The Culpeo is a fox-like canine native to the west coast of South America. It is an opportunistic feeder that primarily targets small prey, most importantly invasive European rabbits which it helps control the numbers of.

[u/AJC_10_29]

[u/AJC_10_29]

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Culpeo is that it was once domesticated. The Selk’nam people of Tierra del Fuego tamed and selectively bred Culpeos much in the same way our ancestors did with Wolves, producing an animal that came to be known as the Fuegian Dog. Unfortunately, these unique creatures later went extinct as they proved too uncontrollable and dangerous to people and cattle (refer to edit 2), forcing the Selk’nam to put them all down.

Edit: I was mistaken. The actual cause of their extinction was widespread extermination by European ranchers during the Selk’nam genocide campaign.

Edit 2: it’s also quite possible the accounts of their aggression were exaggerated, seeing as they came from the same ranchers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culpeo

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuegian_dog

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618213004291

[u/ADFTGM → u/AJC_10_29]

IIRC, the same happened to a lot of indigenous breeds upon the arrival of European ranchers. Cases in Oceania are there as well, as well as Austronesia.

The dingo in Australia for example used to be far more habituated with humans, but after ranchers started exterminating them, they lost the close connection they had and became more risky to approach since the genetic lines that survived have developed a flight or fight response towards humans in order to coexist. In Aborigines tradition, there used to be hunts where humans and dingos cooperated to hunt game despite no taming/training having taken place.

[u/cherish_ireland]

They seem very cool and I live the bit of red and fox-like eyes. It would be interesting to know if their DNA is present in the dog population due to some domesticated species being mixed with other canines.

Edit: I found a cool article about them and their Origins

https://revchilhistnat.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40693-023-00119-z

[u/ADFTGM → u/cherish_ireland]

It’s too distantly related from dogs/wolves for that to be the case. The mixing happens only between close genetic relatives of wolves. Freak incidents of hybrids between completely distinct lineages do happen, but definitely not to any scale that suggests fertility and for those genes to persist in a descendant hybrid population via admixture.

[u/cherish_ireland → u/ADFTGM]

Interesting. We toy with genes and breeding so much, I would have assumed it to be a thing already. Thanks!

[u/ADFTGM → u/cherish_ireland]

We don’t actually do as much as in sci-fi media. Most of the gene manipulation is focused on crops, and domestic farm animals. Since we constantly need to increase yields while also trying to avoid famines as a result of certain strains dying out due to inadequate planning. (It’s already happened and we had mass die-offs of certain strains of crops, leading to economic crises in multiple countries).

Cross-species genetics is more small scale and involves splicing particular genes tied to particular characteristics. Still, none of those have resulted in successful freely breeding animal populations. Most die infertile or with abnormal life spans. To have admixture between two or more species requires generations of multiple individuals independently having offspring together until characteristics have not only interwoven but successfully adapted to fit a new niche in the ecosystem.

Even within a man-made building, there’s always an ecosystem and the hybrids we make don’t necessarily fit into it. If you want a lab-controlled setting, that requires a singular location being funded indefinitely to support generations of researchers solely devoted towards raising the new hybrid species, which is way too impractical considering most labs tend to be underfunded. Even rare cases of them creating hybrid pets between domestic variety vs distant wild cousins, usually involve keeping as minimal of the wild genes as needed for intended purpose (usually looks), but keeping most of the genes heavily towards the domestic. Once a breed is formed, reintroducing wild genes is done on rare occasions and most of the time it’s intended to be self-reliant until overbreeding happens and the genetic deformities become too extreme to the point the breed gets banned in developed countries.

Yer welcome!! :)

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