Despite its fear of humans, dogxim gradually allowed some to approach if they were careful and calm, Ms. Ferrari said.
“So at times she would let herself be touched and even petted, also interacting and sometimes even playing with toys,” she added.
The animal was castrated as part of her treatment, so scientists are unsure if she could have reproduced, but believe it would have been possible.
Scientists examined the dogxim’s genes and found 76 chromosomes. Only one canid, the maned wolf, has this number of chromosomes, and it appears so different from the recently discovered Brazilian animal that scientists have ruled it out.
A dog has 78 chromosomes and a pampas fox 74 and hybridizing the two would produce 76 chromosomes. No other interspecific species could produce the dogxim karyotype, the team says.
Mitochondrial DNA, passed down from the mother in the cell’s energy-producing capsules, revealed the fox’s heritage. However, elsewhere in the genome were clear stretches of dog-like DNA.
“In our study, we recorded the first case of hybridization between a species of wild canid and the domestic dog,” the study’s first author, Bruna Elenara Szynwelski, a doctoral student in genetics and molecular biology at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. .
“But, unlike cases of hybridization studied in North America, Europe and Africa, this hybridization occurred between species of distinct genera: lycalopex and canis.”