Sunday, August 10, 2014

Hokkaido Island dogs and human diets 1500 YBP

Hokkaido Island dog today
One of the disadvantages of keeping dogs is their requirement for a high protein diet, placing them in competition with humans. On the other hand if dogs and humans are eating the same things it would suggest a reason for them to come together when food was plentiful. Feeding dogs would give the dogs a reason to follow hunters, and cooperate with humans.

In a forthcoming paper Tsutaya et al. (in press 2014) analyze carbon and nitrogen isotopes from human and dog remains from the Moyore site on eastern Hokkaido Island, Japan. The Moyoro archeological site is located on an estuarine sand area of the Abashiri River and is representative of the shell mounds of the Okhotsk culture. The site has been excavated several times during the 20th century and contains human burials and the remains of pit dwellings. Radiocarbon and palaeomagnetic dating suggest the site was used 1500 YBP.

The isotopic data shows the dogs were predominantly feeding on brackish-water fish, marine fish, and marine mammals (5-45%). The presence of marine mammals in the dog’s diet suggests that humans were feeding the dogs.

The δ13C and δ15N values of adult human bone collagen found terrestrial food sources provided less than 16% of the diet and that the Moyoro human population depended heavily on marine mammals for dietary protein. Marine mammals made up 80-90% of the Moyoro human diet. Thus, there was no significant overlap in the diet of the dog and the human population.

Ethnographic studies of the late 19th and early 20th century reported on dog use and dog diet of the indigenous Ainu people in Hokkaido and Sakhalin, and fishers in Kamchatka. Ethnographic accounts of the Ainu population in Hokkaido and Sakhalin reported dogs were used for hunting terrestrial mammals and sledging. Dog skins were used to make clothes and shoes. The Ainu people fed their dogs with low-sodium trout and the isotope ratio of trout in Hokkaido is similar to that of brackish-water fish. Fishers in Kamchatka in the late nineteenth century fed their domesticated dogs with dried or fermented fish and used them to pull sledges. Although the cultural traits reported in modern ethnographic studies are not directly comparable with those in the ancient Okhotsk population, such ethnographic observations agree well with the isotopic results in the Tsutaya et al. (2014) study.

Citation
Tsutaya T, Naito YI, Ishida H, and Yoneda M. (in press 2014). Carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of human and dog diet in the Okhotsk culture: perspectives from the Moyoro site, Japan. Anthropological Science. 

Dogs and herders in southern Africa


Photo Credit: Johan Gallant
The geographical origin for the domestic dog is probably Eurasia. While modern dogs may have had a single origin about 15,000 YBP, earlier paleodogs may have been present 33,000 YBP. Dogs in sub-Sahara Africa therefore are most likely to be recent invaders from Eurasia. Currently, the oldest archaeological evidence for the presence of domestic dogs in Africa comes from about 7000-6000 YBP (the Neolithic of Egypt’s Western Desert and along the Nile in Egypt and Sudan). However, dogs do not appear to be widespread or common in African archeological sites until about 1000 YBP. This may be the result of confusion distinguishing between dog remains and jackal remains, or a more recent introduction of dogs.

In a new paper, Peter Mitchell (2014) of Oxford University follows up on an earlier paper on dog use by pre-colonial herders in southern Africa. Mitchell notes that dogs were one of several domestic animals kept by south African herders, but their economic and social relevance is poorly known. He reviews the evidence for the dog’s introduction into southern Africa and assesses the relative strengths of various lines of evidence (osteology; ancient DNA; animal tracks; faunal taphonomy) to identify those instances where the presence of dogs can most convincingly be established on sites used by herders.

The study reports skeletal evidence for herder-associated dogs comes from a handful of sites in the western half of South Africa, Namibia and, possibly, Botswana. A review of previous studies noted the strongest evidence is a nearly complete human burial in a shell midden at Cape St Francis on the Indian Ocean coast (dated 1150 ± 40 YBP) found with the skeleton of a small dog in the lap of the human skeleton. Other evidence suggests dogs have been present in the western regions of southern Africa since about at about the same time. Mitchell suggests that herder communities in the Cape acquired dogs through some exchange-mediated process of diffusion sourced ultimately to farmers in the eastern third of South Africa.

The first documented observation of dogs in southern Africa was made by Vasco da Gama and dates to 7 November 1497 when the Portuguese explorer observed people who were probably hunter-gatherers with dogs. Most observations of dogs with Khoe-speaking herders postdate the onset of Dutch colonization of the Cape in 1652. The dogs were medium height with short hair, long muzzles, and ears that could be erect and pointed or drooping. Analysis of skeletons buried at Zerrissene Mountain and Cape St Francis supports this description. These dogs were small, and more gracile overall than those found at agro-pastoralist sites in the Shashe-Limpopo Basin.

Some commentators suggest that the Khoe-speakers did not value their dogs highly, noting they were few in number and scrawny, and not cared for. But, in 1731 Peter Kolbe wrote more extensively about these people and considered the dogs well taken care of. Dogs of the Korana speaking people were larger and varied from grey to white to brown in color, but interbreeding with dogs introduced to South Africa by Europeans cannot, perhaps, be excluded. Korana dogs were also well treated. They were feed meat and milk.

Mitchell proposes dogs in used by herding cultures acted as companions, guard dogs, defenders of livestock, and as aids in hunting. While the Damara in north-central Namibia apparently ate dogs, there is no evidence to support this in the other cultures. Dogs also played a role in the belief systems of these peoples, to at least a limited degree.

Hendrik Wikar led an expedition to the north of the Cape Colony in the 1770s, and recounts the story of a group of women who chose to sleep on an elephant trail close to a river. Not having dogs with them, and having chosen not to light a fire, two were trampled to death by a passing elephant. Dogs could also alert their human companions to human enemies, Jan van Riebeeck describes this in early conflicts between the Cape Khoekhoen people and the Dutch East India Company in 1659. Dogs also alert people to the presence of predators of livestock. Today in Kenya, for example, annual livestock losses to predators are in the range of 1-6 %, though this understates their possible significance to individual owners.

European farmers in the 19th and 20th centuries employed shooting, traps and poisons to control jackals and reduce their attacks on sheep, precolonial herders must necessarily have depended more heavily upon dogs. Kolbe wrote about this in 1731 and describes how the Khoe-speakers would release dogs at night to guard livestock.

Mitchell suggests when and how dogs came to be part of the lives of southern African herders merits more research. Noting that it might be productive to look at the taphonomy of other faunal assemblages where sheep are prominent to see if there is evidence for canine-induced modification. Sheep do not travel by themselves, they needed to be looked after. Previous authors have proposed that dogs and livestock spread together in the Neolithic Sahara. And, it seems likely that success in a carnivore-rich African landscape would have been very difficult without the help of the dog.

Today, dogs are being used in southern Africa to protect sheep from local predators. There is a dual benefit because the dogs guard the sheep from the endangered cheetah and protect the cheetahs from being shot by the farmers. Anatolian sheep dogs are being used for this purpose. However indigenous dogs are still present in southern Africa, they are free-ranging and still exhibit behaviors involved in guarding livestock. For more on indigenous African dogs see the AfriCanis website; The story of the African Dog by Johan Gallant. And, SOS Dog, The purebred Dog Hobby re-examined by Johan and Edith Gallant.  


Citation
Mitchell, P. (2014). The canine connection II: dogs and southern African herders. Southern African Humanities, 26, 1-19.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Abstract: Is black coat color in wolves of Iran an evidence of admixed ancestry with dogs?


A European black wolf, by Charles Hamilton Smith
Abstract: Melanism is not considered a typical characteristic in wolves of Iran and dark wolves are believed to have originated from crossbreeding with dogs. Such hybrid individuals can be identified with the combined use of genetic and morphological markers. We analyzed two black wolves using a 544 base pairs (bp) fragment of the mtDNA control region and 15 microsatellite loci in comparison with 28 dogs, 28 wolves, and four known hybrids. The artificial neural networks (ANNs) method was applied to microsatellite data to separate genetically differentiated samples of wolves, dogs, and hybrids, and to determine the correct class for the black specimens. Individual assignments based on ANNs showed that black samples were genetically closer to wolves. Also, in the neighbor-joining network of mtDNA haplotypes, wolves and dogs were separated, with the dark specimens located in the wolf branch as two separate haplotypes. Furthermore, we compared 20 craniometrical characters of the two black individuals with 14 other wolves. The results showed that craniometrical measures of the two black wolves fall within the range of wolf skulls. We found no trace of recent hybridization with free-ranging dogs in the two black wolves. Dark coat color might be the result of a natural combination of alleles in the coat-color-determining gene, mutation in the K locus due to past hybridization with free-ranging dogs, or the effect of ecological factors and adaption to habitat conditions.

Citation

Khosravi, R., Aghbolaghi, M. A., Rezaei, H. R., Nourani, E., & Kaboli, M. 2014. Is black coat color in wolves of Iran an evidence of admixed ancestry with dogs?  Journal of Applied Genetics, 1-9.

Monday, August 4, 2014

Dingoes recognized as a full species

Photo credit. André Geißenhöner
Scottish zoologist Robert Kerr published the first volume of what would be the two volume The Animal Kingdom in 1792. On page 144 he used the combination Canis antarctitus for the Australian wild dog. The following year, Friedrich Meyer a German physician and naturalist again described the Australia wild dog on pages 33-35 of his 1793 book Systematisch-summarische Uebersicht der neuesten zoologischen Entdeckungen in Neuholland und Afrika, (a volume that mostly focused on African primates and birds). The name dingo was long applied to the Australian dogs but Kerr’s name Canis antarcticus was overlooked. But, C. antarcticus should have had priority given it was published before Meyer’s description. ICZN Opinion 0.451 suppressed Kerr’s name and Meyer’s Canis dingo became the approved scientific name for Australia’s wild dogs to maintain nomenclature stability.

The dingo, is Australia's largest land predator as well as a controversial taxon threatened by hybridization with domestic dogs. Dingoes are thought to have arrived in Australia more than 5000 YBP (Years Before Present), and because of their isolation they became a unique canid. How to distinguish ‘pure’ dingoes from dingo-dog hybrids is an issue that has been recently dealt with in a paper by Crowther et al (2014).

 Crowther et al. notes that the confusion exists because there is no description or series of original specimens against which the identities of putative hybrid and ‘pure’ dingoes can be assessed. Current methods to classify dingoes have poor discriminatory abilities because natural variation within dingoes is poorly understood. Also, it is unknown if hybridization may have altered the genome of post-19th century reference specimens. The new research provides a description of the dingo based on pre-20th century specimens that are unlikely to have been influenced by hybridization.

The authors reasoned that because Australia was colonized by Europeans in 1788 and was only sparsely inhabited by European settlers prior to 1900, dingoes collected before this date would be less likely to have been influenced by hybridization with domestic dogs. A search for museum specimens collected prior 1900 produced a sample of 69 dingo skulls and six skins as well as specimens collected from archaeological and paleontological deposits dated before 1900. They used radiocarbon (C14) dating to determine if specimens from cave deposits lacking data on their context pre-dated 1900. Selected for comparison were domestic dogs of similar size which were or have frequently been used as stock-working dogs and hunting dogs in Australia. Thus it is likely they have interbred with dingoes. These breeds included Australian cattle dogs, kelpies, collies and greyhounds.

They found dingoes differ from the domestic dog in having a relatively larger palatal width, a relatively longer rostrum, a relatively shorter skull height and a relatively wider top ridge of skull. The pre-20th century dingoes were also found to lacked dewclaws on the hind legs. In the sample of 19th century dingo skins they found considerable variability in the color and including various combinations of yellow, white, ginger and darker variations from tan to black.

Diagnosing the dingo remains difficult due to the overlap in morphological characters with domestic dogs, localized adaptations in dingoes and morphological variation through time. Identification of diagnostic morphological characters is also difficult, especially when there is more variation within the domestic dogs in shape and size than in the entire canid clade. The morphological analyses showed that there is considerable overlap between domestic dogs and dingoes for most morphological characters. This was particularly the case for some Australian breeds, such as the Australian cattle dog, which are thought to have dingo ancestry. A similar degree of overlap in shape exists between North American wolves and closely related husky dogs.

Recognizing the dingo as a full species is likely to remain controversial. But, lineage based species concepts will likely accept the dingo as a species. The full article is available on-line.

Citations
Crowther MS, Fillios M, Colman N and Letnic M. 2014. An updated description of the Australian dingo (Canis dingo Meyer, 1793). Journal of Zoology, 293: 192–203. doi: 10.1111/jzo.12134.



Sunday, August 3, 2014

Dog remains from Santa Rosa Island, California

Remains of a dog on Santa Rosa Island, CA (T. Rick)
In a recent paper in Ethnobiology Letters Hofman and Rick (2014) report on the remains of six dog skeletons from Santa Rosa Island, in the Channel Islands of California. Native Americans colonized the Channel Islands about 13,000 YBP and inhabited the islands until about 1822. The island Chumash people were maritime foragers during the Late Holocene and potentially earlier. They lived in large villages and had sophisticated mainland and island exchange networks. Dog remains have been found in Channel Island sites as early as ~6000 YBP, but they are most common in sites dated from ~1500 YBP to the Historic Period. Ethnographic accounts of dogs are limited, suggesting that the mainland Chumash may have occasionally used dogs for food, but it is unclear if they were used in hunting.  Archaeological data suggest that dogs may have been used for hunting and as working animals. Documents discussing Vizcaino’s 1602 expedition suggested that Santa Catalina Island dogs were of medium size and similar to spotted retrievers found in Europe at the time.

CA-SRI-2 is a large late Holocene village and cemetery complex on northwest Santa Rosa Island and has produced a number of dog remains. The site was excavated by Phil Orr in the 1940s-1960s and then revisited in by Rick in 2000-2003. Rick et al. (2011) used δ13C and δ15N data from dog, fox, and human bones to reconstruct diet among these three species. The Native Americans and their dogs at CA-SRI-2 had similar diets -high trophic marine organisms like finfishes, marine mammals, and seabirds, complemented by seeds, corms, and other carbohydrates. In contrast, the CA-SRI-2 island foxes appear to have eaten lower trophic level terrestrial foods. Their data confirm the commensal relationship between dogs and people, with some modest carbon enrichment in dogs perhaps from higher consumption of C3 plants and bone collagen.

The CA-SRI-2 dogs are similar in size and share some aspects of morphology to other Channel Island dogs. Two of the CASRI dogs are consistent with medium facial size (mesaticephalic dogs) and have similar characteristics to a dog from San Nicolas Island though that dog was more brachycephalic than the CA-SRI-2 dogs. Shoulder height estimates suggest that the CA-SRI-2 dogs were large to medium in size (42.52-55.09 cm), falling within or above the estimates for three other Channel Island dogs.

The CA-SRI-2 dogs share many characteristics with Plains-Indian Dog breed measurements reported by Allen for San Nicolas Island but, like some of those dogs, they also have some overlap with the Shortnosed Indian Dog. The mix of Allen’s Shortnosed and Plains-Indian Dog characteristics is further supported by dog mandible and teeth measurements reported by others for three dogs from Santa Cruz Island and a dog from San Miguel Island. These data suggest that prehistoric southern California dogs had a mix of traits with many falling into the large Indian Dog category and still others falling into the small Indian Dog category. Domestic dogs were important companions for humans on the northern and southern Channel Islands, and were scavenging and/or being fed the same types of foods that people were eating, and were often given special burial treatment.

Citations
Hofman, C., & Rick, T. (2014). The Dogs of CA-SRI-2: Osteometry of Canis familiaris from Santa Rosa Island, California. Ethnobiology Letters, 5, 65-76.

Rick, T. C., B. J. Culleton, C. B. Smith, J. R. Johnson, and D. J. Kennett. 2011. Stable Isotope Analysis of Dog, Fox, and Human Diets at a Late Holocene Chumash Village (CA-SRI-2) on Santa Rosa Island, California. Journal of Archaeological Science 38:1385-1393.