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Concept
Husky
Summary
Husky is a general term for a dog used in the polar regions, primarily and specifically for work as sled dogs. It refers to a traditional northern type, notable for its cold-weather tolerance and overall hardiness. Modern racing huskies that maintain arctic breed traits (also known as Alaskan huskies) represent an ever-changing crossbreed of the fastest dogs.
Huskies have continued to be used in sled-dog racing, as well as expedition and trek style tour businesses, and as a means of essential transportation in rural communities. Huskies are also kept as pets, and groups work to find new pet homes for retired racing and adventure-trekking dogs.
Nearly all dogs' genetic closeness to the gray wolf is due to admixture. However, several Arctic breeds also show a genetic closeness with the now-extinct Taimyr wolf of North Asia due to admixture: the Siberian Husky and Greenland Dog (which are also historically associated with Arctic human populations) and to a lesser extent, the Shar Pei and Finnish Spitz. An admixture graph of the Greenland Dog indicates a best-fit of 3.5% shared material; however, an ancestry proportion ranging between 1.4% and 27.3% is consistent with the data and indicates admixture between the Taimyr wolf and the ancestors of these four high-latitude breeds.
This introgression could have provided early dogs living in high latitudes with phenotypic variation beneficial for adaption to a new and challenging environment, contributing significantly to the development of the husky. It also indicates that the ancestry of present-day dog breeds descends from more than one region.
The term "husky" first came into usage in the mid to late 1700s. At this time, "Esquimaux" or "Eskimo" was a common term for pre-Columbian Arctic inhabitants of North America. Several dialectal permutations were in use including Uskee, Uskimay and Huskemaw. Thus, dogs used by Arctic people were the dogs of the Huskies, the Huskie's dogs, and eventually simply the husky dogs.
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