Roll over Beethoven! And Balto too!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Who doesn’t love a snow dog story? Except the part where they die heroically.
Like a thousand year old breed of endangered Inuit-Canadian sled dogs!
Meet the noble Qimmit. These fluffy boys have lost half their population to climate change. Are they strong enough to survive?
Enter Tatiana Feuerborn and team from the University of Copenhagen. They studied Qimmit DNA samples dating back EIGHT-HUNDRED years.
And? Despite their small population and inbreeding, Qimmit are surprisingly healthy after being isolated for centuries. Add in a dash of European dog DNA. The result? One tough pup!
I guess that Survivor song should be called “Eye of the Qimmit!”
Reference: T. R. Feuerborn et al. ,Origins and diversity of Greenland’s Qimmit revealed with genomes of ancient and modern sled dogs.Science389,163-168(2025).DOI:10.1126/science.adu1990