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Saturday, April 7, 2012

Guess the Genotype #62

Can you guess this dog's genotype? Its breed?

Image from Flickr.com under a Creative Commons license.



This dog is a saluki mix, probably mixed with greyhound or something similar. As such, this dog can also be called a longdog. Longdogs are crosses between two or more sighthound breeds, which makes them a bit different from the more commonly-known lurcher. Now for the genotype.

This dog is sable. Though a bit difficult to determine, the apparent hint of black on the back of his ears would make him a sable rather that a recessive red. It's possible for this dog to be carrying one of the non-sable alleles on the Agouti locus due to the known saluki ancestry. However, there is no way of knowing which, if any, are present. For the sake of argument, I am going to say this dog is Ayat sable carrying tan point as the tan point gene is seen relatively frequently in the saluki breed.

The intensity of the red on this dog is a bit intense, and as such he is most likely Ccch moderately intense red.

This dog also has urajiro! Usually only seen in Asian breeds, this is a good example of the pale points on a breed that looks extremely different from, say, an akita. It's believed that urajiro is recessive and may be polygenic. For this, however, we will say that this dog is xx urajiro present.

So, that's Ayat cchcch xx or red with pale points.

6 comments:

  1. Photo taken by http://www.flickr.com/people/gandalfspics/

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  2. Urajiro (the Saluki people generally call it countershading) is very common in Salukis. Several of my dogs have it.

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    1. I've noticed that. It seems to be most common on dogs where it isn't easily seen, though, like ones that are tan point or the paler shades of red. I have definitely seen my fair share of salukis marked as obviously as this one, though.

      I'm trying to emphasize that the gene is more widespread than many people would think, since so many Asian breeds are known to commonly have this phenotype. And, yes, countershading is quite commonly used to describe the pale points. I've also seen dogs described as having "pale points" or "pale cheeks and pips" as if the dog was red with cream points. I find it fascinating how different breeds treat this phenotype.

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  3. I *really* like the looks of this one.
    Predictable of me, I guess...

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    1. I've seen a couple of basenjis with urajiro-type markings, by the way. Here's one who's a descendant of dogs brought over from Africa in the 1990's.

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