Venn diagram

Compare your dogs to marty Select one to begin:

marty

Formosan Mountain Dog

No bio has been provided yet

Place of Birth

Taiwan

Current Location

Portland, Oregon, USA

From

Taiwan

This dog has been viewed and been given 2 wags

Genetic Breed Result

Loading...

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. marty 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, Formosan Mountain 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 marty back, you won’t find any ancestral dogs that are part of any of those standardized breeds.

Formosan Mountain Dog

Formosan Mountain Dogs hail from the Formosan Mountain region in Taiwan. Recently, some of these ancient dogs were used as foundational stock to create the Taiwan Dog breed.

Learn More

Loading...

Start a conversation! Message this dog’s humans.

Loading...

Explore

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. marty 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 marty's DNA to a global panel of thousands of village dogs. This plot highlights regions of the world where marty'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.

Explore

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

Loading...

Explore

Through marty’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

A1a

Haplotype

A388

Map

A1a

marty’s Haplogroup

A1a is the most common maternal lineage among Western dogs. This lineage traveled from the site of dog domestication in Central Asia to Europe along with an early dog expansion perhaps 10,000 years ago. It hung around in European village dogs for many millennia. Then, about 300 years ago, some of the prized females in the line were chosen as the founding dogs for several dog breeds. That set in motion a huge expansion of this lineage. It's now the maternal lineage of the overwhelming majority of Mastiffs, Labrador Retrievers and Gordon Setters. About half of Boxers and less than half of Shar-Pei dogs descend from the A1a line. It is also common across the world among village dogs, a legacy of European colonialism.

A388

marty’s Haplotype

Part of the large A1a haplogroup, this haplotype occurs most frequently in Staffordshire Terriers, Labrador Retrievers, and English Bulldogs.

Shar Pei dogs think A1a is the coolest!

Loading...

Explore

Through marty’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.4

Map

C

marty’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.4

marty’s Haplotype

Part of the C haplogroup, the H5a.4 haplotype occurs most commonly in Central Asian Village Dogs. It's a rare find!

The Shiba Inu descends from this relativey rare haplogroup.

Loading...

Explore