Popular genetics tests can’t tell you much about your dog’s personality, according to a recent study.

A team of geneticists recently found no connection between simple genetic variants and behavioral traits in more than 3,200 dogs, even though previous studies suggested that hundreds of genes might predict aspects of a dog’s behavior and personality. That’s despite the popularity of at-home genetic tests that claim they can tell you whether your dog’s genes contain the recipe for anxiety or a fondness for cuddles.

This is Max, and no single genetic variant can explain why he is the way he is. Credit: Kiona Smith

Gattaca for dogs, except it doesn’t work

University of Massachusetts genomicist Kathryn Lord and her colleagues compared DNA sequences and behavioral surveys from more than 3,000 dogs whose humans had enrolled them in the Darwin’s Ark project (and filled out the surveys). “Genetic tests for behavioral and personality traits in dogs are now being marketed to pet owners, but their predictive accuracy has not been validated,” wrote Lord and her colleagues in their recent paper.

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© Alberto Menendez Cervero

The fossil and genetic evidence agree that modern humans originated in Africa. The most genetically diverse human populations—the groups that have had the longest time to pick up novel mutations—live there today. But the history of what went on within Africa between our origins and the present day is a bit murky.

That’s partly because DNA doesn’t survive long in the conditions typical of most of the continent, which has largely limited us to trying to reconstruct the past using data from present-day populations. The other part is that many of those present-day populations have been impacted by the vast genetic churn caused by the Bantu expansion, which left its traces across most of the populations south of the Sahara.

But a new study has managed to extract genomes from ancient samples in southern Africa. While all of these are relatively recent, dating from after the end of the most recent glacial period, they reveal a distinct southern African population that was relatively large, outside of the range of previously described human variation, and it remained isolated until only about 1,000 years ago.

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© Edwin Remsberg

Many dog breeds are noted for their personalities and behavioral traits, from the distinctive vocalizations of huskies to the herding of border collies. People have worked to identify the genes associated with many of these behaviors, taking advantage of the fact that dogs can interbreed. But that creates its own experimental challenges, as it can be difficult to separate some behaviors from physical traits distinctive to the breed—small dog breeds may seem more aggressive simply because they feel threatened more often.

To get around that, a team of researchers recently did the largest gene/behavior association study within a single dog breed. Taking advantage of a population of over 1,000 golden retrievers, they found a number of genes associated with behaviors within that breed. A high percentage of these genes turned out to correspond to regions of the human genome that have been associated with behavioral differences as well. But, in many cases, these associations have been with very different behaviors.

Gone to the dogs

The work, done by a team based largely at Cambridge University, utilized the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, which involved over 3,000 owners of these dogs filling out annual surveys that included information on their dogs’ behavior. Over 1,000 of those owners also had blood samples obtained from their dogs and shipped in; the researchers used these samples to scan the dogs’ genomes for variants. Those were then compared to ratings of the dogs’ behavior on a range of issues, like fear or aggression directed toward strangers or other dogs.

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