Dogs took over the University of Otago yesterday, in a quest to find out the genetic connection between canine behaviour and genetics. The dogs were DNA swabbed by American-based project called Darwin Dogs. It's part of a week-long Genetics Society of Australasia being held by the university.
The Darwin Dogs project leader Dr Elinor Karlsson expects New Zealand dogs to have different characteristics compared to the thousands of dogs which had been tested by the citizen-led project in the US since it started in 2015.
Professor Peter Dearden from the Otago Centre for Genetics took his own dog Barkley along, as he hoped to find out its breed as it looks like a "lab crossed with a pony".
He explains what unique genetic characteristics New Zealand dogs might have, and why.
