Balto had a body built for strength and not speed, disappointing the breeder, who had the dog neutered.īalto's life after the Serum Run was a complicated one involving human exploitation and later salvation. Balto was found to share ancestry with modern Siberian huskies and Alaskan sled dogs as well as Greenland sled dogs, Vietnamese village dogs and Tibetan mastiffs, with no discernible wolf ancestry.īorn in 1919, Balto was part of a population of sled dogs imported from Siberia, dubbed Siberian huskies - though the study showed that these dogs differed substantially from modern Siberian huskies. The researchers examined Balto's genome as part of a dataset of 682 genomes from modern dogs and wolves and a larger assemblage of 240 mammalian genomes, including humans.īalto's genome showed lower rates of inbreeding and a lower burden of rare and potentially damaging genetic variation than almost all modern breed dogs. Balto was among about 150 dogs in a relay lasting 127 hours through temperatures of minus-45 degrees Celsius. That bond between human and dog remains strong, 100 years after Balto's job was done," Moon added.Īs diphtheria - a serious and sometimes fatal bacterial infection - spread among Nome's people, its port was icebound, meaning antitoxin would have to be delivered overland. "Dogs not only offer comfort, support and friendship to humans, but many are actively bred or trained to provide vital services. "Balto personifies the strength of the bond between human and dog, and what that bond is capable of," said Katie Moon, a postdoctoral paleogenomics researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and co-lead author of the study published in the journal Science. Balto, belonging to a population of working sled dogs in Alaska, also was found to have possessed greater genetic diversity and genetic health than modern canine breeds.
Scientists have extracted DNA from a piece of Balto's underbelly skin from the well-preserved museum mount and sequenced the dog's genome as part of an ambitious comparative mammalian genomic research project called Zoonomia.īalto's genome, the scientists found, possessed certain gene variants that may have helped the dog thrive in the extreme Alaskan environment and endure what is now called the Serum Run. But that was not the end of Balto's magnificent deeds.
WASHINGTON - In 1925, a handsome male sled dog named Balto led a 13-dog team that braved blizzard conditions during the grueling final 85km leg of a 1,088km dogsled relay, bringing lifesaving medicine to the Alaskan city of Nome during a diphtheria outbreak.īalto was feted as a hero, the subject of books and movies, and the dog's taxidermy mount still stands on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
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