Basenji
Basenjis have a cited life expectancy of 12.1 years (McMillan 2024 / VetCompass, n=92, 95% CI 11.3 to 15.8). The most carried tested variant is Fanconi Syndrome, in 11% of 130 Basenjis tested (Donner 2023), then Progressive Retinal Atrophy (11%). 40 dogs stand behind the atlas figures here, so treat this page as an early sketch.
Also known as African Barkless Dog, African Bush Dog, Ango Angari, and Basenji (African Bush Dog).
What genetic diseases do Basenjis carry?
From a panel of 250 Mendelian-disease variants screened in 1,054,293 dogs (Donner et al. 2023), Basenjis 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.
Other names
The Basenji is also recorded as African Barkless Dog, African Bush Dog, Ango Angari, Basenji (African Bush Dog), Congo Dog, and Zande Dog.
Identified as Basenji (VBO:0200120) in the Vertebrate Breed Ontology (Mullen et al. 2025, CC-BY 4.0) · registry IDs FCI 43 · iDog 20 · VeNom 13678.
For researchers Population genetics, disease models and every recorded condition Open the research detail for the Basenji
In the atlas, the Basenji clusters consistently as Basenji (100% of the 40 dogs here). Dogs here sit in a relatively sparse region of the atlas, fewer close neighbors than typical.
Ranks 13 of 107 on the bottleneck severity scale, well into the upper quartile of population contraction. High breed predictability score (3.02), individual dogs of this breed reliably cluster together genetically.
Median lifespan is 15.55 years, about 3.0 years longer than a typical dog of 10.25 kg, an unusually positive longevity for this size.
What the atlas genotypes say about Basenji
Computed from the 14,478 CanVAS dogs in the Atlas, on an imputed genotype backbone: 77,215 directly typed sites per dog, imputed to 9.67 million variants.
The confidence below counts dogs, not reads: it is the size of the sample, and it is separate from how the genotypes were measured.
What does genetic diversity mean?
How varied a breed's gene pool is — the share of gene spots where a typical dog of the breed carries two different versions rather than two identical ones.
How to read it: Higher = more diverse. Among well-sampled breeds it ranges roughly 0.22 (least diverse) to 0.33 (most diverse).
Diversity is a strength, not a verdict on any individual dog. Lower diversity means it's worth paying attention to recessive-risk testing — not that a dog is doomed.
What does within-breed variation mean?
How much individual dogs within the breed differ from each other genetically.
How to read it: Higher = more internal variety among individuals of the breed.
Sensitive to how many dogs of the breed we've sampled.
What does typical lifespan mean?
The median age dogs of the breed tend to reach.
How to read it: Higher = longer-lived. Compare to longevity-for-size to see whether it's just a size effect.
Drawn from population lifespan records; individual dogs vary widely with care, genetics, and luck.
Basenjis are a natural model for human disease
Because the same genes cause the same conditions across species, the inherited conditions documented in Basenjis help researchers understand, and work toward treating, the human diseases they model. This is the dog advancing human medicine. The breed models the human disease; it does not have it, and this is not a prediction for your dog.
- Oguchi disease-1, modeled by the breed's Retinal atrophy, progressive, SAG-related via SAG, the same underlying biology.
- OMIM:614817, modeled by the breed's Fanconi syndrome, FAN1-related , the same underlying biology.
- OMIM:169400, modeled by the breed's Pelger-Huet anomaly , the same underlying biology.
- pyruvate kinase deficiency of red cells, modeled by the breed's Pyruvate kinase deficiency of erythrocyte , the same underlying biology.
- OMIM:603372, modeled by the breed's Reproductive seasonality , the same underlying biology.
Every condition recorded in the Basenji
Beyond the testable carriers above, OMIA's literature catalogue records 6 genetic conditions in the Basenji, 5 of which have a known human equivalent. This is the documented landscape across all Basenjis ever studied, not a prediction for any one dog.
- Retinal atrophy, progressive, SAG-related Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: Oguchi disease-1
- Fanconi syndrome, FAN1-related Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: OMIM:614817
- Human equivalent: OMIM:169400
- Pyruvate kinase deficiency of erythrocyte Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: pyruvate kinase deficiency of red cells
- Reproductive seasonality Autosomal dominant with incomplete penetranceHuman equivalent: OMIM:603372
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 in the structured data for every variant the panel covers. Mondo, OMIM, Ensembl, and HGNC cross-references live on the gene and disease pages this page links to, rather than being repeated here. What is still absent from this breed page is anything not in the cited panel, and each such gap carries its cause where it appears.
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.
Some things about living with a basenji never make it into a database. Add what you know as a Keeper, in your words →
Lived experience, kept beside the science.We have 40 basenjis. We do not have yours.
Every basenji added sharpens the breed's genetic neighborhood. Enrollment is free. The data stays open. The star is permanent.
- Donner J, Freyer J, Davison S, Anderson H, Blades M, Honkanen L, et al. (2023). Genetic prevalence and clinical relevance of canine Mendelian disease variants in over one million dogs. PLOS Genetics 19(2):e1010651. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1010651
- Brundage DM (2026). CanVAS: A Harmonized and Imputed 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).