Please note that genetic age is different from calendar age. We cannot (yet) estimate calendar age—how long since your dog was born—from DNA. To learn how vets estimate calendar age you can read How old is your dog? How veterinarians estimate dog age.
The genetic age that we report is an estimation of where your dog is in his or her healthspan. Dogs age at very different rates due to a number of genetic and environmental factors. Body size is a strong genetic influence: for example, a seven year old Great Dane is at the start of his golden years, but a seven year old Pomeranian is just learning what "slow down" means. Just within this example, you can see that the old "one doggie year = seven human years" adage isn’t going to work. And yet, knowing your dog’s age is important: it informs what your dog needs as far as food, frequency of veterinary checkups, and exercise. So how do you best determine how old your dog is?
Embark's genetic age feature calculates how old your dog would be if he or she were aging at an average human rate (using humans in the USA as the baseline). So going back to our Dane/Pom example, we'd estimate a seven year old Great Dane at about 80 years old (senior citizen), but a seven year old Pom would be about 42 (adult). Makes way more sense, right?
| Calendar age | Genetic age |
|---|---|
| 1 year | 17 human years |
| 2 years | 25 human years |
| 3 years | 31 human years |
| 4 years | 38 human years |
| 5 years | 45 human years |
| 6 years | 51 human years |
| 7 years | 58 human years |
| 8 years | 65 human years |
| 9 years | 71 human years |
| 10 years | 78 human years |
All we need from you is a calendar age. It's okay if this is an estimation: it is just a starting point. We then factor in your dog's breed composition, information at certain genes that affect size, and their inbreeding coefficient to calculate genetic age. Like in humans, in dogs females tend to live longer than males (so an “80 year old” female dog = 80 year old woman). Exercise and diet also play a role in how long your dog will live. Nevertheless, genetic age is the primary risk factor for numerous diseases in dogs, including cancer, kidney disease, osteoarthritis, cataracts, cardiac disease and cognitive decline. It can help you and your vet know what you should feed your dog, what screenings to get, and other aspects of your dog’s care.
Most dogs have wolfiness scores of 1% or less. We find populations and breeds with higher scores of 2-4% occasionally, and unique dogs with scores of 5% or above more rarely.
Your dog’s Wolfiness Score is not a measure of recent dog-wolf hybridization and does not necessarily indicate that your dog has some recent wolf ancestors. (If your dog has recent wolf ancestors, you will see that in the breed mix report.) Instead, the Wolfiness Score is based on the number of ancient genetic variants your dog has in our unique Wolfiness marker panel. Wolfiness scores up to 10% are almost always due to ancient wolf genes that survived many generations, rather than any recent wolf ancestors. These ancient genes may be a few thousand years old, or may even date back to the original domestication event 15,000 years ago. They are bits of a wild past that survive in your dog!
Your dog’s Wolfiness Score is based on hundreds of markers across the genome where dogs (or almost all of them) are the same, but wolves tend to be different. These markers are thought to be related to "domestication gene sweeps" where early dogs were selected for some trait. Scientists have known about “domestication gene sweeps” for years, but do not yet know why each sweep occurred. By finding rare dogs carrying an ancient variant at a certain marker, we can make associations with behavior, size, metabolism, and development that likely caused these unique signatures of “doggyness” in the genome.
For people with puppies, you probably want to know how big of a crate to buy or just how big to expect your dog to become. But genetic weight is also useful for people with fully grown dogs. Just like with people, overweight and obese dogs suffer reduced length and quality of life. They can develop chronic health conditions and suffer from limited mobility and other issues. While over half of American dogs are overweight or obese, fewer than 15% of their owners realize it. By comparing your dog’s weight to their genetic predicted weight you have one more piece of information about their ideal weight. With this and other pieces of information like weight history and body condition, you and your veterinarian may want to discuss your dog’s diet, exercise, and weight control plan to give your pup the longest, healthiest life possible.
Our test is the only dog DNA test that provides true genetic size not based just on breed ancestry but based on over a dozen genes known to influence a dog’s weight. It uses the most advanced science to determine your dog’s expected weight based on their sex, the combination of these genes, and breed-specific modifiers.
Unlike in people, healthy weight in dogs is controlled largely by only a few genes. Our algorithm explains over 85% of the variance in healthy adult weight. However, due to a few as-yet-undiscovered genes and genetic interactions that affect size, this algorithm sometimes misses. Occasionally it misses by a fairly large amount especially when a dog has a breed with an unknown size-influencing gene. If we have missed your dog’s weight, your dog may be a scientific discovery waiting to happen! Please be sure to go to the Research tab and complete the Nutrition & Exercise assessment, where you can answer the question "Has your dog been weighed in the past 3 months, and if so how much does he or she weigh" by telling us your dog’s actual weight. This information will inform our ongoing research into weight, nutrition and exercise in dogs.
Haplotypes are particular DNA sequences that are inherited entirely from a dog’s mom (maternal) or dad (paternal).
Because they are inherited whole, your dog and his or her mom share the exact same maternal haplotype. If you have a male dog, your dog and his dad share the exact same paternal haplotype (female dogs don’t inherit paternal haplotypes).
Because most breeds were started with only a few individual dogs, many breeds are dominated by only one or a few haplotypes.
Haplogroups are groups of similar DNA sequences (called haplotypes) that are inherited entirely from the mother (maternal) or father (paternal) and don’t get shuffled up like other parts of your dog’s genome.
These groups all originally descend from one male or female wolf, usually one that lived tens of thousands of years ago. Because they are inherited whole and not shuffled like other DNA, they can be used to trace the ancestral routes that dogs took around the globe en route to your home.
Only male dogs have paternal haplogroups because they are determined by the Y chromosome, which only male dogs have. Both males and females have maternal haplogroups, which come from a part of DNA called the mitochondrial DNA.
All dogs are related and share some DNA. Siblings share lots of their DNA (half of it in fact), cousins share a bit less (an eighth), and so on. Because dog breeds are made up of a closed group of dogs, all dogs in that breed share a lot of their DNA, typically about as much as second cousins, though it varies by breed. Different breeds that are closely related share somewhat less DNA, and dogs from very different breeds share even less DNA (but still much more DNA than either dog shares with a cat).
DNA is inherited in pieces, called chromosomes, that are passed along from parent to offspring. Each generation, these chromosomes are broken up and shuffled a bit in a process known as recombination. So, the length of the segments your dog shares with his ancestors decreases with each generation above him: he shares longer segments with his mom than his grandma, longer segments with his grandma than his great-grandma, and so on.
We can use the length of segments Leo shares with our reference dogs to see how many generations it has been since they last shared an ancestor. Long segments of DNA that are identical to known purebred dogs tell Embark's scientists that Leo has, without a doubt, a relative from that breed. By testing over 200,000 genetic markers, we build up his genes one DNA segment at a time, to learn the ancestry with great certainty. Other dog DNA tests look at many fewer genetic markers and have to take a guess at breed ancestry based on that.
Look closely and you'll probably find Leo has some physical and/or behavioral resemblance with his ancestor's breeds. The exact similarity depends on which parts of DNA Leo shares with each breed. Some traits associated with each breed are listed in the Breed & Ancestry section of our website. Embark will tell you even more about Leo's traits soon!
P.S. In a small proportion of cases, we find dogs that don’t share segments with other dogs we have tested, indicating the presence of a rare breed that is not part of our reference panel or possibly a true "village dog" without any purebred relatives at all. In these rare cases we contact the owner to find out more and let them know about their unique dog before they get their results. With this in-depth detective work, we are pushing science forward by identifying genetically unique groups of dogs.
Let us know with our contact form or by email at howdy@embarkvet.com.
Yes! Some dogs descend from other dogs that were themselves mixed breed. These other dogs can give small contributions to the ancestry of your dog, so small that they are no longer recognizable as any one particular breed. We call this portion unresolved or “Supermutt” since it confers super powers! Just kidding. But we do think supermutts really are super!
“Leo is the most friendly and happy dog i have very met. He always finds a way to make friends every where we go.”
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Siberian Husky
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Our algorithms predict this is the most likely family tree to explain Leo’s breed mix, but this family tree may not be the only possible one.
DNA sequences that are close together on a chromosome tend to be inherited together. Because of this, we can use genetic variation surrounding a mutation (i.e. "linked" to it) to infer the presence or absence of a mutation of interest.
Linkage tests do not directly assay a mutation of interest; therefore, they may not be perfectly predictive of your dog’s true genotype.
Through Leo’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.
A2 is a very ancient maternal line. Most likely it was one of the major female lines that contributed to the very first domesticated dogs in Central Asia about 15,000 years ago. Some of the line stayed in Central Asia to the present day, and frequently appear as Tibetan Mastiffs and Akitas. Those that escaped the mountains of Central Asia sought out other cold spots, and are now found among Alaskan Malamutes and Siberian Huskies. This lineage is also occasionally found in several common Western breeds, such as German Shepherds and Labrador Retrievers. Curiously, all New Guinea Singing Dogs descend from this line. These are an ancient and very interesting breed found in the mountains of Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately, they are now endangered. They are closely related to the Australian dingo, so you could say its cousins are dingos! This line is also common in village dogs in Southeast and East Asia. Unlike many other lineages, A2 did not spread across the whole world, probably because it did not have the opportunity to hitch its wagon to European colonialism - or because these dogs just prefer hanging out in mountains, tundras, islands, and other hard-to-reach places!
Part of the A2 haplogroup, this haplotype occurs most commonly in Siberian Huskies, Alaskan Malamutes, Labrador Retrievers, and village dogs from Alaska.
Some other Embark dogs with this haplotype:
Through Leo’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.
A is the distant relative of some of the most numerous paternal lineages in the world. Characterized by a single sub-lineage, this is a rare and interesting paternal line! The A line is found most commonly in Siberian Huskies and in Alaskan village dogs. It seems plausible that this paternal lineage diverged within the last 10,000 years from a group arriving with the first Arctic explorers. The recent ancestors of dogs with this lineage actually allowed humans to survive in some of the most forbidding conditions on the face of the earth!
The lone member of the A haplogroup, this haplotype occurs most commonly in Siberian Huskies and village dogs from Alaska.
Some other Embark dogs with this haplotype:
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