By David Grimm
If you were walking through a dark forest in ancient Japan, (click here) you might hope to run into an okuri-ōkami, a wolf that would escort you safely to your destination. This creature of folklore may be based on the Japanese wolf, a border collie–size animal with short legs and stubby ears that lived in Japan for thousands of years until humans wiped it out in the early 20th century. Now, scientists studying ancient DNA from this wolf’s bones say they may have solved the long-standing mystery of where it came from: a vanished population of gray wolves in East Asia that also gave rise to modern dogs.
“It’s a very meticulous study,” says Peter Savolainen, a geneticist at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm who was not involved. The research, he says, adds evidence to the idea that dogs arose in East Asia, as he and other researchers suspect, rather than in Europe or the Middle East, as some experts have proposed.
All of today’s dogs likely descend from a single population of gray wolves. But exactly where and when those wolves lived has long been a source of contentious debate. Part of the problem is that although the species persists, that original population has likely vanished, wiping out genetic clues about doggy origins.
Enter the Japanese wolf (Canis lupus hodophilax). Described by some as one of the greatest mysteries in the history of Japanese zoology, the animal’s origins are unclear, as is the route it took to reach Japan. A genetic analysis of remains from a single Japanese wolf published earlier this year found it was closely related to a lineage of Siberian wolves, long thought extinct. Recent evidence also suggests dogs may have arisen in Siberia. Might Japanese wolves and dogs share more than just geography?...
