2023-04-30 06:00:19
Almost a hundred years ago, in 1925, the dog Balto saved the community of Nome, Alaska, from a diphtheria epidemic. This sled dog, which owes its name to the Norwegian explorer Samuel Balto, had participated in the team over a thousand kilometers which made it possible to deliver the precious anti-diphtheria serum to this town cut off from the world by a blizzard and extreme temperatures.
Entered into legend for having traveled the last tens of kilometers of this incredible musher relay race, this husky, whose story has been brought to the screen, even has a statue in Central Park, New York.
Stuffed after his death in 1933, Balto is on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (Ohio, USA). Enough to allow samples to reconstruct its genome… American researchers have thus analyzed the genetics of the famous dog by comparing it with the genome of more than 680 modern dogs, representing 135 breeds, according to the study published in the journal Science Thursday, April 27.
Result: science thwarts legend. No, Balto wasn’t half-wolf, as he is portrayed in Universal Pictures’ 1995 animated film. The analysis did not discern any wolf ancestors. Balto shares common ancestry with present-day Alaskan and Greenland sled dogs and, to a lesser extent, Siberian huskies.
More genetically diverse
The hero exhibits fewer possibly deleterious rare variants than modern races and appears to be more genetically diverse. Which made it more robust. “Balto had variants in genes related to traits like weight, coordination, joint formation, skin thickness, which makes sense for a dog bred to thrive in such an environment”said Katherine Moon, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, lead author of the study.
“It’s a great job, with rigorous analyzes that manage to make the genetic data speak, to have a photograph, by expressing the phenotype of the animal”observes Christophe Hitte, research engineer at the CNRS, at the Institute of Genetics and Development of Rennes, who did not participate in the study.
The researchers managed to reconstruct his physical appearance. It turns out that Balto had blue eyes and a black and tan coat, with a little bit of white on the tips of his legs, which is a darker coat than today’s huskies. “These data were compared with testimonies, photographs, which makes it possible to validate the genetic discoveries”comments Christophe Hitte, specialist in canine genetics.
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