The double nosed dog of the Andes

Rarely has a dog had a more apt name than the Double-Nosed Andean tiger hound. The rare breed has, exactly as you would expect, a double-barreled nose.

British explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell saw one of the dogs in Bolivia two years ago carrying out reconnaissance for an expedition to examine an ancient meteorite crater near Ojaki.

He returned this year and found the offspring of the original animal doing quite well.

A veterinarian with the group determined the unusual nose was not a single deformity (as can sometimes occur to create the double-nose in canines) and locals said the surviving dog, name Xingu, He had just produced a litter with a bitch that had a single nose that included two double nosed pups which later died.

The breed was first identified by Colonel Percy Fawcett who reported seeing such strange dogs in the Amazon jungle.

The breed is believed to have descended from a Spanish double nosed dog, which were hunting dogs at the time of the Conquistadors. The animals, reportedly, have an enhanced sense of smell due to the odd nose structure.

Although such dogs are rare, other breeds exist. The Turkish Pointer, Turkey’s only native pointing breed, has the strange feature and is called çatalburun by the Turkish people because of the breed’s nose structure.

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