The Queen's Dog Secret: Why Are Corgis Short Legs?
Corgi, the queen's pet dog dumps all beings with short legs and round ass, but why are the legs so short? Princess Elizabeth playing with her corgi, her father's Labrador, in 1936. Source: Flickr, Public domain Author: Red Queen Compilation: Red Queen Tips: It takes about 10 minutes to read this article. Since 1933, my father gave Princess Elizabeth a corgi named Dookie. The hobby never stops. The word corgi is of Welsh origin and means "dwarf dog". Why are dogs so short? We have to start with the dog's growth process. So, here comes the short legs! Image source: Why are the dog legs so short on Pixabay? Corgi's "short legs" phenomenon, called disproportional dwarfism, is caused by chondrodysplasia. The growth points of the limb bones are calcified in advance, so that the leg bones stop growing very early, forming short and curved legs. "Come and play with me!" Source: Pixabay In 2009, Elaine Ostrander, Heidi Parker and others of the National Human Genome Research Institute, in order to find out The origin of "Little Legs", the genes of 76 breeds of dogs (8 of which are "Little Legs") were analyzed. It turned out that the genes of the "little short-legged" dog were not something missing, but something more. Cute little legs. Source: The extra thing from Pixabay is a gene, which is responsible for making a protein called "fibroblast growth factor 4", or FGF4 for short. This is caused by mistakes in genetic work. If you think of an organism's genes as an archive, all the information needed for life to function is stored in it. The hard drive that stores this information is DNA. The big butt is also the cute point of Corgi. Image source: Pixabay However, the information in DNA cannot be directly extracted, and another molecule, messenger RNA (mRNA), is needed to interpret the information in DNA before it can be put into use. But sometimes, after the messenger RNA gets the DNA information, it will create another DNA "hard disk" according to this information and stuff it back into the gene. In this way, there is an extra copy of the gene in the archive, called a retrogene. Mengmeng's short legs are multiplied by two. Source: "Little short legs" like the Corgi from Pixabay have one more FGF4 gene than ordinary dogs, that is, one more reverse transcription gene. How the extra genes lead to "short legs" is still unclear. But scientists speculate that it may have caused the dog to make more of the FGF4 protein, and the excess protein then affected another gene, which makes another protein called fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 ( fibroblast growth factor receptor 3), referred to as FGFR3. "Hmph, how about short legs?" Image source: Too much FGFR3 on Pixabay can lead to achondroplasia. In humans, the main symptom of achondroplasia is abnormally short limbs. Scholars hope that the study of "dog legs" will improve our understanding of the human achondroplasia disease. By the way, this study does not help "shorter people of normal height" grow taller, forget it. The history of short legs starts with a novel. Source: Pixabay has short legs, but flexible. In addition to artificially bred short legs, there are also naturally created short legs. A major change in the evolution of mammals from terrestrial to aquatic is that the legs became shorter to reduce drag in the water. Terrie M. Williams and others at the University of California wanted to study the movement patterns of semi-aquatic "short-legged" animals (such as otters) on land. Otters made a comparison, and they brought in Corgis by the way. The researchers recorded the running movements of North American otters (Lontra canadensis) and corgis for analysis. It turns out that Corgi's short legs are more capable than we thought. People are running fast! Source: Pixabay otters have two gaits, one is walking, and the other is running with a lot of jumping movements. When the speed exceeds 1.2 meters per second, the otter will switch from "walking" to "running while hopping", and the fastest speed is 1.6 meters per second. Corgi has three gaits, the slowest is walking, the speed exceeds 1.1 meters per second, switches to trot, the speed exceeds 2.2 meters per second, and then switches to gallop. These are also the three movement patterns typical of land mammals. Corgi's top speed reaches 7.4 meters per second. Maybe faster than you can run. Corgis have short legs but are very active. Source: Pixabay's short legs may not necessarily run fast (of course, this does not mean that short legs can also reach the speed of a cheetah). The main difference between corgis and otters lies in the different movement patterns: the running corgis have small spine bending movements and have four legs hanging in the air. . The adaptation of otters as excellent swimmers comes at the expense of some of their land-based athletic abilities. Corgis can swim too! Source: Pixabay Finally, let's talk about a little short-legged anecdote. In 2018, Betty McGuire of Cornell University and others published an article in the Journal of Zoology. They found that when the male dog crossed one leg to urinate, the smaller the dog, the higher the leg was crossed, and the higher the urine was spilled. The researchers speculate that the smaller dogs are creating the illusion of "there's a big dog here" by urinating a little higher...which is pretty cheesy. This article is from the species calendar (ID: guokrpac), and it may not be reprinted without authorization. If you need it, please contact [email protected]