This Floofy Sheepdog Reveals Its Ancestral Dog From 200 Years Ago

DNA technology reveals that Patagonian sheepdogs are the closest living relative to now-extinct varieties of herding dogs of Victorian era Britain

Patagonian sheepdog in the field. (Credit: Rodrigo Muñoz / CC-BY 4.0)

Looking rather like a sheep itself, the floofy Patagonian sheepdog is rare (only several hundred are alive today), and it represents the last remnant of a now-lost population of working dogs that originated in Victorian era Britain. Maintained as an isolated population for over 130 years, this special breed offers a unique opportunity to understand the genetic relationship amongst modern herding breeds, to identify key genomic structures — functional genes, as well as other genetic elements, such as microsatellites and transposons — of its founders, and to investigate how genomic data from dogs reveals and mirrors human migration patterns.