Black wolves got their black color from dogs.
At some point in the last 10,000 years, a black dog mated with a normal colored wolf in North America, and a whole new coloration was introduced to the wolves. Gregory Barsh, a geneticist at Stanford University, has traced the gene in wolves back to the k black mutation. This mutation comes from dogs, not wolves.
This black color has also been found in Italian wolves, which have been known to interbreed with dogs– a lot. In fact, Italian wolves are so interbred with dogs, that some Italian wolves have hind dewclaws, which exist only in dogs. In fact, the presence of these hind dewclaws is used to identify wolves that have dog in them.
Black color, according to Barsh, is inherited from a dominant gene. This is the exact same genetic inheritance relationship we have with most black dogs. A black lab’s color is dominant to the yellow’s. However, Barsh points out that black German shepherds inherit their color through a recessive gene to the more typical color, but this recessive black color also occurs in Tervuren and Malinois that have Tevuren in them. Because all Belgian shepherd dogs in the FCI are recognized by phenotype and not breeding, recessive black Tervs become Groenendael (Belgian sheepdogs) in the registry, while black Malinois aren’t recognized at all.
Black wolves are almost entirely linked to the North American continent. They are most common in forest regions. This area is where we have historical records of large numbers of Native Americans living with large numbers of domestic dogs. And some of them had to be black.
Interesting, black wolves were thought to be associated with the Southeastern races of wolf. In fact, the so-called red wolf was once called Canis niger (black dog) because there were so many black wolves in Florida.
Wolf and dog interbreeding had to have been more common in the past. I’ve read accounts of the early American West that suggest that wolves were very often sharing their kills with dogs and coyotes, animals that modern wolves now kill if they run into them. In Italy, dogs and wolves don’t have a lot of prey to hunt, so they both rely on garbage dumps to feed themselves. Congregating around the same food source, the dogs and wolves are also interbreeding.
It is because of this interbreeding and the continuous development of dogs from wolves over a very long period of time that dog and wolf genetics are quite difficult to tell apart. In terms of behavior and phenotype, one can easily distinguish between the two, but the genes tell the story of a close common ancestry. In fact, that is why dogs and wolves are often considered the same species.
Today, interbreeding is not that common, especially in North America. North American wolves are far more likely to kill a dog rather than breed with one. The Italian wolves are in much smaller numbers, and the typical wolf has only so many mates it can choose from in the wolf population. It makes sense that Italian wolves would mate with dogs.
This finding is quite parismonious with what we already know about the high levels of interrelatedness with wolves and dogs. I regard them as the same species, but with important differences, just as there are important differences between Arabian wolves and Arctic wolves.
Black coyotes also exist, mainly in the Eastern subspecies. This makes sense, although I’m much more willing to believe that in coyotes, the coloration came from interbreeding with wolves as they worked their way north into Canada and then moved south into the Eastern US. Barsh found that the black coyotes ultimately got their black gene from dogs, too, but my guess is it is indirectly inherited through cross-breeding with black wolves.
Black coyote.
Mark Derr also has an article in the NY Times. And yes, we really need to think about this term species.
National Geographic has also picked up the story.
A very interesting post that makes you wonder on not only the color but what other genetical traits are being exchanged between these two species. Also makes you think why wolves in North America show a distinct aggressive behavior toward dogs than those in Italy? Like I said, very interesting article!
Wolves in Europe are also aggressive toward dogs. I have had family members who have traveled in Eastern Europe where there are still plenty of wolves. The wolves actually are the main control on feral dogs in some Eastern European countries, like Romania.
I don’t think wolf aggression towards dogs is the original behavior. I think it’s a byproduct of centuries of persecution of the wolf, so that the only wolves left are unusually high strung animals.
I do have a similar case in the case of the hippo. Hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa to people. Hippos hate people, and people hate hippos. It’s likely that Hippos didn’t really care about people until agriculture arrived, and then hippos started raiding the fields. Then we started killing them. And then only ones that survived were those that showed a sort of calculated aggression towards people.
The pygmy hippos are far less aggressive animals than the common ones. They’ve never had to deal with widespread persecution, or with lion predation, which is the other thing that has driven the common hippo into a mad animal.
[…] Murie’s rather banal speculation that appears as an aside in the study has suddenly taken on new meaning. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)I like my modified wolvesDogs and wolvesDogs: Our […]
Uh…aren’t dogs basically tamed wolves?
Yes.
so that means that those wolves r agressive to those dogs because it is like another wolf comin into their territory. Well I have cats not wolves. And people want a deadly chawowas runnin around in their hanbag?
[…] that is further complicated with the influx of dog genes into the wolf population. (See the recent finding on black wolves for the most notorious example. Also see the sudden appearance of dewclaws on the hind legs of […]
No explanation is given why anyone thinks the gene came from dogs and not the other way around. Really stretching here when it gets to the black coyotes. Why is the researcher so sure about this? Where is the concrete evidence?
I don’t understand the relevance that the two types of black gene in dogs has to this issue. Are we saying that black German shepherds contributed genes to the wolf populations? If anything it would be the other way around, since wolves are rumored to have been mated with sheepdogs to create the German shepherd breed.
“The events in this scenario have been dated using the amount and pattern of variation at single-nucleotide polymorphisms linked to CBD103. For example, there is very little variation at single-nucleotide polymorphisms closely linked to the KB allele in wolves, resulting in a very recent estimate of time to most recent common ancestor and indicating a recent selective sweep. Conversely, there is more variation and evidence of recombination, among the same single-nucleotide polymorphisms on the KB haplotypes from dogs, suggesting a somewhat older time to most recent common ancestor.”
http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v103/n6/full/hdy200977a.html
They did the same thing with coyotes, and they got the same results.
[…] coyotes no son perros Yesss…Finally got that Black Coyote!!! – Avery Outdoors Message Board Evidence now suggests that black wolves in Italy and North America got that coloration from interbre… este si esta raro parece un perro huski o como se llaman ? jaja Black Coyote – Southern Airboat […]
[…] their black coloration from crossbreeding with domestic dogs. In Western North American wolves, this black coloration was introduced about 12,000 years ago. However, in these Eastern wolf populations there would have likely been a large number of Native […]
Interesting article especially about the wolves in Italy. As my husband worked on translating a thesis on Italian wolves (in the Parco Nazionale in Abruzzo) with some ‘assistance’ from the now deceased Konrad Lorenz and I think he mentioned David Mech had imput as well.
Apart from the translating work it also meant that he was involved in catching the wolves to put electronic collars on them so that they could track where they traveled and especially at night, (usually to the villages) to go to the rubbish bins and dumps for feeding. That thesis then became a documentary on TV on wolf behaviour of the Italian wolves.
After returning to Australia, my husband said that the only breed of dog he wanted was the Belgian Tervuren, because of their wolf like personality (they single track like wolves, ‘smile’ like wolves, and are super intelligent as well).
Anyway I read an article a few years ago that Belgian Shepherds ( the Tevuren is one of the varieties of the breed) + two other dog breeds (this is where my memory may be a tad faulty, i think the article mentioned Golden retrievers and a small lap dog breed) are DNA related to the Russian wolf – have you heard of this ?
i have just come across this article recently, so i hope that you can still reply regarding this subject.
I have not heard that about golden retrievers, but I do have a good source on Italian black wolves: