing and see!

I'd like to, but can't find a practical way to do so.

I doubt there is any consumer level service that would do this- the "23andme for dogs" type services likely aren't setup for this. It would need to be a professional level biotech project, where one would prepare the sample themselves and send it off for sequencing where you get just raw data back.

I am an academic scientist with a lab, and know how to do this, but feel it would be inappropriate to use my work facilities for such a project.

And in any case, you may not really get any conclusive data back anyhow.

CBC Marketplace sent a _human_ DNA sample to various dog DNA testing places and from some of them got an actual dog breed answer back (instead of the expected "error, not dog DNA").

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-dog-dna-test-1....

So if you send "wolf" to a dog DNA testing place, how accurate would that really be for "wolf" vs. "dog" when all they expect to find is "dog" (and "wolf" is very close to "dog" given overall ancestry)?

Knowing how these services work that is not surprising- most only use a microarray that can only identify the approximate relative abundance of specific small fragments of DNA, it does not read the DNA sequence directly. They then probably have a very primitive analysis that assumes you have dog dna, and returns the same breed as whatever reference sample it is closest to. They almost certainly would have no reference data on a highly endangered African wolf.

Sure but do they not check whether a sample is contaminated? That would seem like a step you can't skip.

For human vs. dog I would definitely expect that all of them would be able to tell (given that _some_ of them definitely were able to tell).

For wolf vs. dog I'd not be so certain even for the reputable ones. But then again I'm not a geneticist, so I can't tell you how easy it is to tell their version of "is this C# or Java byte code" :grin:

They don’t get the DNA sequence with these cheap microarray based services. However a human or something just as directly related to a dog would give weird mostly nonsense outputs- even if they could not tell what species the sample is actually from, it would be clearly not a dog. They should detect and reject those samples, but I am not surprised some of the services didn’t bother to implement that, as it requires more work.

This is most likely what they are using: https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/550869/ta...

Can you buy the primers personally for a few selected regions of great variability, do the extraction and PCR, and pay for sending it off for sequencing personally? You don't really need whole genome coverage and I'm sure if you asked if you could use a few ml of lysis buffer nobody would care. The scariest part for me would be sticking a buccal swab in your wolfdog's mouth...

Yes, that could possibly work with some carefully selected Sanger sequencing- I'd have to start with finding region(s) that had something I expected to be able to meaningfully interpret, which itself wouldn't be trivial, especially if the dog ends up being some type of wolfdog hybrid or just generally a less domesticated 'archaic dog.' Thanks for the suggestion- I'll look into it.

If it is an Ethiopian wolf, then it is one of the rarest animals on earth, and I suspect that many organizations would be more than willing to stump up for the testing.

I’d start by dropping into a local zoo, with photos.

I’d be genuinely concerned that they would take my “dog” if it ended up being an endangered species.

Exactly. I'd suggest enjoying its company, and keeping it quiet.

But wild animals, and wild animal hybrids can be a bit unpredictable, once they reach adulthood.

There are other canids in Africa, like Cape Hunting Dogs, Jackals, and foxes, that can be pretty badass (and some are endangered).

Come on, we want to see a picture now! :-)

These wolves are also notable for being in a good/symbiotic relationship with gelada monkeys living there - they don't prey on gelada babies and the monkey's let them freely roam through their herds. It seems also that sometimes those monkey even kind of "domesticate" the puppies of those wolves.

Wow. What a blast to see this here. I paid for an expedition and went on a 3-day horse riding tour in the Bale Mountains with some rangers, looking for the Ethiopian Wolf. And I was able to observe him. Looks like an oversized fox. Cute. Shy, normally hunts the rats that live on the plateau. Three days on a horse that I and my a... will never forget.

"The Ethiopian wolf is the rarest wild canid species in the world, and Africa’s most threatened carnivore. Found only in the Ethiopian highlands, fewer than 500 individuals survive,"

There are protection efforts from the Senckenberg Society and they do a pretty good job.

It becomes less surprising when you see a photo of the flower. It's huge, so it's not that unlike large mammals eating fruit or honey.

My dogs sometimes eat grass. I figure they are self medicating

My dog does that quite often and it's usually for two reasons:

- self medicating (he's missing certain nutrients not available in his regular food)

- anxiety / boredom (essentially, if there's a cat nearby and I put him on the leash, he'll turn into a goat)

(he's a podengo -- those dogs tend to have a very strong prey drive, and get either very easily bored or overstimulated)

Indeed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoopharmacognosy

Wolf discovers dessert menu.