Recent research shows that North American wolves took on a specific genetic mutation for dark coat colour as a result of mating with domesticated dogs. It’s long been known that light-coloured coats dominate wolf populations in tundras, but dark coats are much more common in wolves living in North American forests. What we haven’t known, until now, is why that mutation is region specific.
Extinct dogs and living wolves genetically linked
It’s a very odd finding, because it’s counter-intuitive – being an occasion where human interference in an ecosystem has actually enriched the genetic diversity of a wild animal population. Although there’s a certain strange justice to the fact that it was human meddling that created the trait that is now likely to help wolves adjust to human-created habitat changes.
Tundra ecosystems are likely to shrink in future, as forests expand north due to climate change – wolves may be better able to adapt as a result of the genetic mutation which could help traditional ‘grey’ wolves in adapting to their changing environment.
Legislation, habitat and hunting all threaten wolves
The research suggests that black wolves derived from the breeding of grey wolves with the domestic dog breeds who travelled with Native Americans into the Americas between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago. These dog breeds have become extinct, which, until recently, seemed likely to be the case with North American wolves too. The recent freeze on implementing legislation has meant that no states have been allowed to remove wolves from their endangered species list, a proposal that was about to be passed by the outgoing Bush administration, but the threat to the wolves doesn’t end there.
We don’t know why dark coats help woodland wolves. There’s a suggestion that darker coloration might let camouflage them better under trees but current research suggests that wolves don’t use this kind of concealment when hunting or to protect themselves. Another possibility is that the protein that delivers a darker pelt may also help fight inflammation and infection. There is a link in humans between this protein and healing rates, so perhaps the animals with darker pigmentation are just quicker to recover from illness or injury.
Whatever benefit it confers, wolves will need all the help they can get – climate change, hunters, agricultural communities campaigning for eradication and shrinking territories all threaten their continued existence. The dogs they bred with have already disappeared, and the wolves may still follow.
Photograph of Peyto, ambassador wolf, author’s own
Typical whiny article from a liberal city dweller who has little if any knowledge of wolves and their interactions in todays world. Wolves will not go extinct under any circumstances and at this time are wreaking havoc in areas where they are now without any control.
Actually G Stoll, it looks like you're the typical reactionary wwho cirt4es ZERO actual facts, right wing radio style. Most of the large predators will go extinct in our or our children's lifetimes unless there is a complete shift in our breeding habits, extraction of resources like timber etc. I'm a lefty city dweller who has spent countless hours in the woods and and countless hours in the library so I can speak with some FACTS about these amtters. Read Quammen's "Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind"
Read books by people who do actual research (not Anne Coulter) so you can a least be an informed Right-winger. And please don't breed.
Hmmm, I don't think I'm a liberal, or a city dweller. In fact I've spent a lot of time in 'uninhabited' areas of the world.
But it's true that some wolf populations can be devastating to local stock and wildlife – species extinction is not likely, but sub-species extinction is on the cards for several wolf populations with their own unique and irreplaceable genes.
G Stoll it is people like you that have causeed the world's animals to be in the situations that they are now. There use to be millions of bision and elk and thousand of wolves.