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by bitwize 264 days ago
That would be interesting, because the modern thinking goes that modern wolves are as different from wolves around the time of the wolf-dog split as modern dogs are. So if there was recent wolf interbreeding in the husky lineage, it's a different kind of wolf than what the first dogs were descended from. They're all very similar animals, so it may only show up on DNA tests, but there may be a sort of genetic timestamp showing when the last wolf admixture was that's visible on a DNA test.
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I have doubts that changes in selection pressure on wolves in their natural environment, no matter how many generations, is remotely close to domestication and selective breeding.
The thousands of years of selection in the Arctic shaped Huskies, not the old wolf/husky interbreeding, which only left small but distinct genetic markers. Those came from an ancient Arctic wolf that split off around the same time as the ancestors of dogs and modern wolves, which is why they still show up so clearly today.