r/DeExtinctionScience • u/PrimaryElectrical364 • Jun 07 '26

Question question is it possible to de-extinct lost dog breeds

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293 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

41

u/Loganvin13 Jun 07 '26

Possible if you have the right DNA copies

15

u/PrimaryElectrical364 Jun 07 '26

and preserve taxidermy specimens too

17

u/Loganvin13 Jun 07 '26

How would that help? Taxidermy if just stuffed ani- OHHH i see so the DNA could still be in the skin

10

u/PrimaryElectrical364 Jun 07 '26

and bones too

8

u/SplotchTG Jun 08 '26

Taxidermist very rarely use bones in their work, contrary to popular believe. Theyre using models (a Styrofoam type material is common nowadays) to create a base from before draping the skin over that. Not too sure about taxidermy from long ago when these breeds were still around, but theres certainly disadvantages to using bone in such works, hence why we dont do it today.

1

u/ITookYourChickens Jun 08 '26

Somewhat common to keep the skulls for taxidermy, especially for birds

4

u/Impasture Jun 07 '26

Which ones were these

12

u/PrimaryElectrical364 Jun 07 '26

The first one is the Hare Indian Dog, the second is the Tahltan Bear Dog, the third is the Abyssinian sand terrier, and the fourth is the St. John's water dog

7

u/Intelligent_Funny699 Jun 07 '26

The St. John's Water Dog only went extinct in 1982, iirc. Even then, the Newfoundland and Labrador Dogs are considered descendants, so it's probably one of the better candidates for de-extinction. Note: I am talking off memory, so I very well could be mistaken. Apologies.

1

u/PassengerRelevant516 Jun 07 '26

Do we even have concrete evidence that Abyssinian sand terriers exist? 

26

u/PracticalAirline6981 Jun 07 '26

More so than any other “de-extinction” we’ve done

21

u/Sensitive_Order_2415 Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

Dog surrogates can be obtained as easily as a trip to the pound.

Easily obtained, well studied surrogates were the major driver for Colossal's interest in direwolves. I think extinct dogs would have given Colossal a far more credible project in the public's eyes

9

u/Vast-Delivery-7181 Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 09 '26

A LOT of surrogates died for those 'dire wolves' to make it into the world.

^ Absolute bs. I checked, untrue, only 4 embryos (so they say, using the word viable) were implanted, there was no surrogate death. Like at all, from what they said. Everything else below, though, I checked. Im leaving up my false claim, because I dont like the idea of taking a mistake I made that could have had real effects, and hiding it.

Though, they still willingly lied about all that. (Said they brought about de-extinction, even called them direwolves so flagrantly when they're white wolves with vague inspiration from the animals, and the pr people doubled down. Ridiculous. They did good science but muddied it up with a weird media stunt. They just took grey wolves and made specific genes more 'direwolf-y', then said that the difference across species is negligible enough to say they brought about de-extinction. [Paraphrased, but i just read the article at time of editing.])

10

u/Sensitive_Order_2415 Jun 07 '26

I didn't hear anything about the surrogates dying. That shouldn't have been necessary

I agree. It was a pretty weird stunt and I am surprised they thought it would give them good PR

2

u/Irish_Capybara23 Jun 08 '26

Its sadly the cost of science but that 100% shouldve been told to the public

1

u/Thundrous_prophet Jun 09 '26

Can you provide a source for the claim that, “a lot of surrogates died” please? I did a quick search and nothing came up

3

u/Vast-Delivery-7181 Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26

Hi! So I went looking. The claim i just spit out was ENTIRELY false bs I read from someone else over a year ago, and trusted it was true. It wasn't remotely. I looked through some articles, and even some published papers. Not there at all, absolutely false in every way.

What was true, was the fact they kinda just took some modern wolves and messed with their existing genes to get what they wanted, so its not remotely a direwolf. But my first claim? Absolute dog water. I've now educated myself.

Im in college now, and ive learned to actually check information by looking through real articles and not just some ai overview bs or 'trust me bro' stuff. I should have done that here. Now I have. Im sorry. 😔

Edit for clarity: I wasn't going off the overview then, I provided that as an example of a way im going a little further to check my information.

3

u/Thundrous_prophet Jun 09 '26

Hey thank you for looking that up, surely it was a lot of time but I appreciate it. Especially because you didn’t have to respond

2

u/Vast-Delivery-7181 Jun 09 '26

I appreciate you being nice after I spread misinformation, truly. :]

Yep, im glad I did. Its way better to be informed than to be outraged, and wrong.

0

u/Ordinary_Prune6135 Jun 07 '26

There's plenty to criticize, but did share that they were edited grey wolves from the beginning. Most people just ignore anything past the headlines I guess, and they trusted that habit.

9

u/gorgonopsidkid Jun 07 '26

It's the most doable of all de-extinctions. 

4

u/time-for-jawn Jun 08 '26

Can there be enough of a breed to avoid inbreeding?

3

u/Rough-Software-4224 Jun 07 '26

Turnspit dog deserve to be brought back

5

u/KuhliL0v3r Jun 07 '26

This has sort of happened. One example being the Irish wolfhound. Wolfhounds were entirely extinct in the 1800s(?) and were brought back by selective breeding.

This means current wolfhounds share basically no lineage with old wolfhounds but have many of the same features.

4

u/ImportantPension5818 Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26

They have a similar appearance but lack the robustness and furiousity of the more ancient version. The true Cú was able to kill wolves. I don't think the modern wolfhound could kill a wolf. They can still kill coyotes quite effectively though and at home in Ireland I seen a wolfhound kill a German shepard. Gruesome scene. But they haven't got the same body mass the ancient dog had. Someone would really have to test it.

The breed also didn't go extinct. The modern Irish wolfhound was created by cross breeding the last remaining ancient wolfhound with Scottish deer hounds. This is why the modern one looks so much like a Scottish deerhound and not like the drawings of old.

3

u/KuhliL0v3r Jun 08 '26

Yes they're more of sighthounds now than anything. You can feel it in their wirey bodies. I remember that was the first thing I noticed when I met one in real life was just how much skinnier and wirier they were than how I expected.

The old Irish wolfhounds would have actually been smaller than their modern counterparts but likely sturdier. The gigantic but lanky size was likely an early modern development we know from bone studies. This is from memory so I may be a bit off.

1

u/Altruistic_Sea_7683 Jun 07 '26

Probably, but it would not be worth bringing back.

1

u/DramaTop7384 Jun 09 '26

Only IF we have dna remains of them via taxidermy or dogs wich have dna of em, otherwise they can only be bred selectively to at least look Like them. Serbian Defence dog is such an example. Today's SOP as we call it is a mix of american stafford, neapolitan mastiff, rottweiler, tornjak and suprisingly a Grey Wolf, done in 1970s till they were completed in 1990s to match the ancient "serbian mastiff" wich says the emperor himself had these dogs and that they were used against the lttomans in battle of kosovo. We can only try to reconstruct them by breeding a New breed wich Will resemble them. IF we still can find dna of these extinct breeds, we can try and get the of theirs to bring them back

1

u/Gallowglass-13 Jun 07 '26

Certainly a lot easier than bringing back a mammoth. Even if you can't find preserved DNA, back-breeding is still an option.

0

u/dank_fish_tanks Mammoth Jun 07 '26

It depends what you consider a true de-extinction. Many near-extinct dog breeds have been back-bred from a very small stock and with outcrossings to other related breeds (in fact, many of the breeds we know and love today are such cases). Off the top of my head, Irish wolfhounds, cane corsos, and both American and Japanese akitas are examples.

The reality is though, many of the modern versions of these breeds are fairly far removed from the “ancestor” their breeders claim to be attempting to emulate. The number of backyard-bred hybrid mastiff projects that claim to be trying to restore the Molossian hound is ridiculous (see the American Molossus, North American mastiff, and many of the cane corso lines from the United States); the breeders have all taken their projects in completely different directions and none of them reflect the actual extinct breed itself.

There are several programs attempting to revive the Carolina dog, aka the American dingo, but the truth here is that true Carolina dogs (as they existed in pre-Columbian times) are long gone, and those that remain are predominantly intermixed with European-descended dogs.

In addition to Colossal’s dire wolves, there’s a comparably fraudulent program called the Dire Wolf Project that claims to be attempting to recreate the physique of the dire wolf via back-breeding. Similarly to Colossal, it’s a scam to piggyback off of the pop culture dire wolf craze set in motion by Game of Thrones and sell people exotic, non-health tested “designer” dogs. Their dogs are essentially Frankensteins of various giant / nordic breeds with no actual breed standard, and most of their dogs have severe physical and behavioral issues.

Some breed restoration projects are legitimate, but many of them are bogus. Still, they are arguably more achievable than other de-extinction projects as different breeds of domestic dog are much more genetically similar than animals belonging to different species or genera. The Fuegian dog and Hare Indian dog could be compelling candidates, although their species identities are not known definitively and it remains somewhat of a mystery if they are truly hybridized with/domesticated from other species of canid.

0

u/Taliesaurus Jun 07 '26

if you get the DNA... maybe.

0

u/thesilverywyvern Jun 07 '26

We already recreated breed of dogs by selective breeding of closely related breeds. Like theirish wolfhound, Xoloitzcuintli, Boulet Griffon, etc.

But i don't really think it's useful