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The lifesaving sled dog Balto had genes unlike those of dog breeds today
- nocoiner 3y agoTogo was the real hero, though.
- runnerup 3y agoTo expand for those who don't know: Togo and Balto were both lead dogs owned/raised/trained by the same man (Leonhard Seppala) but they ran different sleds. Togo led the "A" team and Balto, being a lesser sled-dog, led the "bench" or "B" team. For the famous "serum run", Togo's team ran 261 miles, including the most dangerous section: 42 miles over frozen body of water. Whereas Balto's team only ran the final 55 miles. However, Balto got the credit because he carried the medicine into the town while Togo's team was still out in the wilderness. Seppala wrote: “I hope I shall never be the man to take away credit from any dog or driver who participated in that run. We all did our best. But when the country was roused to enthusiasm over the serum run driver, I resented the statue to Balto, for if any dog deserved special mention it was Togo.” There is a Disney movie named "Togo", which does a fantastic job of telling the story. According to comparison with best-available primary and secondary sources, the movie has astounding historic accuracy -- even though many, many times it seems like it "jumps the shark". The "true" story of Togo's life is so unbelievable that Disney's inaccuracies are more leaving things out that audiences would never be able to believe rather than putting in exaggerated over-the-top things.
- rythmshifter 3y agowhere can I read the "true" story of Togo's life?
- runnerup 3y agoPerhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Togo_(dog) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Togo_(dog). Much of the wiki is borrowed from a more detailed book[0], "The Cruelest Miles" by Gay and Lainey Salisbury. 0: https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=27144DD0253AAAF50314993CE6860517 https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=27144DD0253AAAF50314993...
- nashashmi 3y agoThat was a difficult movie to watch. It was filled with so much excitement and jitter. The periodic breaks into history did little to suppress the anxiety.
- esaym 3y agoAt least Togo got a proper burial...
- paleotrope 3y agoThat's partly why they are talking about Balto here. Balto's genes are readily accessible.
- runnerup 3y agoErm, Togo's mounted skin is on display at the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Headquarters museum in Wasilla, Alaska. https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/images/2019/12/togo/stftg.jpg https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/images/2019/12/...
- b112 3y agoI never thought of this method of preserving a respected or loved animal! Now I wonder, can it be done for me, who would do it, and what cemetery would allow me to pay to display it.
- runnerup 3y agoEntirely non-sarcastically, try: https://www.google.com/maps/search/taxidermy+near+me https://www.google.com/maps/search/taxidermy+near+me
- b112 3y agoI think though, I might have to find someone skilled in pigs? My thought, is they're the closest to humans? And then, who wants to do it... even if they can? I think it would be awesome, to have a skin on display in a cemetery. A marble construct, tower like, with a airtight sealed glass front, with my skin, it in all its fineness.
- runnerup 3y agoOH, I didn't realize you meant human taxidermy. I believe that's not allowed except for science/education purposes such as "BODIES" and "Body World" exhibits: https://bodyworlds.com https://bodyworlds.com
- bee_rider 3y agoIt is funny to project the concept of heroism to working animals… I bet Togo thought he had just been on a particularly exciting walk.
- tedunangst 3y agoThe article goes on and on for many paragraphs about the claim that Balto was inherently healthier on the basis of genetic diversity, with no actual assessment of whether today's dogs are healthy, before dropping this sentence: > Today’s sled dogs are even “faster and more durable” than those of Balto’s era, Moon says.
- paleotrope 3y agoThey are trying to compare and contrast your pet breed with working dogs, clumsily. Not Balto and working dogs today
- yieldcrv 3y agosled work is work!
- sundvor 3y agoI had the exact same reaction as GP. :) So there was something about how the point was hidden, TFA could benefit greatly from including your one line summary. I wondered about if the requirement to not work contributes to an early decline in dogs? Physical fitness is seemingly the number one marker for longevity in humans. If today's pets get but a fraction of the exercise dogs are originally capable of, something will have to give? (Forgive me for being naive).
- kept3k 3y agoTogo is a great movie based on this event
- iancmceachern 3y agoAlso the animated film Balto
- oldstrangers 3y agoBreed health was one of the reasons I ended up with a working line dog (Dutch Shepherd). Most dogs are bred for appearance these days, even in some working breeds like the German Shepherd. Anecdotally, I always felt like 'muts' were some of the healthiest dogs I've been around. They seem invincible, and the genetic diversity probably helps explain that.
- explaininjs 3y agoIt is well established that mixed breeds and hybrids are healthier than purebreds.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoWe have an offspring of central american feral dogs, whom we DNA tested via Cornell vet school’s embarkvet.com database. Interestingly, the notion of breed changed meanings, for me, when they published the results. The only modern breed in her is a great grandparent chihuahua and otherwise she’s genetically varied as feral dogs are, something like an asymptote for the various blends called mutts. Of the 161 (i think) tracked recessive disorders, she’s a carrier for only two.
- jjtheblunt 3y agop.s. It's unclear to me if, genetically, "mutt" implies a blend of various artificially constrained gene pools (that is, "breeds") or just means less constrained gene pool than what occurs in "breeds".
- inconceivable 3y agoi've got a 12 year old 35 pound mutt and he's literally never had a health problem. i take him in every 12 months for shots. he did get kennel cough one time from dog daycare but he just... got better on his own after a few days, or something. he just slept it off. at this point i'm only half joking when i wonder if he'll outlive me.
- h2odragon 3y agoI've found many "pure" breeds to be regrettably diminished, they look like the books say but they pay for it in some way. Shorter lifespans, health problems, mental problems, etc. Out-crossing a purebred with something from a different style of dog can often produce much healthier pups than either parent. Great Danes and Collie make 3/4 sized, slightly skinny dane-like dogs that are shockingly robust and energetic and can live to 16+ in my experience (and that's as active working outdoor dogs).
- majormajor 3y agoOne of the things that struck me from seeing some coverage around this recently is that Balto died at age 14 and Togo, another prominent dog in that sled run, died at age 16. After having a couple German Shepherds as a kid those numbers were striking for large working dogs. Looks like Huskies still have pretty good life expectancy (12-14 years in the US from the AKC), Malamutes a bit less, but both stronger than GSD, which are like <10 years in the US these days. Hopefully things swing away from the fascination with "purebred" before those breeds see further declines. From the article it seems like the working dogs, vs the breeding-for-sale dogs, are still pretty healthy: “What we found is that Balto is more genetically diverse and genetically healthier than your breed dog of today but similar to those working Alaskan dogs that we have now—which is what you expect from a group that is still bred for work rather than the aesthetic phenotype that breed dogs are now held to,”
- lbenes 3y agoMe too. Since my grandmother was a child, we've always had German Shepherds in our family. When I was a kid for the first time our dogs started getting hip dysplasia. My mother and grandmother had never seen before, despite being involved in the dog training community. I’ve had 2 purebreds in a row with major health issues, even though I searched for working line breeders. I’ve given up on purebreds, and now have a GSD mix. He’s a gorgeous animal, going on 11 without any hip issues or health issues. The AKC in their pursuit of the perfect look and willful ignorance of genetics has destroyed the German Shepard breed. https://www.handicappedpets.com/blog/german-shepherd-back-legs/#:~:text=This%20is%20because%20German%20Shepherds,possible%20in%20their%20hind%20legs https://www.handicappedpets.com/blog/german-shepherd-back-le....
- gedy 3y agoSame, my sibling adopted a wonderful German Shepard, and was awful to see it rapidly lose mobility and drag itself and due to the hip problems.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y agoI started seeing this in German Shepards years ago. I’d see shepherds being walked and their hind legs just weren’t moving right. I thought it was just an old dog that developed health problems, but no, they are being bred that way. I’m not sure why you’d want an unhealthy dog. I can get behind the whole something-poo craze since at least it might put a short pause to pure breds.
- ljf 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1925_serum_run_to_Nome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1925_serum_run_to_Nome is a brilliant read (featuring Balto)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 27fingies 3y agois this an “old wives tale” (for lack of a better term atm) that turned out to be true? i swear my parents used this as a reason to get a mutt for me as a kid in the 90s.. today’s pure breed dogs are sometimes sad to see..
- b112 3y agoWe've been breeders for at least 10s of thousands of years, not just with dogs, but endless work animals, livestock, plants. Empirically one can go a long way, into understanding that inbreeding is bad, that diversity is good. I wouldn't be surprised to see Greek, or Sumerian texts on breeding...
- barry-cotter 3y agoAmazingly this isn’t true. You would think selective would have been invented by the Greeks or Romans, someone, but the first evidence of long run sustained breeding programmes for a desired trait using careful record keeping was during the British Agricultural Revolution of the 1700s. For more detail read the link https://gwern.net/review/bakewell https://gwern.net/review/bakewell
- etempleton 3y agoWorking dogs were bred, historically, for character traits. Breeders didn’t care if the parents were one breed or another. It was about getting the desired size, intelligence, disposition for a job.
- conorcleary 3y agoWhat about those of Togo, the dog that did most of the work?
- nocoiner 3y agoTogo is actually a direct ancestor of the vast majority of Siberian Huskies in the United States today. He had a very, uh, fulfilling retirement and as a consequence he’s part of almost every modern day husky’s genetic line. The dog that played him in the movie was something like his twelfth generation descendant.
- conorcleary 3y agonoted
- thriftwy 3y ago"suggests that greater genetic diversity and less inbreeding contribute to better health" How is it still possible to give this as a suggestion rather than a rock solid fact? Every piece of evidence and theory screams of it.
- wyager 3y agoThere are diminishing returns to exogeny, especially in species with a high degree of genetic redundancy (like dogs, cf https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17437958/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17437958/), whereas with guided endogeny you can achieve better outcomes than you would via random cross-breeding (on task performance, health, or whatever else the breeders are optimizing for).
- mavu 3y ago> The genome of the 1920s Siberian husky Balto suggests that greater genetic diversity and less inbreeding contribute to better health Wow. Really? Never would have guessed.
- etempleton 3y agoThe idea of purebred dogs is a fairly recent concept and a pretty terrible one. We understand the ramifications of inbreeding in humans, so I don’t know why it seems to be such a cognitive leap for folks to understand why inbred dogs are less healthy and often develop undesirable traits (alongside some inbred desirable ones). I have had many dogs over the years a number of mutts and a number of pure bred dogs and the pure bred dogs have almost always had both personality and health issues to varying degrees. The mutts tend to have a more even disposition and are longer lived.
- suzzer99 3y agoI agree with all of this except Great Pyrenees, which are the BEST DOGS IN THE WORLD. Mutts are second.
- wyager 3y agoIf you need a dog to perform any kind of specific function, you're 95% of the time vastly better off with a purpose-bred dog than some random mixture. Plus, a huge fraction of the dogs up for adoption in the US have strong admixture with breeds with specifically undesirable behavior (e.g. biting children or other dogs), which is often causally related to why they're up for adoption in the first place. Adverse selection, yo.
- data-abuse 3y agoTo be fair, this entirely depends on the breed in question. There are some breeds that are known to have weak bloodlines, and some breeds that are better. It is also dependent on the breeder. Breeders that "cheap" out will be more likely to have inbred dogs since it can cost money for a good stud.
- ramesh31 3y ago>The idea of purebred dogs is a fairly recent concept and a pretty terrible one. It's just that the inbred traits are so desirable. I've had many mutts, and loved them very much. But when you want a dog, and you want to know exactly what you're getting, it's hard to beat a pure bred. Yes they will have problems, but it's a known quantity. And what you get in return is a dog who needs minimal training to behave exactly as you wish.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoI'm about to receive a service puppy. They have been selectively raised from different stock for awareness, bravery, and intelligent non-reactivity. They're unlike work, guard, or companion dogs. They have to be to serve people who have disabilities as their last line of defense in risky and dangerous situations.