A gene that is important for human hearing can determine whether a dog’s ears are floppy like a Basset Hound’s or stubby like a Rottweiler’s, according to a genetic analysis of more than 3,000 dogs, wolves and coyotes.
The study, presented Jan. 11 at the Plant and Animal Genome Conference in San Diego, Calif., found that variants near a gene called DNA msrb3 Related to ear length in dogs. The results were also published in December scientific report.
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The project was inspired by Cobain, a friendly, nine-year-old American Cocker Spaniel whose hobbies include morning swimming in the local creek and chasing people from one room to another. One day, Anna Ramey, a graduate student working in the canine genetics laboratory at the University of Georgia in Athens, looked at her dog Cobain’s long, floppy ears and wondered: Why?
She took this question to her colleagues and the project was born. “We realized that people had studied ear rotation before—like pointed, erect ears versus floppy, droopy ears,” says Tori Rudolph, a geneticist in the lab. “But no one had seen the length of the dogs’ ears.”
The length and shape of dog ears vary from breed to breed. Some of these evolved naturally: short, straight ears are thought to lose less heat than long, droopy ears, and dogs from cold climates have smaller ears than dogs from warmer regions.
But selective breeding has also shaped dog ears. The Basset Hound’s long ears are said to increase his hunting intensity by delivering scent to his nose, while a German Shepherd’s straight ears may slightly enhance his hearing.
Rudolph and his colleagues analyzed the genomes of thousands of dogs, and looked for differences in sequence related to ear length. The search led them to an area close to the genome msrb3A gene that codes for an antioxidant protein that is linked to ear shape in pigs, sheep, and goats. Some mutations in the gene are associated with hearing loss in people, and previous studies have linked the gene to ear discharge in dogs.
The DNA variant that Rudolph and his colleagues found may promote msrb3 Activity increases the rate at which ear cells grow, she says.
The analysis focused on small, single-letter changes in DNA, but some physical variation may be controlled by other types of genetic variants, such as large deleted or duplicated regions in the genome, says Claire Wade, an animal geneticist at the University of Sydney in Australia, who reports that her dog Sage’s ears are moderately floppy while Phoenix’s ears are small and “sticky-top.”
After observing sequence variation in a variety of dog breeds, Rudolph, inspired by her two golden retrievers, Erin and Brooks, now wanted to see what could be learned by observing the same breed. “Golden retrievers actually vary a lot in ear shape and ear length,” she says. “They would be my ideal next step.”
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on 13 January 2026.
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