Why Labradors are obsessed with food

If you own a Labrador Retriever, you know they’ll do just about anything for food. But that relentless appetite could also be a key to their trainability. That’s the suggestion of a study published in Cell Metabolism in May.

Labradors have the highest rates of obesity of any dog breed, and just as in humans, there are health costs and a reduced life span.

In humans, obesity has been linked to several genes. Eleanor Raffan at the University of Cambridge and colleagues tested to see whether any of these genes were linked to the Labrador’s problem. They found a mutated version of the POMC gene was more common in obesityprone dogs.

POMC encodes two hormones called -MSH and -endorphin. When released in humans, they switch off hunger signals in the brain. In dogs (as in humans), a mutation of POMC ratchets down the release of the hormones, leading to weight gain.

Interestingly, the POMC mutation was also far more common in those Labradors that made it through the training regime required to graduate as human helpers.

The authors suggest the mutation – and a bigger appetite – makes dogs more “trainable”.