Gray Wolves – Also Available in Black

Interesting, the Wolf is a wonderful animal.

I have seen several in fact, we have two living near to our house, several cyotes as well. We also get a Bear or two and lots of Moose and Deer. However the numbers are decreasing as the years go on and the city grows. havn't seen and of the big cats in years.

I will take two in black please!

That may not be such a good idea, but I couldn't resist the temptation! It is good to know that when I see a black wolf I will know that their genes are perfect for fighting infection. However, I feel (luckily enough) that the closest I will ever come to a wolf is by petting a siberian husky. Those dogs are monsterous! Does their lineage trace back to wolves? If not, then it should be!

A wolf really is not that bad, I have been close to them, 20 yards or so, a single well fed wolf is no threat, and very curious, he would have come even closer but got spooked by a car. I had a coyote that would come right up to me and sniff about as long as I sat still. Two years back I got to within 8 feet of a Bobcat, he spooked when my photo assistant moved. The day before I tracked a mountain lion for two hours, she was very close by, I could hear her in the underbrush, but she refused to come out and have her picture taken.

In my youth i was lucky enough to see an Atlantic Panther, that one followed me down a country road for the better part of an hour, I was walking, he/she was in the woods. I stopped at a point just past a clearing and it came out into the area lit up by the full moon, what a beautiful cat, and big. It simply sat down and looked at me, so I started to talk to it. That lasted about 10 minutes and it turned and loped back into the bush. Amazing animal, and before I started to carry a camera all the time, I was only 13 at the time.

Wolves & dogs, it makes sense! But, I am wondering why wolves and dogs in Europe and Asia haven't produced any black wolves as well - they'd have mixed here and there, wouldn't they?

It's really interesting that the breeding with dogs is the reason attributed to the black color mutation. And even more so that the mutation may be linked with a strengthened immune system. To me, it's amazing that wolves have adapted to the point where this is even possible. I can't help but think of Darwin...

"In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment."

Nice post, thanks!

A friend of mine in Virginia raises Buffalo Wolves (aka Great Plains Wolf) and is one of the few people who've ever bred them in captivity. These wolves are very shy in spite of their large size (up to 110-120 pounds). I've never seen any black ones, though, even though they're a subspecies of gray (timber) wolves.

That one's face is quite expressive! His coloring makes him look like he's smiling and his eyebrows make him look deep in thought. Despite their history as being aggressive, they are not seen by the average person in the wild. Yellowstone has many wolves and although we ventured off the heavily-populated roads for quite a bit of our trip there last summer, we did not see any wolves - even after "staking out" a buffalo carcass one night (from quite a distance, of course).

I saw a special a few months ago about how all dogs originally came from wolves and foxes. It showed selective breeding experiments where they would take the two tamest of a group of animals and breed them together. After several generations of breeding the wolves/foxes became as friendly as dogs.

Here is an article on a study on farmed foxes in which the aggressive behavior was breed out. http://www.floridalupine.org/publications/PDF/trut-fox-study.pdf

I wonder now whether there are behavior changes that are also involved with this wolf population. As man has encroached on the areas in which they live. So changes would have to take place. The rancher shooting the more aggressive wolfs which prey on his live stock or the relocation of these wolfs to other areas. May have left the less aggressive wolfs to breed.

My dog was partly wolf it had the fur of a husky but the head of a wolf (and the demeanor of a rabbit)

Maybe that is why they have been almost hunted to extinction in Europe, because black cats & wolves are surely in league with the devil

During the last couple years I've seen solitary gray wolves in the U.S. of A. Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas and Michigan. Usually at night but often in daylight.

A book I read when young forever endeared wolves to me. It is called, "Wolf King", by J.W. Lippincott. I just checked it's availability and there were 5 (used) available from $447.17 !!!!! on Amazon.com. I'm shocked. I guess it is out of print. Anyone interested in wolves would find it an enjoyable read -- at any age. :) Check a local library.

Kris, thanks reading and for your comments. Here are a few responses to some of your questions on my writing.

""It doesn't seem that the animals need camouflage to protect themselves from predators or to aid in hunting"
"Maybe I missed something, but I didn't see anything to back that up in the resource links. The main predator is man, and as for hunting - have all those African lions got it wrong ?""

"Wildlife biologists don't really think that wolves rely much on camouflage to protect themselves or to increase their hunting success," said genetics professor Greg Barsh." I actually read this a few times in my research on this topic, but may not have necessarily posted all of the links. A lot of the articles were quite repetitive.

""Since black wolves are more prevalent in wooded areas (62% of populations in those locations) compared to on the open tundra (7%), it could be that the black gene helps to protect wolves from pathogens found in forests"
What ? None of the links get very specific about this pathogen protection gene.

As I read it, dogs were selectively bred from domesticated wolves. The gene for black fur in dogs was selectively encouraged, and is later re-introduced to the wolf population. Plausible, but where is the story going ? Wolves that aren't seen much don't get captured and trained as actors/grey wolves die of pathogens/wolves are easier to see in winter (!) ?"

My tie-in at the beginning about wolves in the movies is just that - a tie-in to get readers thinking. Where do most people see wolves? In the movies, not in their backyard, not in the wild. Maybe in a zoo. Until reading up on this topic I didn't know much, if anything, about black wolves, and neither did any of the people I did a quick/informal survey of regarding black wolves. I was not trying to say that gray wolves are in the movies because they are more likely to be trapped because of their coloration. I was trying to say they are what society usually pictures when they think "wolf".

Thanks for sharing the link; looks interesting but not something I have time to read today. I did my best to summarize what I thought was an interesting story for CR4's readers in 500 words, not 7,000. That's why I provide additional reading links.

Cheers for the feed-back, Savvy.

I wasn't really having a dig at your posting, but I was getting a bit narked at all the looping in the links (not just the ones posted). I got the impression that a single comment somewhere (about genetics/pathogens) had been re-circulated all over the net. On the bright side, it gave me a chance to explore a lot of interesting stuff about wolves. Thumbs up from me for introducing the topic. If I get a bit more time later I'll come back and give some links to info I found that was interesting, albeit not to the original discussion point, but wolf related.

Kris - thanks! And interesting point that I often find too. Whenever a big news story breaks, you see it everywhere, and it's often the same rendition of an AP (Associated Press) story. So if it was wrong in the original, and then repeated everywhere, that's a lot of wrongness spread everywhere! It also makes it hard to find facts that deviate from or expand from the norm. Quite frustrating sometimes, so I hear you!