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Jasper

Chinese Village Dog

“Jasper was born and raised on the streets of Shanghai. Unfortunately, due to the nature of being a street dog he suffered from a double eye infection that lead to the loss of both his eyes. Luckily for him he found his forever home with me while I was living in Zhengzhou. He's been all around China and the USA, which just goes to show you can never judge a dog by his bark. He is extremely happy and friendly and we can't wait to see if he has any siblings or children that show up.”

Place of Birth

Shanghai, Shanghai, China

Current Location

Gloucester, Virginia, USA

From

Zhengzhou, Henan, China

This dog has been viewed and been given 29 wags

Genetic Breed Result

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Village dog trace breed analysis

Village dogs often have short stretches of DNA that match purebred dogs, due to a distant common ancestor or a more recent mating between a purebred and a village dog. Jasper has short stretches of DNA in common with these breeds:

What exactly are village dogs?

Village dogs are the free-breeding, free-roaming “outside” dogs found around the world living in and around human settlements big and small. They are also known as island dogs, pariah dogs, or free-ranging dogs.

Many village dog populations precede the formation of modern breed dogs.

They make up about 3/4s of the billion or so dogs living on Earth today. They serve as trash cleaners, sentinels, and even sometimes companions while still retaining much of their freedom. Embark’s founders have studied village dogs on six continents since 2007 in their efforts to understand the history, traits, and health of the domestic dog. Through this work they have discovered the origins of the dog in Central Asia, and also identified genetic regions involved in domestication and local adaptation, such as the high altitude adaptation in Himalayan dogs. Embark is the only dog DNA test that includes diverse village dogs from around the world in its breed reference panel.

So what breeds are in my dog?

In a very real sense, Chinese Village Dog is the actual breed of your dog. Village dogs like this descend from separate lines of dogs than the lines that have been bred into standardized breeds like Labradors and Poodles. If you trace the family tree of Jasper back, you won’t find any ancestral dogs that are part of any of those standardized breeds.

Chinese Village Dog

Chinese Village Dogs are very special dogs. Originating in China, these dogs have some of the most ancient domestic dog ancestry around, going back over 15,000 years. Now, that’s quite the family tree.

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Village dogs have lived just about everywhere across the world for thousands of years. Long before there were any recognized dog breeds, there were village dogs around the fires and trash heaps of early human villages. Jasper is part of this ancient heritage, not descended from a specific breed, but continuing the ancient lineage of dogs that were our first, best friends.

Embark's co-founders studied Village Dogs on six continents in their efforts to understand the history, traits, and health of the domestic dog. Through this work, they discovered evidence for the origins of the dog in Central Asia , and they also identified genetic regions involved in domestication and local adaptation. As a result, Embark has the largest Village Dog reference panel of any canine genetics company.

We compared Jasper's DNA to a global panel of thousands of village dogs. This plot highlights regions of the world where Jasper's DNA is most similar to those village dogs. The areas of darkest red reflect the greatest similarity to our village dog panel.

Village Dog Map
Similarity to village dog groups around the world. Darker red reflects greater similarity.

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Traits

Explore the genetics behind your dog’s appearance and size.

Base Coat Color

Base Coat Color

Coat Color Modifiers

Coat Color Modifiers

Other Coat Traits

Other Coat Traits

Other Body Features

Other Body Features

Body Size

Body Size

Performance

Performance

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Through Jasper’s mitochondrial DNA we can trace his mother’s ancestry back to where dogs and people first became friends. This map helps you visualize the routes that his ancestors took to your home. Their story is described below the map.

Haplogroup

C1

Haplotype

C7/10

Map

C1

Jasper’s Haplogroup

Congratulations, C1 is a very exotic female lineage! It is more closely associated with maternal lineages found in wolves, foxes and jackals than with other dog lineages. So it seems dogs in this group have a common male dog ancestor who, many thousands of years ago, mated with a female wolf! This is not a common lineage in any breed, though a good number of German Shepherds and Doberman Pinchers are C1. It is also found in breeds as diverse as Peruvian Inca Orchids and Pekingese; it is rarely found amongst Labrador Retrievers, Border Collies, Siberian Huskies, or Cocker Spaniels. Despite its fascinating origins, it is widely distributed around the globe, and even shows up frequently among Peruvian village dogs. It almost certainly survived at low frequency in Europe for millennia and then was dispersed outside of Europe by colonialism, though not as successfully as some other lineages.

C7/10

Jasper’s Haplotype

Part of the C1 haplogroup, this haplotype occurs most commonly in Pekingese, Boston Terriers, and Rat Terriers.

The C1 maternal line is commonly found in Jackals.

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Through Jasper’s Y-chromosome we can trace his father’s ancestry back to where dogs and people first became friends. This map helps you visualize the routes that his ancestors took to your home. Their story is described below the map.

Haplogroup

C

Haplotype

H5a

Map

C

Jasper’s Haplogroup

C is a relatively rare paternal lineage. The dog populations which bear C are a disparate bunch. The Akita and Shiba Inu are Japanese breeds, the former of which seems to have roots in the Jomon population of hunter-gatherers which were present in the islands of Japan before the ancestors of the modern Japanese arrived. The New Guinea Singing Dog, Samoyed, and Alaska Malamute are all disparate breeds that also represent the C lineage. One village dog from Peru also bore this lineage. This wide distribution and diversity suggest C is not a recently expanded lineage. It likely represents a canid lineage which diversified sometime around the Last Glacial Maximum, when the dogs of Siberia and Oceania split off and went their separate ways.

H5a

Jasper’s Haplotype

Part of the C haplogroup, this haplotype occurs most commonly in Akitas and Alaskan Malamutes.

The Shiba Inu descends from this relativey rare haplogroup.

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