Scottish Deerhound
11 Scottish Deerhounds in the atlas. Every number on this page has a source.
11 Scottish Deerhounds in the Sniff Atlas. Population-genetic snapshot, Mendelian carrier frequencies from Donner 2023, and the data substrate's release version, sample sizes, and evidence tier on every claim.
In the atlas, the Scottish Deerhound clusters consistently as Scottish Deerhound (100% of the 11 dogs here). At the trait loci, LCORL runs lower than average (18% here vs 83%); FGF4_retrogene_CFA12 runs lower than average (18% here vs 80%). Dogs here sit in a relatively sparse region of the atlas, fewer close neighbors than typical.
High breed predictability score (3.46), individual dogs of this breed reliably cluster together genetically. Only 11 dogs of this breed in the atlas, modestly sampled.
Closest genetic neighbors in the atlas: Irish Wolfhound, Borzoi, Greyhound, Italian Greyhound, and Whippet.
What the genome says about Scottish Deerhound
Computed from the 18,477 research dogs in the Atlas.
- Irish Wolfhound8.19
- Borzoi40.36
- Greyhound43.61
- Italian Greyhound43.77
- Whippet43.84
Frequency of the alternate allele in this breed at each locus's representative SNP.
| IGF1 | 56% |
| HMGA2 | 0% |
| SMAD2 | 41% |
| LCORL | 18% |
| STC2 | – |
| ADAMTS17 | – |
| FGF4·CFA18 | 46% |
| FGF4·CFA12 | 18% |
| RSPO2 | – |
| FGF5 | 68% |
| KRT71 | 46% |
| MC1R | 18% |
| MSRB3 | – |
| BMP3 | 60% |
| SMOC2 | 77% |
What does the genome say about how a Scottish Deerhound looks?
Scottish Deerhounds look the way they do because of a small set of fixed and near-fixed morphology genes that, taken together, define the visible breed. Each translation below pairs the gene with the trait an owner actually sees, the breed's allele frequency at that locus, and a one-clause causal phrase.
Size and build
IGF1 sits at 56% for the small-body allele. IGF1 is the gene that sets dog body size from Chihuahua to Great Dane. Intermediate frequencies typically keep a breed in the mid-sized range rather than tipping toward the larger working forms.
HMGA2 is at 0%, leaving most of the size signal to other loci in the panel.
SMAD2 sits at 41% at the chromosome-7 height locus.
LCORL is at 18%, the NCAPG/LCORL height locus running against the breed's body-size profile here.
STC2 is at 0%, leaving the growth-axis signal to other loci.
ADAMTS17 is at 0%, the lower-frequency allele in this breed.
Leg length
The FGF4 retrogene on chromosome 18 sits at 46%. This is the leg-length variant. The intermediate frequency means some dogs in this breed carry the short-legged allele and some do not.
The FGF4 retrogene on chromosome 12 is at 18%, leaving most of this breed clear of the chondrodystrophic intervertebral disc disease risk.
Coat type, length, and color
RSPO2 is at 0% for the furnishings allele. The breed does not carry the eyebrows-and-mustache pattern of Wheatens, Schnauzers, or wire-haired terriers.
FGF5 sits at 68% for the long-coat variant. Coat length is influenced by other loci as well, so intermediate FGF5 frequencies do not always correspond to intermediate visible coat lengths.
KRT71 sits at 46% for the wavy/curly variant. Coat curl varies across individuals at this intermediate frequency, and visible expression is also influenced by modifier loci.
MC1R is at 18% at the representative SNP, leaving the breed in the black-to-brown coat range under the dominant E allele.
Ears
MSRB3 is at 0% for the drop-ear allele, keeping the breed's ears upright and prick.
Skull shape
BMP3 sits at 60%, contributing to the breed's moderate, mesaticephalic head shape rather than the extreme brachycephalic form.
SMOC2 sits at 77%, contributing to the breed's moderate head shape.
What genetic diseases do Scottish Deerhounds carry?
From a panel of 250 Mendelian-disease variants screened in 1,054,293 dogs (Donner et al. 2023), Scottish Deerhounds carry 2 of them at observable frequency. Carrier frequency is not clinical risk. Most recessive variants require two copies for disease expression; many dominant variants show incomplete penetrance. Read this as a population fingerprint of what's in the gene pool, not a per-dog prediction.
Where every number on this page came from.
This page draws on three primary data sources. Carrier frequencies for the Mendelian section come from Donner et al. 2023 (CC-BY-4.0). We grade these data at evidence Limited because the cohort is a direct-to-consumer ascertainment, which biases toward owners who chose to test their dogs. The panel also uses tag-SNP proxies for some variants rather than direct causal-variant assays. Limited is a study-design grade, not a quality grade: the Donner cohort is the largest open canine-genotype dataset in existence and we are grateful for it. We rate the confounding MEDIUM.
Population-genetic dimensions (heterozygosity, intra-breed PCA distance, nearest neighbors, trait-locus frequencies) come from CanVAS (Brundage 2026), harmonized through the Sniff Atlas. The exact release date and verification commit are pinned at the bottom of the page so a researcher can trace a number back to a specific snapshot. The disease-gene-variant graph comes from OMIA (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals; Nicholas, Tammen, and the Sydney Informatics Hub at the Sydney School of Veterinary Science, The University of Sydney; retrieved April 2026, DOI 10.25910/2AMR-PV70).
What this page does not yet have. Inheritance modes and per-disease penetrance evidence from Donner 2023 are now in the structured data for every variant the panel covers. Mondo, OMIM, Ensembl, and HGNC cross-references on gene pages remain pending — they arrive in December 2026 alongside the imputed 9.67M-variant CanVAS dataset via the OMIA SQL dump absorption. Until then, gene IDs carry NCBI Gene and OMIA phene URLs only; the wider human-homolog and disease-ontology cross-reference set fills in with that release.
How to cite this page. The computed dimensions on this page are derived from the open Sniff Atlas v1.0.1 (Gehring 2026, doi:10.5281/zenodo.20566358, CC-BY 4.0). Full citation formats including BibTeX, RIS, and CITATION.cff at sniff.world/cite.
We have 11 scottish deerhounds. We do not have yours.
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- Donner J, Anderson H, Davison S, et al. (2023). Frequency and distribution of 152 genetic disease variants in over 1,000,000 mixed-breed and purebred dogs. PLOS Genetics 19(2):e1010651. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1010651
- Brundage J, et al. (2026). CanVAS: a harmonized canine variant atlas. bioRxiv. doi:10.64898/2026.04.13.718238
- Nicholas, F.W., Tammen, I., & Sydney Informatics Hub. (2026). Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals (OMIA) [dataset]. The University of Sydney. https://omia.org. doi:10.25910/2AMR-PV70 (retrieved April 2026).