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Let’s face it, dog owners, you don’t always know what you’re getting when you adopt a dog. They range from fearful and clingy to calm and loving to boisterous and aggressive. By choosing a particular breed, you tilt the odds in your favor in terms of dog personality; still, there is wide within-breed variation, as many a dog parent will lament or celebrate.
Families have won this game of canine roulette for decades by going with the golden retriever. Originally bred as Scottish hunting dogs, goldens have been among the most popular breeds in the United States for decades. The American Kennel Club describes golden retrievers as “outgoing, trustworthy, and eager-to-please family dogs, and relatively easy to train,” adding, “They take a joyous and playful approach to life and maintain this puppyish behavior into adulthood.”
But even goldens have their foibles.
A study published today in PNAS reveals the genetic underpinnings of some behavioral traits in golden retrievers. The authors of the paper suggest that some of the genes that drive aggression, fear of the unknown, and anxiety in goldens underlie related human behaviors.
Read more: “Why Do Some People Look Like Their Dogs?”
The University of Cambridge study team analyzed DNA from 1,300 golden retrievers. Because single dog breeds are not terribly genetically diverse, mapping the genes for personality traits was easier. By matching dogs’ genetic signatures with behavior traits (assessed through comprehensive owner questionnaires), the team uncovered 18 “candidate” genes to explain behaviors like trainability, stranger fear, and aggression.
Of those 18, 12 have human equivalents that are associated with human traits and emotions. The gene PTPN1, for example, is associated with both intelligence and major depression in humans, and with aggressiveness in golden retrievers. And the gene ROMO1 in humans is associated with cognitive performance, but also irritability and sensitivity, related to golden retriever trainability. ASCC3, associated with neuroticism and anxiety in humans, appeared to influence fearfulness in golden retrievers.
“The findings are really striking—they provide strong evidence that humans and golden retrievers have shared genetic roots for their behavior,” said study co-author and University of Cambridge veterinarian and geneticist Eleanor Raffan in a statement. “The genes we identified frequently influence emotional states and behavior in both species.”
The similarity in the genetic underpinnings of some behavioral traits in golden retrievers and humans helps explain why some dogs can develop human-like psychiatric conditions, such as compulsive behavior that looks an awful lot like human obsessive-compulsive disorders. As they age, dogs may also exhibit Alzheimer’s-like cognitive decline.
So, before you scold your golden for bad behavior, remember that it may partly come from the dog’s human-adjacent genetic predisposition.
“If your golden retriever cowers behind the sofa every time the doorbell rings, perhaps you might have a bit more empathy if you know they’re genetically driven to feel sensitive and anxious,” said University of Cambridge veterinary surgeon and study co-author Anna Morros-Nuevo. 
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Lead image: Rodolphe_SGT / Pixabay
