Dogs Likely Evolved From Wolves in Mideast

(March 17) -- If you have a basenji, Chinese shar-pei or chow chow snoozing at your feet, you'd better pamper your pet. You're living with blue-blooded canine royalty.

Those three are among the most ancient of dog lineages, according to a new study of doggie DNA. They have heritages tracing back for centuries -- even millennia – and also show the greatest genetic similarity to wolves of all of the breeds studied, the research found.

In what is sure to be a controversial claim, the study also concludes that the dog was probably domesticated in the Middle East, not, as other research has indicated, in China and nearby countries.

The genetic makeup of dogs sends "a very strong signal for origin in the Middle East," says study leader Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles. "This really contradicts the prevailing notion that dogs originated in East Asia."

To determine the origins of modern dog breeds, Wayne and his team compared the DNA from 912 dogs with the DNA from 225 gray wolves from around the globe. Experts agree that thousands of years ago, the fierce and independent gray wolf somehow evolved to give rise to the first domestic dogs.

Many of the dog DNA samples came from the pageant queens of the dog world. As dogs were being primped to enter U.S. show rings, the scientists brushed the inside of their mouths with a swab.

Nearly all modern strains of dog have much stronger genetic ties to Middle Eastern wolves than to wolves in Europe or East Asia, Wayne and his colleagues found. That suggests that Middle Eastern wolves were the founding fathers of today's parade of pooches.

The study also found a handful of pedigrees that stretch back further than the rest. Historical and cultural evidence has painted the basenji, chow chow and shar-pei, among others, as ancient breeds. His DNA evidence backs that up, Wayne says. His team's roster of ancient breeds also includes the Afghan hound, saluki, Akita and Samoyed.

Asian and European wolves also contributed to today's breeds, but the main center of domestication was in the Middle East, Wayne says.

One of the scientists whose research points to Southeast Asia as the birthplace of the domestic dog disputes Wayne's interpretation of his own data.

"Their data clearly says there were two flows of genes from wolves into dogs, one in the Middle East and one in China, and that's the same thing we find" in a different form of DNA, says Peter Savolainen of the KTH-Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. He says the new study didn't examine enough Asian dogs and used a DNA study method that would have biased the results.

Wayne disagrees with Savolainen's assessment.

"I hope it doesn't become a big fight," Wayne says.

Whatever the dog's origins, Wayne points to a remaining puzzle: not where but how wolves were transformed into dogs.

The dog was domesticated earlier than any other kind of animal, earlier, even, than agriculture. Dogs weren't developed for eating, herding or protection.

"One can't imagine why you'd pick a large carnivore for the first domesticated species," Wayne says. "You have to feed them meat. ... And they potentially attack children and even adults. And what functions they provide, I don't know. My own dog, a Boston terrier, never provided that much of a function, except affection."

The study was published today in the online version of the scientific journal Nature.