My dog has a “wolfiness” stat of 11.4%. I can’t find any information on this beyond the faq on the website which mentions scores up to 10% being normal but nothing note after that. Info?
ResultsI think of the 'wolfiness score" much like Neanderthal DNA found via human DNA testing.
Some folks have more than others. I'm on the high end myself and it's about 4% of my DNA. It doesn't mean there's recent Neanderthals in my ancestry but that's how much of that DNA has been retained over all those millennia.
After a lot of research, you have finally explained this in a way I can understand. Thank you!
My favorite part is that there's some mapped out Neanderthal traits. Here's what I have. . The one about a reduced tendency to sneeze after eating dark chocolate, still makes me laugh.
I think of the 'wolfiness score" much like Neanderthal DNA found via human DNA testing
What's important to understand about ancient DNA is that its "Active DNA" meaning, its epigenetic DNA that instructs the body to behave in a particular way unlike 90% to 99% of the rest of our genetic code that is latent/dormant.
Epigenetic DNA may also show up as phenotypic expression, meaning, something about you could resemble and look like neanderthal all the way up to 4% of you.
Genetic testing only tests epigenetic "active" dna and from studies say, only 1% to 8% of our genome is active (depending on the study).
The rest of our genome is latent/dormant with some of this latent genome possessing the potential to become activated if up-regulated, or "awakened" by environmental factors.
The other possibility for active, epigenetic dna expression is for it to show up in things like liver function, brain processing, or for example whether someone will be a hoarder or not aka non-phenotype epigenetic expression.
So when you see a dog that has 11% ancient wolf DNA, then its have 11% active wolf DNA. And the more Wolflike it looks, then there's a likelihood that the ancient wolf dna is phenotypic. If not then the active ancient DNA is not phenotypic.
There are wolfdogs with 30% to 40% recent wolf DNA that dont look wolf-like at all. It just depends on whether the epigenetic DNA expression belongs to the phenotypic part of the wolfdogs epigenetic DNA profile and how much of it is expressed there.
Thank you so much! Your reply makes a lot of sense. I appreciate the effort.
Our girl has a Wolfiness score of 14.1% Her closest relative on Embark has a score of 3.4%. I’m wondering what’s the highest Wolfiness score that’s been found so far?
I just got my dog’s embark results and her Wolfiness score was almost 26%! I wondered the same thing. I found a dog named Kyo who is 63% Gray Wolf and her Wolfiness score is 46.4%.
Do you have a link to her Embark?
We just adopted this senior dog from our local animal shelter and found out that she is a wolfdog. 26% Wolfiness!
My dog is a whopping Shih Tzu mix (64% Shih Tzu + Lhasa Apso + Bolonka) and she has a wolfiness score of 11.3%. She cannot look any farther from a wolf but she DOES howl and her personality is not exactly docile. Just adding an anecdote.
We just got ours back and ours is 12.6% 😳
Our dog just pegged 18.7%. We are hoping she refrains from eating us at least until we die.
This comment, funny
If she looks wolfy then chances are good that she has phenotypic (active epigenetic) ancient wolf DNA expression. If she doenst then its more than likely the epigenetic test is measuring wolf dna in something other than looks like behavior or eyesight or liver function etc.
Hahaha! I'm with you there!!
My dog has 11.3% He is a supermutt, mainly siberian husky.
One of the primary research interests of Embark's founders is how dogs diverged from wolves, basically what makes wolves wolfy and dogs doggy at the level of DNA. Among the many DNA markers they look at are some chosen because they've noticed that by and large, dogs and wolves tend to differ at those particular markers. Howie's "wolfiness score" essentially measures at how many of those markers he happens to be "wolfy" rather than "doggy." As you mentioned, one rule of thumb Embark regularly cites is that "Wolfiness scores below 10 are almost always due to ancient wolf genes that have survived many generations to be carried in your dog," as opposed to more recent dog-wolf hybridization events in the lines your dog descends from (note that "many" here can and usually does mean "thousands of years back"). Sometimes a high "wolfiness score" is random, and simply a function of how the DNA happened to shake down in a particular individual; other times that individual's ancestry includes breeds that routinely have relatively high "wolfiness" scores (which aren't at all necessarily "wolfy-looking" breeds, since the conserved "wolfy" markers in question might not have anything to do with looks at all).
There was someone awhile back whose purebred Siberian Husky had a "wolfiness" score of 14.1%; they were encouraged to email Embark about it, but I don't think they ever reported back. You could try that. My guess is the 10% figure is meant to be a very ballpark one, and that therefore an 11.4% (as opposed to, say, 33%) still falls well within the random chance category, even though it's certainly not common.