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Piker20

Any news on the creature?

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If it has dog features and wolf features, the possibilities are pretty limited. Western wolves in the wild will kill a dog or coyote on sight, which pretty much precludes a wild hybrid. What's most likely is that some knucklehead bought a wolf/dog hybrid from a breeder and turned it loose when it became impossible to handle. I've seen several "domesticated" hybrids out there when we were living in Idaho, and I sure as hell wouldn't want one either. Eastern wolves have dog and coyote DNA, but I don't think you'd find one in Montana. Then again, if you live in that area, it couldn't hurt to stock up on wolfsbane and carry a silver-headed club when traversing the moor at night. And if you happen to see Lon Chaney Jr. walking through the streets with a Chinese menu in his hand, you can probably kiss your ass goodbye.

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It's a dang good dog. The best dogs all have that posture.

 

My understanding (from years ago) is that all domestic dogs are descended from wolves and so will have wolf DNA, I doubt that animal has more wolf than a dog should have, but...

I have seen wild canines in a pack with coyotes that looked mostly dog, killed a couple that were obviously (to me) dog/coyote cross and that dog in the picture could well be such a cross. I don't know much about the wolves of Montana, but I did read Jack Londons books and am pretty sure he had wolf/dog or dog/wolf crosses in a couple of his stories.

 

On the hand, "what difference does it make"? She learned to roll over and look dead; good dog.

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The canid in the picture could be anything, though my money's on a wolf/dog hybrid. Research indicates that modern (gray) wolves and dogs descended from an extinct common ancestor thousands of years ago, but they've evolved separately over the millennia. Dogs do not descend from modern wolves; they're entirely different animals, though they're still classified within the same species. (which is open to debate) Canids' ability to interbreed makes tracing their lineages difficult, but with DNA research, the picture is beginning to clear up somewhat. A male gray wolf will occasionally mate with a female domestic dog that it finds in estrus, but it's extremely rare. Wolf/dog hybrids are nearly always the result of selective breeding controlled by humans. They're intelligent, unpredictable, powerful animals that will often escape captivity, or be turned loose by owners who have bitten off more than they can chew. As far as I know, the only strain of free-ranging dogs still in existence in the U.S. is the Carolina dog, which is still out there in the Southeast, and carries a unique DNA haplotype. (I happen to own one; the light-colored dog in the picture is a Carolina) There's a distinct possibility that they're pre-Columbian, although the research is still incomplete. There's no evidence that they've ever mated with coyotes, though they've had the opportunity. BTW - Jack London's "White Fang" was about a wolf-dog, (3/4 wolf) and "The Call of the Wild" was about a dog that was accepted by a wolf pack, but London wrote fiction, and where he got his ideas, nobody knows.

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I know it's got nothing to do with the OP ... but a question.

Aren't "wolf/dog" offspring like horse/donkey offspring ... sterile?

 

Dogs and wolves are similar enough to interbreed ... but their offspring will be sterile.

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Interesting about the common ancestor rather than descended from, and possibility of a pre-Columbian,dog; both go against what I had read years ago, but knowledge of DNA was mostly theory back when.

 

fwiw, trappers from that area and from AK and Ca. think it is ordinary wolf in spring clothing, partly shed, partly rubbed,

 

 

Dogs and wolves are similar enough to interbreed ... but their offspring will be sterile.

Maybe, but, there are several "breeds" of "dog" that claim to have been developed from wolf x dogs, including the German Shepard and Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, at least in the articles I read.

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fwiw, trappers from that area and from AK and Ca. think it is ordinary wolf in spring clothing, partly shed, partly rubbed

 

 

Its paws look small though. Even for a big dog they are on the small side???

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Mike, dogs and wolves belong to the same species, and their offspring are fertile. Knuckleheads who breed these potentially dangerous animals come up with all kinds of percentages of dog/wolf genes by selective breeding. Horses and donkeys belong to different species; their genes don't match up well enough for mules and hinnies to have complete reproductive systems. Coyote/dog crosses are also fertile, although pups from two coydog parents don't do well in the wild. Tjm; Carolina dogs were unknown to science until the 1970s, when a biologist in a dense South Carolina swamp noticed that the free-ranging dogs he was seeing looked exactly alike. He trapped some of them for study, and found that they exhibited behaviors that are unknown in domestic dogs. Local folks, of course, knew all about them, and just called them "yaller" dogs or swamp dogs. They'd always been roaming around remote areas, and nobody gave them a second thought. To get back to the OP: I'll try to keep track of the story. We should know something by the next full moon, especially if there are any Gypsy caravans in the area. I never missed a Friday night "Shriek Theater" presentation when I was a kid, and I'm well-acquainted with critters that stalk human prey around cemeteries on foggy nights.

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Kind of like a Carolinas version of the dingo huh Peterjay?

 

 

 

I looks like a yoing wolf transitioning from winter to summer coats. Sure the paws were small but it was a small female and if it had any coyote blood mixed in at any point, that would explain that anomaly.

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Yeah, FB; Carolina dogs are nicknamed "American dingoes." They strongly resemble each other physically, but there's no genetic connection. My guess is that dogs who fend for themselves have evolved into forms that resemble each other for practical reasons. Big, erect ears, medium size, bushy tails. Our Carolina dog has hearing that's amazing, and has extremely strong pack instincts. (She won't touch her food until the alpha female eats, and she won't let the lower-ranking dogs touch her.) The OP animal could be a wolf that just looks a little different than other wolves. Heck, I don't look like Brad Pitt or George Clooney either, even though we're all equally handsome and irresistible to women.

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I know it's got nothing to do with the OP ... but a question.

Aren't "wolf/dog" offspring like horse/donkey offspring ... sterile?

To quote Ian Malcom in Jurrasic Park "Life will find a way".

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Never heard of a Carolina dog before. This thread has been interesting. Looks like some good tying fur there too.

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