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February 24, 2019February 24, 2019

Red wolf DNA found in Texas canids

Red wolves were declared extinct in the wild by 1980. Formerly ranging throughout south central and eastern portions of the US, hunting, trapping and loss of habitat decimated their numbers.

Luckily, the US Fish and Wildlife Service captured about forty of the wolves and began a captive breeding program. Red wolf families and individuals were released and captive-born pups were successfully cross-fostered in wilderness areas of North Carolina from the late 1980s on.

According to Regina Mossotti, director of animal care and conservation at the Endangered Wolf Center in Missouri, in early 2018 there were approximately 230 red wolves in captive breeding programs but populations in the wild had dropped from over 100 to around thirty.

Coyotes are found in many urban and rural areas of North America. Photo courtesy US National Park Service

But a few years ago, biologist Ron Wooten noticed something odd about the coyotes he was photographing on Galveston Island in Texas. When he found two of the animals dead on the roadside, he took some samples hoping genetic testing would provide some answers.

Researchers at Princeton University were shocked to find a piece of endangered red wolf genome in the tissue they analysed. The genetic evidence indicates that at least some of the Galveston Island ‘coyotes’ appear to be red wolf/coyote hybrids.

Red wolves (and eastern wolves, which primarily inhabited southeastern Canada and the northeastern US and are now only found in southern Ontario and Quebec) will interbreed with coyotes when their populations fall below a sustainable level.

Still, researchers were surprised to find red wolf DNA on an island in Texas. And the Galveston Island canids are unique in that they possess some red wolf genes not found in the captive population.

Challenges to reintroducing red wolves to wilderness areas continue and they may once again be declared extinct in the wild.

The Endangered Species Act does not include protected status for hybrids but some scientists feel this thinking is outdated, especially since hybridisation does not seem to be as rare as previously thought.

But even if the Galveston Island canids do not receive protected status, their presence is a testament to the resiliency of wolves and opens the door to further discussions on the status of hybrids.

Top image: Red wolves are lean animals with a distinct reddish cast to their coats. They’re in between the size of a grey wolf and coyote. Photo courtesy B. Bartel, USFWS

February 9, 2019February 9, 2019

Wolf paws

Wolf paws are the foundation for the carnivore’s every movement. They carry the predator across rugged terrain, serve as snowshoes in deep snow and provide traction on icy surfaces. And the heavy padding means a wolf can move across the landscape as silent as a cloud.

Of course, if a wolf is travelling across rocky ground or a paved road, their nails may click against the hard surface. Wolves have four toes on each paw, as well as another toe, the dew claw higher up on the front legs.

The structural dynamic of inward-turning elbows and outward-turning paws results in a highly efficient gait that puts little or no stress on the shoulders. And webbed toes mean wolves are capable of fording rivers, lakes and even up to thirteen kilometres (eight miles) of open-ocean.

Wolves possess an internal temperature regulation system that prevents their toes from freezing in northern locations. They also have scent glands between their toes, allowing other wolves to know if it was a friend or foe that passed by.

Wolf paw prints are generally recognisable due to their size – about 7.6 – 10 cm (3 — 4 inches) wide and 8.9 — 11.4 cm (3.5 to 4.5 inches) long on an adult. Some dogs, such as Great Danes or Blood hounds have tracks that are longer than wolves but most dog paw prints are smaller and rounder.

Coyotes have smaller tracks than most dogs and wolves. Young wolf pups’ paws grow incredibly quickly so, even at three months old, most wolves have larger feet than an adult coyote.

Image courtesy Montana Fish and Wildlife

Top photo iStock/Ramiro Marquez

January 26, 2019February 18, 2019

What wolves eat

As carnivores, wolves will eat anything from a mouse to a moose including grasshoppers, birds and frogs. Although wild wolves will occasionally eat berries, their bodies require meat to survive.

As Jack London wrote in White Fang, a story about a wolf-dog hybrid, “The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat.”

Most wolves obtain their meat from ungulates such as deer, elk, moose, bison and muskoxen. While it’s dangerous hunting large animals with horns and hooves, the huge food reward is worth the effort and risk of injury or even death. On the other hand, it takes a lot of mice to fill a wolf’s belly and the energy expended is often greater than the calories gained.

While most wolves depend on ungulates for their sustenance, some eat a lot of fish. This has been recorded throughout the world and often involves fish travelling upstream to spawn.

This wolf caught 15 sockeye salmon in one hour in Brooks River, Alaska. Photo courtesy Paul Stinsa

But some wolves rely heavily on fish and marine-related animals year-round. In fact, wolves on some British Columbia coastal islands primarily eat salmon, seals and shellfish, as well as mink and Canada goose eggs. They will even move rocks at low tide to eat tiny molluscs called chitons. Wolves on outer islands may seldom – if ever – see a deer.

Wolves aren’t picky about their food. They may cache some meat and dig it up for dinner later, as well as scavenge prey that has died of natural causes or been killed by other animals.

They can easily become used to the easy pickings found at unsecured human garbage dumps and will raid campsites or break into tents and kayak holds to check out human food. Although they probably won’t eat much of the food they find this way, they will bite into whatever they can access to check it out.

At times, wolves also kill and eat livestock and pets, which is the major source of their conflict with humans.

Top photo was taken on Ellesmere Island in the high arctic where wolves prey on hares and muskoxen. Photo courtesy Dave Mech

January 12, 2019January 21, 2019

Will wolves howl at the super blood wolf moon?

From ancient times, Indigenous peoples in North America called the first full moon after the winter solstice the Wolf Moon. This was often the coldest, darkest month of the year, when hungry wolves could be heard howling outside villages.

The sky will provide a backdrop for some extra drama when 2019’s Wolf Moon takes place the evening of January 20 – 21. On that night the full moon will pass its closest to earth making it appear larger and brighter than normal. That adds the super to Wolf Moon.

And, depending where you are, at some point that night the earth will move between the sun and the super Wolf Moon creating a total eclipse. The earth’s shadow makes the moon appear red, hence the term blood.

A super blood wolf moon is relatively rare, occurring approximately every three years. But how do wolves respond to this lunar event?

Wolves howl, hunt and travel at any time but are most active around dawn and dusk, as well as throughout the night. And whether they’re sitting, standing or lying down, they lift their snouts to howl. But, rather than focusing on the moon, some believe they’re simply taking advantage of the extra light it provides.

“I know from sleeping near the Sawtooth Pack for eleven years that wolves do howl more during a full moon,” Jeremy Heft writes in the summer 2009 Sawtooth Legacy Quarterly. A wildlife biologist, Heft’s worked at the Wolf Education and Research Center in Winchester, Idaho, since 1998. “They tend to be more active then because it’s easier to see prey and hunt.”

In the 1970s, wolf researcher Paul Paquet observed unusual behaviour in a pack during a solar eclipse. The wolves were actively wandering around an estuary on the BC coast when the moon passed between the earth and the sun. As the light faded, the wolves gathered together along the shoreline and gazed in the direction the bright sun had been. They only resumed their normal routine when the sun began to reappear.

So it’s hard to say how wolves will react to a super blood wolf moon. My guess is they may howl earlier in the night when the moon is brightest but stop to gaze upwards during the dimming of light and change of colour during the blood phase.

Super blood wolf moon photo by Yu Kato (Unsplash)