I don’t know how I missed this story, but a black maned wolf was photographed in a nature reserve in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais.
Unlike the melanism seen in wolves and coyotes, we know that this coloration didn’t originate from crossing with domestic dogs.
But it’s such a cool animal!
Advertisements
I am thoroughly enjoying your blog!
Thank you!
Neat!
I say we don’t know FOR SURE that the black coloration seen in North American wolves necessarily originated in domestic dogs. Melanism occurs with varying regularity in many wild canids. The melanism could just as easily have arisen in wild wolves and then entered the dog population. After all, it had to come from SOMEWHERE. And if we posit that the dog is the domesticated form of the wolf, alleles for melanism have probably been passed back and forth between wild, semi-domestic, and domestic wolves many times over the millennia.
Actually, in this case, we do know for sure.
In New World and Italian wolves, we do know it came from dogs through measuring the mutation rate. The trait is oldest in dogs. Now there are weird recessive blacks that have popped up in Old World wolves before, but this is dominant black, and that’s the color that’s in wolves and coyotes here and in wolves in Italy.