Whether you’ve watched the beloved animated film or walked past his statue in Central Park, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with Balto the sled dog.
Long believed to be a Siberian husky, Balto — perhaps the most famous sled dog of all time — gained superstar status for his role in delivering diphtheria medication to sick children in Nome, Alaska, in 1925. Now, scientists have analyzed his DNA, comparing his genome to the genomes of nearly 700 dogs and wolves to reveal how Balto stacks up against modern canines.
“We can use those comparative resources to see where Balto is different and where he’s the same,” says Katherine Moon, one of the study’s authors and a genomicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “And what do those genes likely do, and what does that mean for what Balto may have looked like or how well he ran.”
The results of the analysis, published in Science in 2023, reveal that the famous canine was a blend of different Asian and Arctic breeds — and more genetically diverse than dogs today. What’s more, the attributes coded in those genes likely helped sled dogs like Balto survive the extreme conditions of the subarctic.
