Here’s another similar ask on the subject that came in:
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You recently got into a discussion on dog body types and obesity and ended up comparing the body of a healthy azawakh and an overweight one, but in the picture you used for the healthy dog you could see its ribs. So I was wondering what about the breed or any type of dog could lead to that being a healthy appearance. Is is something with what the dogs were originally breed for or maybe the environment? (it was also mentioned that azawakhs are capable of withstanding extremely high temperatures)
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These are the dogs involved in the question, for those just tuning in:
Correct weight azawakh above, obese below.
I asked @desertwindhounds to answer this for me because she’s got a huge background in sighthounds, both from her own breeding and extensive research. Here’s her take:
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Azawakh have what is known as very ‘dry’ musculature and skin. The muscles are very flat and the skin is very thin and tight, and their coat is typically very thin with very short hair. Combined with the lack of body fat, what you get when you are looking at many Azawakh is the same effect as a human body builder (without the deliberate dehydration.) This is an endurance runner, not a sprinter with big bunchy fast twitch muscles like a racing greyhound. The look is simply the way the dog is constructed.
The purpose of fat and muscle is not to ‘cushion the bones’ on any dog, muscles move the dog and fat provides insulation or energy storage. You do NOT want a layer of fat on a working sighthound, it insulates the body. Running produces a lot of heat and some of that is dumped through the skin, a fat layer prevents that and the dog will overheat. Most sighthounds appreciate a bed to lie on, but something I have never seen in a country of origin dog, which don’t typically have cushions or blankets, they sleep on the ground, in a basic shelter, or in a den, is pressure sores. COO Azawakh have a large variety of appearance, and many do not have the extremely dry look that is appreciated by Western breeders. It’s a matter of personal preference in Western breeding.
Note that the coat has a good deal of influence on how thin and dry the dog looks. A smooth Saluki in hard condition with no body fat and a very short coat can have a similar dry appearance. A feathered Saluki in the same condition would not, because the coat is long enough to smooth out the appearance, it hides the extreme contours. With coated sighthounds like Borzoi or Afghans you’d never see that degree of dryness, the hair hides it. Sighthounds also have much thinner skin than other dog types, and a good sighthound will have very tight, elastic ligaments, including the layer under the skin (if you pull the skin up on a sighthound, it should pull back strongly), so the skin will actually ‘cling’ more tightly to the dog, emphasizing the musculature.
It is really difficult to explain this to someone who is freaked out by the appearance. It helps to get your hands on such a dog. They do NOT feel frail or sickly, they feel solid and muscular, dense, and they should have plenty of muscle over the loin and along the withers. It feels, frankly, like running your hands over a human marathon runner with little body fat. Same thing, actually, except that humans are constructed in such a way that they don’t have a lot of pokey boney bits that are visible.
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This is something you can also see in the Akhal-Teke horses. My friend and I often discussed the fact that one of my character designs was unrealistic because ‘any animal that looks “shrinkwrapped” with visible pokey boney bits is unhealthy.’
This is not so. You see conformation like that of the Azawakh and the Akhal-Teke in basically any larger animal that’s bred to run long distances for long periods of time, over harsh terrain, in warm weather, and live on sparser rations.
Akhal-Tekes are NOTORIOUS in the equestrian community for their strange shape and are often called the ‘sighthounds/greyhounds of horses’. Like the Azawakh, the Teke is supposed to have thin, tight skin and tight, elastic ligaments, and that’s why almost all Akhal Tekes have the muscles on their ribs appear far more pronounced than other similarly-built horse breeds like the Thoroughbred and even the Marwari, who’s closer in conformation to the Teke than any other horse breed. The weirdly long back and very narrow loin and croup are a product of breeding for speed and stamina in sparse conditions not unlike the ones Azawkh and other sighthounds come from (namely, southern Turkmenistan). The chestnut horse in the bottom picture above is probably not a pure Teke specifically because the back isn’t as long and the legs and chest are layered with thicker muscles rather than thin wiry muscles like the topmost picture and the ones below.
Whenever you CAN’T see an AKhal-Teke’s ribs (you can see them here if you look close, however this horse appears to be young and therefore not quite as muscular, and the dapples on its coat help to hide the faint shape of its ribs) and its barrel doesn’t have that extreme upward slope around the stifle (the ‘tuck’ discussed in the dogs) it’s generally an indication that the horse isn’t in great shape, because their physical appearance is a direct product of breeding, AND their environment–and this lean and trim physique isn’t at all uncommon in animals bred for endurance roles in harsh environments.
But to anyone who isn’t well-versed in the breed, like my teacher who owns Thoroughbred racehorses and has never seen an Akhal-Teke in her life, these horses look bizarre, emaciated and deformed. Just like most people would probably consider any animal with visible ribs unhealthy, but that’s because I feel a lot of times people go by human standards of ‘healthy physical appearance’. Generally, if you can see that many bones on a human, they’re underweight, even if they’re really just in trim, good shape. But you can’t use those same standards on an animal, and of course, again, there’s no substitute for actually being in front of the animal and being able to feel it. Akhal-Tekes are REALLY sturdy horses. Most horses don’t want to budge when they’re in the cross-ties and you need them to scoot over, but if you push your weight against their side enough eventually they will move to avoid losing their balance. Tekes just kind of….stay where they are. Like a rock. Which goes to show that there’s a LOT of raw strength in these ‘sickly-looking’ animals.
Sorry for hijacking your post about dogs. The discussion about sighthounds just really reminded me of this.
No need to apologize – this is great information! I knew of Akhal-Tekes from the photos of the famous “golden horse” but I didn’t realize they had such interesting conformation.
Yes, they’re considered domesticated. Humans have kept them for multiple, multiple generations and selectively bred them to an extent that they are now very different genetically and phenotypically from their wild ancestors.
That’s the result of a long period of selective breeding. There’s some pretty strange shapes we’ve bred into those fish, several of them making me downright uncomfortable. Some of these fish can’t see in front of their face, they can’t see what they’re eating. They’re pretty, but I wish people would remember these things are alive too.
I was very keen on Bettas in my adolescence. I think the most I had was twelve at one point. I would classify them as domesticated as well, because we took a fish like this:
and bred them into these:
They’re genetically and phenotypically different from the wild type betta. It shows, too. Breeding half-moons and over half-moons is very challenging, especially if you’re using a ‘quality’ male. The volume of finnage they have to drag around is huge, and they breed by wrapping their body around a female and squeezing her. The female is lucky enough to have much shorter fins.
They are very pretty and I like them a lot, these little fish to actually have personality and attitude, but I also feel like going beyond super delta is too far.
The welfare aspects of breeding fish to such extreme shapes s generally overlooked, and will probably remain that was because fish are often viewed more like ornaments than like animals. I hope that changes, but I doubt it will happen very soon.
And I’d like to take a moment to indulge a pet peeve. Someone, somewhere, had the bright idea of taking my favorite species of fish, the beautiful pearl gourami…
… and inbreeding it to the point where we end up with creatures like this…
I mean, WHY did you have to do this? It just saddens me like you wouldn’t believe.
Just because we can do these things, doesn’t always mean we should.
There can be no death in the animal kingdom so simultaneously horrifying, pathetic and hilarious than just getting swallowed whole head first by a big snail while you’re fucking sleeping
I like how this hearkens back to some of the most primitive single-celled predators: you just fucking engulf the entire other animal, glomp.
There are so many cool things to talk about with cone snails and their predation habits that this only brushes the surface of it!
Cone snails are nocturnal predators with some really impressive chemical weapons at their command – they not only paralyze their prey but are thought to release chemicals into the water to help calm prey before they even attack. Each type of cone snail is super
super-specialized for the type of prey they go after and how they hunt. Some snails are vermivores that hunt and eat worms, some snails are molluscivores that eat other shellfish, and some (like this one) are piscavores who hunt and eat fish. All cone snails use toxins to immobilize their prey and assist with the hunt, but what’s incredible is that within the piscavore cone snails there are two separate sub-groups – they hunt differently and utilize different types of venom.
Most fish-eating cone snails paralyze their prey by sticking them with an envenomed “harpoon” they extend out from their body – once the prey is stuck, they reel it back toward their body and then engulf it. The conotoxin mixture used in this hunting method paralyzes the fish in a rigid posture so it can be reeled back to the snail without risk of injury or escape.
Some piscavores, though, use a ‘net feeding’ technique like what is seen in this video.
It’s often used to engulf multiple small fish, but the snail in this video is using it to grab a prey item much larger than itself. Once the prey is mostly in the snail’s net, it is jabbed with a “harpoon” carrying conotoxins that paralyze them in a relaxed posture so they can be more effectively swallowed.
For more information about the incredible that is cone snails and some great videos, go to The Cone Snail. (Hunting snail images are sourced from one of their great articles).
Plume de Lynx 