Researchers with the Voyageurs Wolf Project have captured footage of a possible wolf-dog hybrid roaming the forests of northern Minnesota.
The animal was spotted on February 29 and again on March 3, traveling with two wolves. In a Facebook post about the footage, researchers on the University of Minnesota project say that in their 10 years of studying wolves in and around Voyageurs National Park, they have never seen a wolf that looks like this animal.
The video shows a line of three animals trotting through the forest. The first and third are thin wolves with light grey and light brown fur – typical of adult wolves in the area.
The middle animal is larger and bushier, with black and brown coloring and a rounder face.
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“It stands out like a sore thumb,” the scientists wrote.
Project leader Tom Gable told MPR News: “We have never seen a wild wolf in our area that even remotely resembled this.”
He said he was not sure if the animal was a wolf-dog hybrid, but given the animal’s drastic differences from a typical wolf, it was plausible.
“He’s much bigger, he’s taller, he has fluffy fur like a malamute and his tail has a kink that wild wolves in the area don’t have. And his face has features that look more dog-like than wolf-like.”
“All of this together makes this animal look really unique,” Gable said. “It’s either some kind of wolf-dog hybrid or a wolf with some very interesting physiological mutations or traits that are unique compared to other wolves in northern Minnesota.”
If it is a hybrid, Gable assumes that the animal was either released or escaped, since there is no evidence of wolves mating with dogs in northern Minnesota.
He said owners of wolf-dog hybrids sometimes discard them because raising them can be very difficult, especially those with high levels of wolf genes.
“So it doesn’t seem totally unlikely that someone could do something like this in northern Minnesota,” Gable said.
After the two sightings of the animal with the two wolves – which did not belong to a resident pack but were roaming around – cameras recorded videos of the animal alone ten more times between March 11 and 20.
After that it probably left the area.
Joint development
Gable and his project colleagues discovered the sightings while reviewing wildlife camera footage from last winter.
Wolves and dogs share a common evolutionary history. They can interbreed and produce viable offspring, according to the International Wolf Center, a wolf education center based in Ely and the Twin Cities.
Hybridization can occur naturally in the wild, but is rare because wolves are extremely territorial and will defend their territory from invading dogs, coyotes, and other wolves.
Over the past decade, researchers from the Voyageurs Project have used GPS collars and a network of wildlife cameras to uncover the secret summer habits of wolves in and around the national park.
Over the years, they have discovered some surprising hunting behaviors. Among other things, they showed that wolves hunt freshwater fish, gorge themselves on berries, and kill a surprising number of beavers, often lying in wait for hours as the beavers leave their ponds in search of food.
Gable said the discovery does not indicate any larger pattern or behavioral or population change that he and his colleagues could document as part of their project.
“It’s just a one-time, interesting observation,” he said.
