Posted on 12/26/2023 7:32:19 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Ancient DNA from the pelt of a fluffy white dog named Mutton is revealing new details about the woolly dog, an extinct breed that was cared for and raised by the women of the Coast Salish tribal nations in the Pacific Northwest. The small dogs... were fed a special diet of fish or elk, and they were shorn like sheep, their wool woven into special blankets and textiles.
For thousands of years, woolly dogs were cherished as family members and raised on islands or kept in pens to ensure they didn't interbreed with other dogs, according to Michael Pavel, an elder of the Skokomish-Twana tribe and one of the authors of the study, published Thursday in the journal Science. The last woolly dogs disappeared around the end of the 19th century, but they have been kept alive in stories passed down by Coast Salish elders...
Woolly dogs split from other dogs in North America somewhere between 1,900 and 4,800 years ago, the data show. Mutton had only 16 percent ancestry from European dogs — a tiny contribution that, to researchers who study ancient dog DNA, signifies the care with which they were raised even decades after European settlers arrived...
In the mid-19th century, George Gibbs, a naturalist and ethnographer working for the Northwest Boundary Survey for the U.S. government, adopted a woolly dog named Mutton.
Little is known about Mutton's life, but in August 1859, a naturalist working with Gibbs in southwest British Columbia wrote to a curator at the Smithsonian Institution that Gibbs's dog, who had recently been sheared, had eaten the head off a goat skin they had collected.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
fish and elk doesn’t seem that “special” of a diet in this circumstance.
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In the PacNW, before it was settled, was a food paradise. Food was in abundance everywhere all year long. The locals - especially the Skoks, held ‘potlatches’ were they destroyed food and other material wealth in huge bonfires.
When faced with starvation due to the yearly raids by the Canadian tribes, they would hold their collective noses and resort to eating clams, oysters, and Dungeness crab.
I-5 in downtown Seattle?
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Not enough cars.
Back when we were dating, one fall Beau took me to a local Sheep Farm and we saw how yarn was made from start to finish. And, of course, I went home with a lot of yarn and a SEVEN POUND organic chicken that we had for Christmas Eve dinner that year. :)
I’ve seen ads in crafting magazines for people that will take your pets’ shed fur and spin it for you.
A diet of fish and elk sounds pretty good to me.
It’s so hard for a dog to resist chasing the shuttle.
Warp and wooft.
/I’ll stop now
Looks very much like cashmere.
Feels soft and luxurious. My parents had Samoyeds................
Wow.
I’ve petted Samoyeds and I bet that scarf feels like a warm cloud.
Yes, but it always wanting to lick your face can get annoying......................
I dearly miss every “ annoying “ thing my boy did.
Yes, they are wonderfully happy dogs...............
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