Which breed has six toes on each foot and can fold its ears closed?

Which breed has six toes on each foot and can fold its ears closed? The Norwegian Lundehund. This rare Norwegian Spitz-type dog evolved for an unusual job: reaching puffins and their eggs in narrow cliffside caves.

Its six fully formed, jointed toes on each foot gave it extra grip on steep, rocky terrain. The Lundehund also has exceptional flexibility in its neck, shoulders, and forelegs, allowing it to squeeze through passages and maneuver along cliffs. Its upright ears can fold forward or backward, helping seal the ear openings against dirt and debris.

The breed’s name reflects its original work: lunde means “puffin” in Norwegian, while hund means “dog.” For centuries, Lundehunds were valuable working dogs on Norway’s coast, especially around the island of Værøy. A written reference from 1591 describes a small dog trained to crawl into puffin burrows and retrieve birds.

Modern hunting methods and dog taxes caused the breed’s numbers to collapse. Canine distemper during World War II reduced the Værøy population to only a few survivors, and careful conservation breeding prevented extinction. The Norwegian Lundehund is not related to the Icelandic Sheepdog merely because both are Nordic breeds.