Canines take over University of Otago campus

Dogs outnumbered students at the University of Otago yesterday. Pooches ranging from pugs to boisterous labradors had their mouths swabbed for DNA on the Dunedin campus grounds as part of a project to gather information on the connection between canine behaviour and genetics.

A large bag of treats proved enough to keep most of the dogs under control, however dog owner Yiwen Zheng could not stop her dog Huahua from eating the swab.

The dog gathering signalled the start of a Genetics Society of Australasia conference in conjunction with the New Zealand Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology which will draw about 250 delegates to the University of Otago this week.

Darwin Dogs project leader Dr Elinor Karlsson said she expected New Zealand dogs would have different characteristics compared to the thousands of dogs which had been tested by the citizen-led project in America since it started in 2015.

"New Zealand will have a lot stronger working dog origins, a lot of dogs were brought over here for sheep herding, and at the same time when the Europeans showed up there were already dogs here so you have the dogs Maori had and presumably those genetics are still in the New Zealand dog population."

Athleticism, determination and curiosity were obvious traits in the Dunedin dogs, with more than a few slipping their leads to make new canine friends.

While it was too early to conclude the genetic basis of a dog's behaviour, the study had revealed an interesting connection between dogs and humans, Dr Karlsson said.

"I think you can ask any dog owner this, and they probably agree, but it turns out that people and dogs just aren't as different sometimes as we like to think." The presentation and treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) in humans and canines was one example.

"When comparing dogs with OCD with ones that didn't have it we found that the genes we were honing in on were in the same kind of pathways in the brain as what we saw when we looked at people with OCD."

Like humans, when a dog developed OCD it would perform a normal behaviour too often, and the condition was treated with the same drugs in humans and dogs, Dr Karlsson said.

University of Otago department of geology lecturers Dr Christina Riesselman and Dr Chris Moy hoped the project would offer some answers on the unique behaviour of their golden retriever Arlo.

Arlo made more of a meow than a bark and favoured a particular "security blanket", Dr Riesselman said. Conference organiser and University of Otago centre for genetics Professor Peter Dearden said he hoped to find out the breed of his dog Barkley, who looked like a "lab crossed with a pony".