These are hybrids between domestic dogs and golden jackals:
The Sulimov dogs are the only breed I know of that was bred to be a sniffer dog.
The Russian government keeps a tight leash on these dogs, so I don’t think there is any chance of anyone getting one as pet in this country.
The original mix was between a reindeer herding spitz called a Lapinporokoira and a golden jackal from Turkmenistan. Other breeds of domestic dog have been added, but these dogs have a very strong jackalish and herding spitz appearance.
The original dogs were kept at 3/4 Lapinporokoira and 1/4 golden jackal.
The jackals were chosen to produce this dog because the jackals are known to have a better sense of smell than domestic dogs. If your diet is carrion and you don’t live with messy humans, you need a very strong sense of smell to find food.
Klim Sulimov decided to create a golden jackal hybrid to make a super sniffer dog.
I would love to see how these dogs compare to more conventional breeds.
Now, as I have said before, golden jackals can interbreed with domestic dogs. However, domestic dogs and golden jackals have to be raised together before they consider each other mates. Jackal-dogs really aren’t that common, although it suspected that the wolfish golden jackal from Egypt may have some dog in it.
Sulimov had to imprint his male jackals with dogs when they were puppies or they wouldn’t mate with domestic bitches. Female jackals more easily accepted male dogs as mates.
This might mean any hybrid offspring that occur in the wild are derived from male dogs crossing with female jackals. The reverse may not happen without human intervention.
And that may be why golden jackals have not contributed to the dog genome.
It seems like they would. Jackals and dogs scavenge in the same sorts of areas, and some of the dogs from Canis aureus’s range look a lot like they have jackal ancestry.
Darwin and Konrad Lorenz put a lot of stock into jackal origins for at least some domestic dogs.
But none of the genetic studies have found any hint of this golden jackal blood.
However, I don’t think anyone has looked at how dogs have affect on the golden jackal species.
We now know that black wolves and coyotes get their coloration from the occasional influx of dog genes.
I’ve never heard of a black jackal, but maybe they have other genes that come from dogs.
It’s something worth exploring.
This is amazing stuff. As you can guess from the name I’m very interested in jackals, and I’ve always wondered about the potential for interbreeding when it comes to Golden jackals and Grey wolves etc. Thanks for posting this!
This makes me wonder about Bloodhounds. Are they really superior man trailers, or this a myth? If they really are innately superior as man trailers, it might be a good idea to cross them with the golden jackals to create a dog with more stamina and one less likely to die of bloat by the age of seven.
All I know is that bloodhounds have more olfactory receptor cells than other breeds.
I remember reading that somewhere, but I can’t remember.
Of course bloodhounds are a genetic mess.
I don’t know how many these hybrids have.
Hounds have such strong scenting ability that they have what is called olfactory adaption on even the coldest trails. What happens is the hound have their noses on the ground scenting the trail, but after about two minutes their brains and olfactory receptors become accustomed to the odor. The dog can’t track after that sets in because it can no longer smell the odor. So they have to stick their noses in the air for a few minutes until their receptors begin to register the scent as distinct. If you are running a pack of dogs, at least one or two dogs will be detecting the scent, while the rest are trying to “clear” their nasal receptors.
I have read that the jackals are less susceptible to this, which is why they are better scenting animals.
Interesting discussion-with pictures-of the decline of the Bloodhound from its days as a celebrated working dog:
http://www.krkennels.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php?t2040.html
A century ago, the author of this book used Bloodhounds to
hunt Grizzlies:
http://www.high-lonesomebooks.com/cgi-bin/hlb/2723.html
Bloodhounds have the same olfactory abilities as other (normal-nosed) dogs.
The heaps of “lore” about extra scent receptors, skin folds, ears, etc. piled up by bloodhound folk are epic, but mostly bullshit.
They do, when bred for work, have a stronger behavioral focus on following a trail than other dogs. Their persistence is easy to build, and it is difficult to distract a trained one. This is their genetics.
Despite what the good ol’ boys seem to believe, they are not born as operational SAR trailing dogs, and poor training or no training produces a worse-than-useless animal that “looks the part” and can misdirect a search with fatal results.
Almost every dog has enough nose to do the work. It’s what’s behind the nose that makes the difference in potential, and the training that either realizes it or screws the pooch.
I have never seen any evidence that jackals (or wolves or coyotes or whatever) have superior olfactory abilities to domestic dogs’. It does appear that bears do, but that doesn’t lend itself to practical applications.
I think this hybridization experiment is a gimmick. The use of the “German shepherd” as a straw dog is about what I’d expect.
By the way, dogs’ scent receptors don’t acclimate to scents the way you describe. Humans’ do. When a dog on a trail or in a scent cone casts, he is finding the edges of the scent in order to keep track of gradients and determine direction.
Jackals have a better sense of smell:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1977094.stm
We humans are just so unqualified to judge on dogs’ and other animals’ scenting ability! Take it from someone(moi) who has ZERO sense of smell! But it is a fascinating subject…..I agree with Houlie that probably a lot of the hype on Bloodhounds’ long ears, skin folds, etc. helping them scent better is very likely just hoo-haw–although it certainly sounds plausible, and might have some validity in some situations–every trail and each circumstance is unique, of course. What is misleading is someone proposes such a theory, and although there is no real proof, it sounds so good everyone just starts repeating it as fact, and so it becomes accepted as such. But there are plenty of cases where other dog breeds/types have outperformed Bloodhounds in certain scenarios, minus the floppy ears and wrinkly skin. Some of the REAL reasons Bloodhounds make superb mantrailers(if they are genetically sound–something that is getting rarer and rarer, and my advice for a healthy as possible Bloodhound is to stay as far away from show stock as possible–there are working lines of Bloodhounds out there) is they are slow and methodic(at least in comparison to other scent hounds!), and have had most of the game drive bred out of them–despite the Hollywood image to the contrary, almost NO ONE actually uses Bloodhounds to actually hunt game! They tend to be way too slow and gentle for good hunting dogs–which makes them perfect to trail people! I got involved some years ago with some Search And Rescue dog people, and foolishly attempted to train two of my wolf hybrids I had at the time for the work. My two animals did GREAT, and regularly outperformed the Bloodhounds in our training sessions–they really seemed to have fun with it, and loved tracking down the human “rabbits” we used in training! HOWEVER, human prejudice reared its ugly head, and I was bluntly told that it was highly unlikely, no matter how well trained my taboo wolf dogs were, that they would ever be allowed on an actual search for a missing person. The fear(justifiable, alas) that if the media got ahold of it, and my “savage” wolf dogs were out tracking a lost child or elderly person, it could cause a lot of P R problems(sigh). So we finally dropped out and took up sledding/carting, which they took to like ducks to water! But they did very well, certainly, and I could see where it would certainly be possible for Jackal hybrids to do the same, with less silly human stigmas attached. Of course one reason my animals and these Jackal crosses do well is that the human trainers, because of there own perceptions involving the animals’ genetics, just put more effort into training, that would work just as well with a suitable dog breed!
This is what bloodhounds were used for.
It is a myth that they were called bloodhounds because 1. they are bloodthirsty and 2. they are the oldest “blooded” (purebred) dogs.
They were actually used on leashes to trail blood spoor.
One Sulimov Dog live in New York.
[…] only dogs that are known to have the blood of species other than wolves in them are things like the Sulimov dogs, which have golden jackal blood in them, and the intentionally and accidentally bred […]
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Please contact me about obtaining a Sulimov.
Sulimov dogs are owned by Aeroflot, and they are not available for the general public.