Wolf

Canis lupus or Canis lupus lupus?

You will read in academicaly published books that the domestic dog - Canis familiaris - and the wolf - Canis lupus - separated genetically into the two species tens of thousands of years ago. The dogs became the companion of people and the wolves decided to live in the wild and not associate with riff-raff.

But on the other hand, you'll also read in academically published books that dogs and wolves are the same species, the wolf being Canis lupus lupus and people's best friend is Canis lupus familiaris.

Well, since the experts can't seem to agree - and we're talking about experts - we'll just call this, the rendering being in slow-drying acrylics, a wolf.

In fact, this is a grey wolf which you'll read is what you call a wolf if you want to use two words. But you'll also read that there are grey wolves and red wolves and lycaons. Then we read eins mehr that some wolf experts say the lycaon is a subspecies of the grey wolf. And other wolves - timber wolves and arctic wolves - are really just grey wolves when they're living amongst timber or in the arctic.

Part of the difficulty here is how to define a species. For one thing, wolves and dogs can form happy, productive unions to produce robust, vigorous, and fully functional puppies. So in the usual way of thinking, these should be the same species. That is - and we quote - "a species is often defined as a group of individuals that actually or potentially interbreed in nature."

That's often defined, etc., etc. So that definition, we learn, is a simplification. Speciation occurs when circumstances keep the populations separate. Then if two groups will not interbreed because of behavior or geographic distribution, they can legitimately be classed as different species. The physical separation can also produce a distribution of viability of offspring. In some cases you'll find a range of animals over a distance where immediate neighbors can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. But if you grab the animals at the extreme of the distribution, they cannot interbreed and they produce only infertile offspring if at all.

Dogs, though, everyone agrees are a single species. They can all interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Even a Chihuahua could interbreed with a Great Dane as long as someone would put him up to it.

But dogs are unique in that they have the greatest variation in appearance and size than found in any other species. These large differences between dog breeds is likely due to the domestication process itself although not necessarily intentionally.

Many have heard of the experiments where foxes have been domesticated. The process didn't just change their behavior - domesticated foxes wag their tails - but induced physical changes as well. Their ears became more floppy (wolves have alert ears), tails were shorter and sometimes curved (wolves' tails are long and relatively straight), their fur underwent coloration diversion (a difference between dogs and wolves), and important for making them house pets, the musky smell that's characteristic of wild foxes disappeared.

Wolves are found in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. In the Americas the highest populations are north of the Canadian-US border. However, small numbers do live in certain rural areas in the continental United States and sometimes range into states where they are not considered native.

In folklore wolves tend to be the bad guys. Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, all show us wolves that will eat you up. It doesn't take much figgerin' to understand why the bad publicity.

Wolves rarely attack people but they do go after livestock, particularly if they're easy pickin's as we see in Aesop's Fables, in "The Wolf and the Lamb" which is one of the earliest documented tales in bad-wolf literature. Wolves snitching farmers' animals naturally brought them into conflict with humans and gave rise to the tales of the problem wolves.

And of course you have the werewolf stories, at one time the staple of many a monster movie fan. There's been werewolf movies produced since the silent era, but the most famous werewolf is Lawrence Talbot, played by Lon Chaney, Jr., in the 1941 film The Wolfman. The story in this still critically acclaimed film is, of course, fictitious but as late as 2016 citizens in an English shire reported seeing a huge half-man/half wolf creature wandering about. They even organized groups to go out and find whatever it was. Naturally they found nothing since werewolves, as should be obvious by now, are not real.

References

Dogs, Raymond and Lorna Coppinger, University of Chicago Press, Scribners, Simon and Schuster, 2002.

The Domestic Dog,James Serpe (Editor), Priscilla Barrett (Illustrator), Cambridge University Press, 1995.

"Types of Wolves", International Wolf Center.

"Are Wolves and Dogs the Same Species?", The Dog Visitor.

"Defining a Species", Understanding Evolution, University of California - Berkeley.

"How a Russian Scientist Bred the First Domesticated Foxes", Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, Septemper 14, 2016.

"The Archaeology of Dog Domestication", Real Archaeology, Vassar University, November 3, 2021.

"Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? A Fearsome Beast in Tales Around the World", Marilia Pezzato, Ancient Origins, October 2, 2020.

"Why We Should Welcome the Return of 'Old Stinker', the English Werewolf", Sam George, Ancient Origins, June 13, 2019.