Kathleen Morrill The genes behind the heroīalto wasn’t like the floofy, handsome Siberian husky of today. The Alaskan sled dog Balto shares common ancestry with modern Asian and Arctic canine lineages. “Even though he was so famous, we can still find out new things.” “We were able to build on what we knew about him,” Moon says. Black-and-white historical photos also obscure some of his physiognomy. “We gave him a tummy rub,” Moon jokes.īalto’s taxidermied body is preserved at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, but it’s become “sun-bleached,” warping the details of his coloring. The DNA sample the researchers analyzed came from the skin of the taxidermied Balto’s underbelly. “Balto represents this kind of snapshot in human and dog history because the two are obviously completely intertwined,” first author Katie Moon, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz’s paleogenomics lab, tells Inverse. Researchers used the information they gleaned from his genome to predict his eye color, coat color, and standing height. The study confirms a few traits we already know about Balto as well as some others that one can’t discern by appearance alone. Photo courtesy of Cleveland Public Library/Photograph Collection Sequencing Balto Part of the Zoonomia Project, this study details Balto’s heritage and brings genomics a big step forward.īalto and his owner, Gunnar Kasson, ca. and Sweden sequenced and analyzed Balto’s genome, publishing the findings in a study on April 27 in the journal Science. Now we know a little more about the hero dog. (While Balto has gotten all the credit - including a statue in Manhattan’s Central Park and a Disney animated movie - it was actually an older, more experienced sled dog named Togo who covered the most ground.) He and his musher, Gunnar Kasson, thundered into Nome just before dawn on February 2 with the life-saving serum. One novice, three-year-old sled dog led the final stretch his name was Balto. Twenty mushers volunteered to traverse the Iditarod Trail in the Great Race of Mercy with their trusty Siberian huskies. There was only one hope left for transportation: a sled dog relay. It was the dead of an Alaskan winter, with temperatures dipping to negative 50 degrees Fahrenheit. The closest city with the antidote (a simple antibiotic) was Anchorage, 500 miles away. In January 1925, doctors in Nome, Alaska saw the stirrings of a diphtheria outbreak, a deadly infectious disease.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |