In July of this year, this blog will have been up for a decade. I don’t read the old stuff. I can’t force myself to. When I first started, I tried to put as much information in each post as possible, thinking that I might never get a chance to tell it again.
By the time i’d hit my second year, I was doing longer and longer posts, but ones that were more pointed. This was the era of the fractious blogging world.
I met people along the way. Some of have turned into the best online friends I ever could have imagined. Others were my friends for a while then our relationship went to hell after some disagreement or seeing how a person treated another person.
I notice my first gray hairs. They are just little isolates on my sideburns and temples. Someday, all my brown waves will fade away into silver ones.
Someday, I won’t be writing anything. Someday, I won’t be breathing.
Maybe in this digital age this bit of electronic scribbling will stay up, and someone will read it. Maybe that person in the future will think I’m an insufferable prig.
Or maybe that person will see some kinship.
Or maybe no one will give a damn either way.
I’ve come to realize, though, that maturity is not some mysterious process by which we gain wisdom. It is simply living your life out over several iterations of triumph and defeat and realizing that it is all too short in the end.
That realization has a profound influence on how one sees the world. A part of me misses those days of piss and vinegar and comradeship, but another more profound part me realizes what I fool I was.
The most profound song lyrics I’ve ever heard come (oddly) from Billy Joel. In song called “You’re Only Human (Second Wind,” he shuffles quickly through these two lines:
You’re not the only one who’s made mistakes
But they’re the only thing that you can truly call your own
Yep. And I’ll get some more of my truest possession before I finally leave off into the void of eternity.
But I hope I am more refined now and will be more refined later.
I am now more interested in the simplicity of art than the debate about facts, because I will get the facts right somehow. I just want it to look and sound pretty when I lay them out to you.
I hope those people who use to blog with me but have now moved on will find within themselves strength stare it all in the eyes once again. Let that maturity take hold of you and let it drive your narrative prose.
That’s what I am trying to do now before I sleep.
Your blog (among other now gone) in those days was instrumental to my own developing understanding and opinion of dogs and their history and biology. I’m sure I’m not alone.
You’ve been with me since the beginning or very close to it. I’m so glad to have you as one of my friends to share this stuff with.
Wonderful post.
I’ve watched your writing, always lucid and informative, grow steadily better over the years. I look forward to reading your work as you continue to find your voice and hone your craft.
(I had to use my other email address to make the post, but I’m still the same kittenz.)
Hi, I sometimes stumble over your blog when I’m searching for information about wildlife and I wanted to share some nieuws you might not already know. I hope you’ll find it interesting.
English is not my native language, but I’ll do my best.
In my country (Belgium), the last known wolf was shot in 1897 near Erezée, but in january 2018, a wild wolf established on a military domain near Leopoldsburg. This animal, a female, was born in 2016 in eastern Germany (Mecklenburg -Vorpommern, Lübtheener Heide). She was trapped, radio-collard and got the name « Naya » by the way.
You can see a picture of her here :
http://www.ostsee-zeitung.de/Mecklenburg/Suedwestmecklenburg/Woelfin-Naya-laeuft-von-MV-bis-nach-Belgien
Naya left the place she was born in october 2017, crossed the northern part of Germany and the Netherlands until reaching Leopoldsburg in january of this year after covering a distance of about 700 km. As far as I know, she’s still there now.
The wolf is integrally protected in the whole European Community. Until the 1990’s, this species was almost extinct in western Europe, but these last years, the wolves are exanding again. The recolonisation has been well monitored in Germany, where the first wolves immigrated from Poland. They established on a military domain near the border (Muskauer Heide) and the first cubs were born in the year 2000.
One female descendant established more westwards and gave birth to her first litter of nine (!) cubs in 2003, but when they were spotted the first time, it became evident that they were wolf-dog hybrids and it was decided to remove them from the wild. Only four of the hybrids survived into the winter, two of them were caught together with their mother. The pure wolf was radio-collared and released, the two hybrids where brought to a zoo (they died shortly after). The two hybrids that managed to escape where never seen again.
On this video, that retraces the first years of the « wolf-come back » in Germany, you can see the wolves from the « Muskauer Heide » with their cubs and also the hybrids, which look much like german shephards.
Last year, it happened again : a single female wolf established near Ohrdruf (Germany) gave birth to six cubs, all of them black. Black wolves (in contrast to the new world) normally don’t exist in Europe. It is believed that the father of these animals is a black labrador that was roaming around at the wrong time, but this is not sure.
There are intense attempts to catch those hybrids alive (people don’t want them to be killed), but without success until now.
You can watch pictures of them here :
http://www.bild.de/regional/leipzig/leipzig/diese-wolfs-welpen-sollen-getoetet-werden-53508042.bild.html
Our belgian wolf is in age to have her first litter this spring, but I guess that in the region where she is, the chances to encounter another wolf are extremely low, so maybe she’ll find a dog instead ?
I’m going to do something with this!
One thing that was discovered from analyzing wolf genomes recently is that it is estimated that 25 percent of all Eurasian wolves have some dog ancestry.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26680994
So it actually should not matter that dogs and wolves are exchanging genes in the wild. They have done so ever since dogs were created. I recently saw a lecture by the leading Ethiopian wolf expert Claudio Sillero, who pretty much said we shouldn’t be too concerned that some Ethiopian wolves have dog ancestry.
Something very similar happened in the US, when a female wolf in Washington State mated with Pyrenean Mountain dog that was being used to guard livestock in the open range. She was captured and spayed, and a Mexican wolf that had been released in New Mexico kept hooking up with male dogs too.
Hi, I guess that hybridisation has also to do with the fact that individuals that colonise new regions or that live in regions where their own species has been decimated (hunting, diseases, …) are perhaps more prone to choose a partner from a related, more abundant species if there is no « suitable » mate for them.
The female wolf that gave birth to hybrids in 2003 was a great aunt of the wolf with the black cubs, so the tendency to hybridize may perhaps also have a genetic component, but since many of the german wolves are related to each other, it doesn’t prove anything.
I remember another case of a wild wolf mating with a dog in Germany. It was in january 2000. A three-legged male wolf, later called « Naum », probably coming from Poland, met german shephard bitch « Xena » every evening her owner took her out for a walk. Xena’s owner took some pictures of the mating attempts :
http://hitzenhammer.tripod.com/xena.html
After several days of this « romance », Naum was captured and brought to a zoo (I think he sired several litters with a wolf mate and died at old age). Xena got pups two month later, but a paternity test revealed that their father was a dog, not Naum.
On this site, there is a discussion about the fact that many of the wolves that are recolonising Switzerland (coming from Italy) may in fact be more or less dog hybrids (big ears, long curved tail, unusual coat colour, …) :
https://www.vwl-ost.ch/wolfsmischlinge-oder-hybriden/hybriden-oder-wolfsmischlinge-in-der-schweiz/
It seems that on rare occasions, hybridisation also occurs between dogs and golden jackals (Canis aureus). Even in captivity, those hybrids are not as easy to obtain than between wolves and dogs (for the creation of the Sulimov dog, a dog-jackal hybrid breed, the male jackal cubs had to be raised by dog bitches to accept mating with dogs when they were adult, female jackals accepted dogs more easily).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulimov_dog
But apparently, such hybrids may even occur without direct human intervention :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackal%E2%80%93dog_hybrid
Here, you can find a map of Germany with the places, were wolves are known. Green wolf = pack, blue wolf= pair) :
In France, the first wolves established in 1992 in the national parc « Mercantour » in the Alps, but some individuals already appeared in the 1980’s (see map with dates here : https://observatoireduloup.fr/2017/10/28/les-quatre-phases-de-dispersion-du-loup-en-france/). Those animals immigrated from Italy. I remember that it was quite a big hype when a wolf appeared in the Vosges in 1994. This animal disappeared several weeks later an was never heard of again.
Here, you can find a map with the the french population. Orange : wolf is present, red : spreading wolves, green : wolves could sometimes be present, grey : spreading wolves from Germany, blue : no wolves.
https://observatoireduloup.fr/carte-de-dispersion-du-loup-en-france/
Last year, in our neighbouring land Luxembourg, genetic samples taken from a dead sheep showed that this animal had been killed by a wolf from the alpine population.
http://delano.lu/d/detail/news/official-confirmation-wolf-killed-sheep/154256
Those alpine wolves are even starting incursions into Spain. The wolves native to that country belong to a different subspecies (iberian wolf, Canis lupus signatus) and are still considered endangered.
Naya is probably not the first wolf in and around Belgium. In juli 2011, a camera trap was placed near a sheep that had been found partly eaten near Gedinne (Belgium). The film team hoped that the predator would come back in the night. In fact, they expected an eurasian lynx (there have been reintroduction programs for this species in Germany, but it is still very rare and elusive). This is what they filmed :
Here are pictures from the Netherlands :
http://wolvenindrenthe.nl/nederland/
The specimen from 2013 turned out to be a hoax (wolf shot in eastern Europe and placed on the border of the road on purpose).
This picture was taken in Juli 2017 by a farmer in Luxembourg :
http://www.lequotidien.lu/a-la-une/une-photo-qui-prouve-enfin-le-retour-du-loup-au-luxembourg/
and finally these two were filmed in december 2017 by a security camera in Sprimont (Belgium). Ok, I agree that they could as well be dogs :
http://www.lameuse.be/170917/article/2017-12-26/sprimont-jai-vu-deux-loups-dans-mon-jardin
Dogs and wolves exchange genes even where wolf populations are stable: https://academic.oup.com/jhered/article/105/3/345/2960052
Maybe you’re right when you say that “it actually should not matter that dogs and wolves are exchanging genes in the wild”, but I think that when you have only a few wolves with millions of dogs around, it’s a different situation. In that case, hybrids should be removed from the wild if possible.
The crossbreeding of european wild cats and domestic cats in southern Europe and Scotland is another example of introgession of domestic genes into wild populations:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2606743/
Finally, I wanted to correct something: I wrote that the wolf is integrally protected in the whole European Community. This is not totally true because there are exceptions in several countries:
http://www.wolvesandhumans.org/wolves/conservation_of_wolves_in_europe.htm
Thanks for the interesting link.
Hello,
I wanted to join a blogging conversation you have about Jed the wolf dog from Disney. Having a wolf dog DNA tested who looks like his twin, I felt I could offer some info on some questions about his possible heritage. And also wanted to comment about his amazing owner Clint Rowe. I’m unable to find a way to comment on that blog. Is it closed?
All posts close comments after 30 days, so we can keep the blog staying on topic. I had real problems with constantly going back. I know which comment you’re talking about. This guy is commentator: http://www.erbzine.com/mag19/1983.html
He doesn’t have internet at home, but he regularly comments here: http://stephenbodio.blogspot.com