Dogs have been in the Americas for more than 10,000 years. They were already domesticated when they came from Eurasia with the first people to reach North America. In the coastal parts of present-day Washington state and southwestern British Columbia, archaeologists have found dog remains dating back as far as about 5,000 years ago.
Dogs performed many different roles in North American Indigenous communities, including transportation, that in other parts of the world were done by multiple other domestic animals.
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Indigenous Coast Salish peoples of the Pacific Northwest had traditionally maintained a breed of long-haired dog for the purpose of harvesting their hair, or wool, for textile fibers. Along with alpacas and llamas, these woolly dogs are one of only a few known animals intentionally bred for their fleece in all of the Americas.
But the practice of keeping woolly dogs and weaving textiles made from woolly dog yarn declined throughout the 19th century, and the dogs were considered extinct by the beginning of the 20th century. What had happened to them?
Mutton’s pelt has been preserved at the Smithsonian Institution for more than 160 years. Audrey Lin
Today, the only confirmed woolly dog specimen is “Mutton,” whose pelt has been housed in the Smithsonian’s collection since his death in 1859. In life, this “Indian dog” was the companion of George Gibbs, a naturalist working on the Northwest Boundary Survey expedition to map out British Columbia and the American Pacific Northwest. In death, Mutton offered the opportunity to learn more about woolly dog ancestry, selection and management.
We are an archaeologist, an evolutionary molecular biologist and a molecular anthropologist who are part of a large research team. It’s important to note that although we collaborated with a number of Indigenous people on our study, the scientists, including the three of us, are not Indigenous. Alongside historical documents and interviews of Coast Salish elders, knowledge keepers, weavers and artists, our team utilized “Two-Eyed Seeing” – viewing the world through the combined strengths of Indigenous knowledge and western science – to bring Mutton’s story and legacy back to life.
A prestigious part of Indigenous culture
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, there were several types of dogs in the Pacific Northwest: larger “village” dogs and hunting dogs and smaller woolly dogs, kept separately to prevent interbreeding. Woolly dogs were a little larger than the modern American Eskimo dog breed and had curled tails, pricked ears and a pointed foxlike face. Instead of barking, they howled.
Traditionally, only high-status Coast Salish women were allowed to keep woolly dogs, and a woman’s individual wealth could be measured by how many she had. Blankets woven of dog hair, often mixed with hair from mountain goats and waterfowl or plant fibers, were important trade and gift items.
Historians and economists, looking back, first claimed the disappearance of the woolly dog breed was the result of simple capitalist forces: The availability of cheap manufactured blankets offered by businesses like the Hudson’s Bay Company meant the Coast Salish didn’t need to make their own blankets. Why go through the immense time and labor in keeping wool dogs and crafting blankets in the traditional way when you could just buy a machine-woven blanket?
But the Coast Salish don’t agree. Debra qwasen Sparrow, a master weaver of the Musqueam Nation, explained to us, “The blankets really tell a story of our history, our families, the way in which they identified in the communities, (they’re) all reflected in the blankets.”
And Coast Salish people say they would never have willingly parted with their beloved canine friends. The simple economic explanation ignores the massive role colonialism played in the demise of the woolly dogs. Repressive government policies tried to control and subdueIndigenous cultural practices.
“They were told they couldn’t do their cultural things. There was the police, the Indian agent and the priests,” Stó:lō Nation elder Xweliqwiya Rena Point Bolton told our research team. “The dogs were not allowed. (My grandmother) had to get rid of the dogs. And so the family never ever saw them.”
Eventually, there were no more Coast Salish woolly dogs.
Researchers used a portable X-ray fluorescence analyzer as part of their investigation of Mutton’s remains. Audrey Lin
Piecing together a picture of Mutton’s life
We did have access to Mutton’s pelt, though, which had been archived for more than 160 years. No one knows exactly how Gibbs initially acquired Mutton, but it’s likely he got the dog while working with local communities in Stó:lō territory in present-day British Columbia. Using modern techniques, we set out to answer questions about Mutton’s breed and ancestry.
First we used stable isotope analysis, a chemical analysis of once-living tissues, to understand more about Mutton’s environment when he was alive: what kinds of foods he ate and the state of his health.
Interviews of the elders and knowledge keepers confirmed that the woolly dog diet was very different from village dogs, including special foods that kept the dogs healthy and their coats shiny. For example, salmon, elk or certain local plants would be set aside for the woolly dogs.
The stable isotope values of Mutton’s fur suggested he’d been eating maize for some time, but less and less up to the point when he died. The letters of one expedition member imply they were running low on cornmeal and supplementing their imported supplies by trading with locals. Although Gibbs noted in his journal that Mutton was ill before he died, there was no isotopic evidence to support chronic illness; Mutton may have become sick quickly.
Chris Stantis carefully removes a minimal sample from Mutton’s pelt for further analyses. Hsiao-Lei Liu
Next, we turned to genetic analysis for insight into the dog’s ancestry to understand long-term management of this breed. We sequenced Mutton’s DNA and compared it with a contemporaneous village dog that was killed by the explorers in an unknown village in the Pacific Northwest. We also compared Mutton’s DNA with a genetic panel of many other modern and ancient dogs.
We found that Mutton is a rare example of an Indigenous North American dog with precolonial ancestry who lived well after the arrival of white settlers. Using a dataset of mitochondrial genomes from Mutton and more than 200 ancient and modern dogs, we made an elaborate family tree. Called a time-calibrated phylogenetic tree, it creates a diagram of the evolution of Mutton’s maternal lineage.
Based on the tree, we estimate that Mutton’s most recent common ancestor diverged from one other ancient dog from British Columbia between 1,800 and 4,800 years ago, corresponding with the known archaeological record. In other words, Mutton’s woolly dog lineage has been isolated from other dogs for millennia.
We see evidence of inbreeding in Mutton’s genome that can result only from careful long-term selective breed management. We identified variants of genes associated with hair and skin, including KRT77 and KANK2, which are linked to woolly hair in humans.
However, Mutton lived during a very volatile time period. For example, in 1858 more than 33,000 miners flooded into present-day British Columbia in search of gold. This influx left its mark in Mutton’s DNA, and we found that about one eighth of his genome – representating about one great-grandparent’s worth of DNA – came from settler-introduced European dogs.
Finally, we worked closely with a scientific artist, using archaeological dog bones and Mutton’s pelt, to reconstruct what these dogs looked like in life with scientific accuracy.
A Coast Salish classic-style blanket, which has woolly dog hair in the warp fibers that were stretched across the loom. Accessioned 1838-1842. USNM E2124, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
What this woolly dog confirms about the past
With Mutton’s pelt, our team wove together these different ways of exploring the many lives of Mutton – his ancestry as an Indigenous dog, his life traveling with white settlers, and finally his time in the Smithsonian Institution.
Mutton is the latest dog we’re aware of with that much precolonial dog ancestry. European colonization was devastating to Indigenous people in North America. The fact that Mutton carries as much Indigenous dog DNA as he does is a testament to the care that Coast Salish people took to keep the woolly dog tradition alive.
Our Coast Salish weaving collaborators are very keen to learn more about how traditional blankets housed in museum collections are made – to inform efforts to revive complex techniques and better understand the unique materials used. With Mutton’s genetic sequencing, future researchers may be able to identify dog hair in heritage woven materials. Some Coast Salish would like to see the woolly dogs return to their families once again. There’s currently no way to bring back the original woolly dogs, such as by cloning Mutton, because his DNA is far too degraded after more than 160 years. But a new kind of woolly dog could be created in the future through selective breeding and care.
“But the thing that’s most important (is) that (the) wool dog created a gift to produce and to make something, to create something, to bring something alive,” Michael Pavel, elder of the Twana/Skokomish Tribe, told us. “Let’s do that. Let’s bring that back to life. … The wool dog is still very much a part of our life.”
Measles infections can be extremely serious. So far in 2025, 14% of the people who got measles had to be hospitalized. Last year, that number was 40%. Measles can damage the lungs and immune system, and also inflict permanent brain damage. Three in 1,000 people who get the disease die. But because measles vaccination programs in the U.S. over the past 60 years have been highly successful, few Americans under 50 have experienced measles directly, making it easy to think of the infection as a mere childhood rash with fever.
When the measles virus infects a person, it binds to specific proteins on the surface of cells. It then inserts its genome and replicates, destroying the cells in the process. This first happens in the upper respiratory tract and the lungs, where the virus can damage the person’s ability to breathe well. In both places, the virus also infects immune cells that carry it to the lymph nodes, and from there, throughout the body.
Measles can wipe out immune cells’ ability to recognize pathogens.
What generally lands people with measles in the hospital is the disease’s effects on the lungs. As the virus destroys lung cells, patients can develop viral pneumonia, which is characterized by severe coughing and difficulty breathing. Measles pneumonia afflicts about 1 in 20 children who get measles and is the most common cause of death from measles in young children.
An especially alarming but still poorly understood effect of measles infection is that it can reduce the immune system’s ability to recognize pathogens it has previously encountered. Researchers had long suspected that children who get the measles vaccine also tend to have better immunity to other diseases, but they were not sure why. A study published in 2019 found that having a measles infection destroyed between 11% and 75% of their antibodies, leaving them vulnerable to many of the infections to which they previously had immunity. This effect, called immune amnesia, lasts until people are reinfected or revaccinated against each disease their immune system forgot.
There is still much to learn about the measles virus. For example, researchers are exploring antibody therapies to treat severe measles. However, even if such treatments work, the best way to prevent the serious effects of measles is to avoid infection by getting vaccinated.
Having the freedom to choose your own health care provider is something many Americans take for granted. But the Supreme Court is weighing whether people who rely on Medicaid for their health insurance have that right, and if they do – is it enforceable by law?
“There’s a right, and the right is the right to choose your doctor,” said Justice Elena Kagan on April 2, 2025, during oral arguments on the case. John J. Bursch, the Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer who is representing South Carolina Director of Health and Human Services Eunice Medina, countered that none of the words in the underlying statute had what he called a “rights-creating pedigree.”
The case started with Julie Edwards, who is enrolled in Medicaid and lives in South Carolina. After she struggled to get contraceptive services, she was able to receive care from a Planned Parenthood South Atlantic clinic in Columbia, South Carolina.
Planned Parenthood and Edwards sued South Carolina, claiming that the state was violating the federal Medicare and Medicaid Act, which Congress passed in 1965, by not letting Edwards obtain care from the provider of her choice.
A ‘free-choice-of-provider’ requirement
Medicaid operates as a partnership between the federal government and the states. Congress passed the law that led to its creation based on its power under the Constitution’s spending clause, which allows Congress to subject federal funds to certain requirements.
Two years later, due to concerns that states were restricting which providers Medicaid recipients could choose, Congress added a “free-choice-of-provider” requirement to the program. It states that people enrolled in Medicaid “may obtain such assistance from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the service or services required.”
This provision is at the core of this case. At issue is whether a civil rights statute provides a right for Medicaid beneficiaries to sue a state when their federal rights have been violated. Known as Section 1983, it was enacted in 1871.
Bursch, backed by the Trump administration, argued before the court that the absence of words like “right” in the Medicaid provision that requires states to provide a free choice of provider means that neither Edwards nor Planned Parenthood has the authority to file a lawsuit to enforce this aspect of the Medicaid statute.
Nicole A. Saharsky, Planned Parenthood’s lawyer, argued that the creation of a right shouldn’t depend on “some kind of magic words test.” Instead, she said it was clear that the Medicaid statute created “a right to choose their own doctor” because “it’s mandatory” that the state provide this option to everyone with health insurance through Medicaid.
She also emphasized that Congress wanted to protect “an intensely personal right” to be able “to choose your doctor, the person that you see when you’re at your most vulnerable, facing … some of the most significant … challenges to your life and your health.”
Restricting Medicaid funds
Through a federal law known as the Hyde Amendment, Medicaid cannot reimburse health care providers for the cost of abortions, with a few exceptions: when a patient’s life is at risk or her pregnancy is due to rape or incest. Some states do cover abortion when their laws allow it, without using any federal funds.
McMaster explained that he removed “abortion clinics,” including Planned Parenthood, from the South Carolina Medicaid Program because he didn’t want state funds to indirectly subsidize abortions.
South Carolina “decided that Planned Parenthood was unqualified for many reasons, chiefly because they’re the nation’s largest abortion provider,” Bursch told the Supreme Court.
And the Supreme Court has long recognized that Section 1983 protects an individual’s ability to sue when their rights under a federal statute have been violated.
The court’s decision in the Medina case on whether Medicaid patients can choose their own health care provider could have consequences far beyond South Carolina. Arkansas, Missouri and Texas have already barred Planned Parenthood from getting reimbursed by Medicaid for any kind of health care. More states could follow suit.
In addition, given Planned Parenthood’s role in providing expansive contraceptive care, disqualifying it from Medicaid could harm access to health care and increase the already-high unintended pregnancy rate in America.
The ramifications, likewise, could extend beyond the finances of Planned Parenthood.
If the court rules in South Carolina’s favor, states could also try to exclude providers based on other characteristics, such as whether their employees belong to unions or if they provide their patients with gender-affirming care, further restricting patients’ choices.
Or, as Kagan observed, states could go the opposite direction and exclude providers that don’t provide abortions and so forth. What’s really at stake, she said, is whether a patient is “entitled to see” the provider they choose regardless of what their state happens to “think about contraception or abortion or gender transition treatment.”
If the Supreme Court rules that Edwards does have a right to get health care at a Planned Parenthood clinic, the controversy would not be over. The lower courts would then have to decide whether South Carolina appropriately removed Planned Parenthood from Medicaid as an “unqualified provider.”
And if the Supreme Court rules in favor of South Carolina, then Planned Parenthood could still sue South Carolina over its decision to find them to be unqualified.
Imagine you’ve planned the trip of a lifetime for your animal-loving family: a cruise to Antarctica with the unique opportunity to view penguins, whales and other rare wildlife. Your adventure-loving kids can kayak through fjords, plunge into icy water and camp under the Antarctic sky.
But rather than being ecstatic, as you anticipated, your kids whine about skipping an after-school scout meeting at a neighbor’s house. Missing this ordinary weekly event triggers such intense FOMO – “fear of missing out” – for them that they don’t want to go on your amazing expedition.
If this kind of debacle sounds familiar to you – or at least if you find it perplexing – you’re not alone. The three of us are marketingprofessors andsocial psychologists who focus on how consumers make decisions and how this shapes well-being. We’ve been studying FOMO for over a decade and recently published our work in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Over the years, we’ve learned what really drives intense feelings of FOMO – which explains why a run-of-the-mill meeting might feel more crucial than an over-the-top vacation.
FOMO’s real trigger
People use the term FOMO in many different ways. In our research, we focus on a very specific type of FOMO: the kind that occurs when people miss out on events that involve valued social connections.
With this kind of FOMO, we found that the pain of missing out is not related to missing the actual event or opportunity – although that could be there as well. The FOMO we study happens when people miss the chance to bond with friends, co-workers or teammates they care about.
So, the critical part of FOMO is missing out on interactions with people you value. FOMO about a group dinner at a restaurant isn’t really about the food and great lighting. Nor is FOMO about a concert just about the band’s performance. Instead, it’s about the lost opportunity to connect and make memories with people who are important to you.
Why is this upsetting? Imagine the scenario where all your best friends go out to dinner without you. They bond and make lasting memories with each other – and you’re not there for any of it.
If they get closer to each other, where does that leave you? What happens to your social relationships and your sense of belonging? Do you become a less important friend? Less worthy of future invites? Or even kicked out of the group altogether? The anxiety of FOMO can begin to spiral.
People with what psychologists call an anxiousattachment style chronically fear rejection and isolation from others. Because FOMO involves anxiety about future social belonging, it may not come as a surprise that people who are naturally more anxious about their friendships tend to get more intense FOMO. When we asked people in one of our studies to scroll social media until they encountered something social they missed, we found that the more anxiously attached a participant was, the more intense FOMO they experienced.
Getting FOMO for an amazing event you can’t attend makes sense. But if FOMO is less about the event itself and more about the social bonding, what happens when you miss something that’s not really fun at all?
We find that people anticipate FOMO even for unenjoyable missed events. As long as there is some form of missed social bonding, feelings of FOMO emerge. One of our studies found that people anticipated more FOMO from missing an un-fun event that their friends would be at, than a fun event without their friends.
For better or for worse, sad and stressful events can often be emotionally bonding: Going to a funeral to support a friend, cleaning up the mess after a party, or even white-knuckling through a harrowing initiation ceremony can all offer opportunities to forge stronger connections with one another. Stressful contexts like these can be fertile grounds for FOMO.
How to fend off FOMO
Popular discussions about the negative consequences of FOMO tend to focus on the FOMO people feel from compulsively scrolling on social media and seeing what they missed out on. Consequently, much of the suggestedadvice on howto mitigate FOMO centers on turning off phones or taking a vacation from social media.
Those recommendations may be tough for many people to execute. Plus, they address the symptoms of FOMO, not the cause.
Our finding that the core of FOMO is anxiety about missed social relationships yields a simpler strategy to combat it: Reminding yourself of the last time you connected with close friends may provide a sense of security that staves off feelings of FOMO.
In an experiment testing multiple interventions, we asked 788 study participants to look through their social media feeds until they encountered a post of a missed social event. We asked about 200 of these participants to immediately rate how much FOMO they were feeling. They averaged a 3.2 on a 1-to-7 scale.
Another group of about 200 participants also scrolled through their social media feeds until they encountered a post of a missed social event. But before indicating how much FOMO they were feeling, we asked them to think back to a prior experience socializing and bonding with their friends. Encouragingly, this reflection exercise seemed to curtail FOMO. Their average FOMO rating was 2.7 out of 7, a significant drop.
Reminding yourself about other good times with your pals can help keep FOMO at bay. AJ_Watt/E+ via Getty Images
With the remaining participants, we tested other strategies for mitigating FOMO – thinking about the next time they might see their friends or imagining what they’d say to a FOMO-suffering friend – but the simple reflection exercise was by far the most promising.
So, reminding yourself of the meaningful relationships you already have and reaffirming your social belonging in the moment may help combat the rush of anxiety that is characteristic of FOMO.
And missing out on social bonding experiences doesn’t have to be anxiety-provoking. In fact, in our activity-packed, hectic lives, missing some “must-attend” events may be a welcome relief – especially if you remind yourself that your social belonging is not in jeopardy. Cue a recent wave of counter-FOMO programming called JOMO, or “Joy of Missing Out.”
To quote Stuart Smalley, the fictional self-help guru of 1990s “Saturday Night Live,” reminding yourself that “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” might be just the trick to mitigate FOMO.
