One of the great enigmas in the world of canid zoology is the case of Hagenbeck’s wolf.
Hagenbeck’s wolf is a proposed species based upon one pelt.
The pelt came from an animal dealer in Argentina, who sold it to Lorenz Hagenbeck in 1926. Hagenbeck claimed there were four such skins, but he purchased only one. The dealer claimed they came from a wild dog that lived in Andes.
It was sent to Germany and wound up in the museums of Munich. In 1940, a zoologist named Ingo Krumbiegel examined the pelt. The pelt’s color was black and fur was much longer than other canids from the region. He assumed that it belonged to a undescribed montane species of maned wolf.
Krumbiegel ignored the pelt until 1947, when it began looking at again. In that year, he learned from Lorenz Hagenbeck that there were three other pelts just like it. That got Krumbiegel thinking. He had received from the Andes. He had thought the skull belonged to a maned wolf, but it was much larger than any maned wolf he’d ever examined or read about.
He thought that maybe this skull came from the same species as the one with the black pelt. It measured over 30 centimeters in length, while the typical maned wolf skull is only 25 inches in length
Krumbiegel began to reconstruct the animal from the skin. The “mane” on the neck of the pelt was 8 inches long. He noticed the legs were a lot shorter than the typical maned wolf, which is creature of open woodland and grassland habitats and uses its long legs to help it see, hear, and smell over the tall grass. He drew sketches of what he imagined this montane maned wolf looked like.
Krumbiegel thought the animal was unique enough that it deserved its own genus. He initially gave it the name Oreocyon hagenbecki or “Hagenbeck’s mountain dog,” but on learning that Oreocyon had been used before, he changed it to Dasycyon hagenbecki–“Hagenbeck’s thick (furred) dog.”
That proposed name has been the one that has been floating around cryptozoology circles ever since. Bernard Heuvelmans, the dean of cryptozoologists, thought that if Hagenbeck’s wolf really was that similar to the maned wolf, then it might be more properly classified as part of Chrysocyon.
The big maned wolf skull was lost during the war, so Krumbiegel was unable to make additional measurements of it.
In 2000, there was an attempt to do a DNA test on the pelt, but the researchers were unable to get uncontaminated DNA from it. The pelt had been chemically treated, making recovery of DNA from it quite difficult.
The most likely explanation is that this pelt belonged to a domestic dog. Perhaps there was a population of domestic dogs that went feral in the Andes. They were prick-eared and black-coated, and they were thought of as “wild dogs.”
But they were actually feral.
It has been suggested that the large skull that Krumbiegel examined belonged to a German shepherd and that he extrapolated all of this analysis off a skull belonging to a domestic dog.
I’m a bit skeptical of that suggestion. Krumbiegel lived in Nazi Germany, where German shepherds were celebrated dogs and heavily studied. He surely would have known the difference between a German shepherd or wolf skull and that belonging to a South American wild dog.
No one has tried to extract DNA from the anomalous pelt since 2000. It’s generally been ignored. We do have better techniques for DNA extraction now, so maybe it is worth another go.
Maybe this animal really is a montane maned wolf or some other undescribed canid. Maned wolves do rarely come in black on occasion, and this could be suggestive of a relationship.
Perhaps it was a descendant of the improperly classified Canis gezi. Maybe it was a closer relative of the extinct Falkland Islands wolf than the maned wolf, which is currently listed as its closest relative.
The truth is we really don’t know, but if we were to find out that it was something that spectacular, the question ultimately would be whether this animal still exists.
Maybe it was among the last of its species.
Or maybe it was just a feral dog.
That’s the enigma.
And in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that much of a priority.
But wouldn’t you like to know?
My first thought when I saw the sketch was melanistic maned wolf or Falkland Islands wolf (or, as you suggested, a related but now-extinct variant or related species). Lorenz Hagenbeck was Carl Hagenbeck’s son; he grew up surrounded by wild animals from all over the world and as Carl’s son, he would surely have been able to determine whether a skull was that of a domestic dog (feral or not) and a wild wolf or wolflike animal.
Carl Hagenbeck was a self-taught naturalist and was the first person to develop naturalistic exhibits without cages or bars for many of his zoo & circus animals. He also experimented – a lot – with hybridizing. There are photos of his puma x leopard hybrids at messybeast dot com. He was also an avid collector and traveled widely to collect animals from the wild for his zoo as well as for many others.s. I don’t know whether his sons traveled with him, but they were raised to work in the family’s zoo and circus business & would have been very familiar with wild animals. Too bad Lorenz Hagenbeck didn’t buy all four of those pelts! But by 1926 the Hagenbeck brothers’ circus was in financial trouble (Carl was long dead, having died from the bite of a boomslang in 1913), so maybe he just couldn’t afford more than one.
I’ve always been interested in Carl Hagenbeck; he was a visionary. Of course it’s weird that he exhibited various groups of native people, living together in “naturalistic family groups”, in his zoo and traveling circus; during the time in which he lived, that sort of thing was considered not only acceptable but educational. But what intrigues me most about Hagenbeck is his enthusiasm for searching for previously unknown species, and his enthusiasm for hybridizing. It’s frowned on today for zoos to deliberately cross different species, but Hagenbeck’s hybrids were fascinating.
Here’s a link I have saved (I hope the link goes directly to the correct page, but in case it doesn’t, it’s page 331) from a Nov. 1903 Scientific American (via Google Books) that discusses Hagenbeck and some of his hybrids.
https://books.google.com/books?id=VYY3AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA331&lpg=PA331&dq=Hagenbeck+hybrids&source=bl&ots=OFQSHJwpr9&sig=3F7QmskkUOb1w3o-VXKNuB7bfRU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFzYi6s-POAhXLPiYKHelwDcoQ6AEIXjAG#v=onepage&q=hagenbeck&f=true
It’s not too much of a stretch to think that “Hagenbeck’s wolf” might still exist. There’s a lot of South America still relatively unexplored, and species previously unknown (to science, anyway) are discovered there pretty often. Wouldn’t that be astounding? A large canid of an entirely “new” species. Wow.
Bleh. I must be getting tired. Sorry for all the typos.
It seems logical that a canid living in the Andes would have shorter legs, smaller ears, a heavier coat, and larger body size than a similar or related canid living in a savannah environment, too.
Kittenz, thank you for the insights. When I read the name “Hagenbeck” the first thing that came to mind was the Hagenbeck-Wallace circus, My grandparents were with that circus for a time, long ago. Easy to see how Lorenz Hagenbeck’s interest in exotic animals began.
I need the person who deals with cougars in wv to send me an email … I have one on my trail cam and my nephew saw one at the end of his driveway… and wow