Remember the Andean tiger hound and the various strains of double-nosed pointer?
According to that video, it seems that some South American dog fanciers are trying to create an “improved” breed of double-nosed Latin American dog.
This is a good example of how many breeds got started.
If these two dogs in the video did not have the double nose trait, we would think them ordinary pariah-type dogs. We wouldn’t give them a second thought.
However, because they have a double nose, it is now considered a worthy endeavor to turn them into a strain that breeds true.
After all, my breed started out as an unusal color in the wavy/flat-coated retriever breed. It was simply selected for this unusual color in one strain of these dogs.
We are a highly visual species.
Anything unsual in appearance catches our eye. Very often, we get quite excited about unusually colored animals or those with other abnormal physical characteristics.
We breed dogs in so many shapes, sizes, colors, and coats that they all look like separate species, but also have bred virtually all of our domestic animals into such unusual strains. It is simply because dogs have lots of tandem repeats in their DNA sequences that we can produce such unusual specimens in the canine species. I think that the accumulated effects of breeding for so many novelty traits has been detrimental to dogs, but as a species, their ability to morph through selective breeding into so many forms is quite remarkable.
I don’t know whether the South American double-nosed dogs will become a breed, but selecting for an unusual physical trait or behavior is how this process gets started.
