There are an approximated 1 billion dogs worldwide, and today on 60 Minutes reporter Anderson Cooper is on the canine beat to learn how dogs developed to end up being man’s friend.
Cooper spoke with a range of researchers and scientists for his story, consisting of Brian Hare, an evolutionary biologist at Duke University.
“I believe what actually sums up the link in between dog and human advancement is survival of the friendliest,” Hare said. His book, “Survival of the Friendliest,” checks out the theory even more.
The idea has actually been enhanced by the discovery of hereditary anomalies that help separate dogs from their canid relative wolves.
Bridgett vonHoldt, a geneticist at Princeton University, discovered particular canine anomalies on a chromosome that she says make dogs friendlier than wolves to human beings.
“When we sequenced a lot of dogs and a lot of wolves, we already determined their habits about how social they were, on how sidetracked they may be with individuals,” vonHoldt informed Cooper. “We utilized that to then look for anomalies in the dog genome that just dogs had and wolves did not have. And we brought out a truly good location of anomalies on chromosome number 6 in the dog genome.”
In order to help show the findings of her research study, vonHolt sequenced the DNA of Cooper’s Welsh springer spaniel Lily. She discovered that Lily has a common set of hereditary anomalies that incline her to being active and looking for interactions with human beings.
“She has the hereditary predisposition to totally enjoy you more than she most likely can manage,” vonHoldt said about Lily.
You can view Cooper learn more about Lily’s heredity in the video above.
The video above was initially released on November 27, 2022 and was produced by Keith Zubrow and modified by Matthew Lev.