The tanuki is a very interesting example of a very real animal being at the center of a large amount of folklore and possessing a good deal of mythical qualities not the least of which is the scrotums you mention. I suppose the same could be said of the Japanese wolves, real animals so steeped in folklore that one who didn’t know they actually existed might be inclined to think they were merely phantoms of the human imagination.

Thank you for bringing that link to my attention. The Pink Tentacle, by the way, is an excellent site for not only Japanese pop-culture, but also cryptozoological and mysterious phenomena in Japan as well.

Glad you enjoyed the article here!

And as always, appreciate the story and your perspective on both the folklore and natural history. cheers.

You are so right mystery_man, I would rather observe, study, and discuss canids and felids and other carnivores of course, than all the lake monster in the forests or all the bigfoot in Loch Ness.

darn…i guess i really DO have to worry about packs of feral dogs running on my farm property! haven’t had many, just a couple of packs of 3 to 4. hoped they would die out having to compete with coyotes (and me, for that matter). now that you bring it up, there is a dog, supposedly found wild and definately bred, called the Carolina Dingo. i think it is supposed to be desended from the dogs kept by native americans in the area. looks kinda like a coyote.

It’s funny, for me, that this discussion has taken a turn into “pariah” dogs at the point I revisit it.

Just a few minutes ago, on our way home, my three kids and I saw a doglike animal, between fox and coyote size, bolt across the road in front of us. It looked, to me, quite unlike a domestic dog, certainly unlike any dog I had ever seen around our home in Maryland. It looked like a fox might look with its coat removed, i.e, skinny frame and tail, but with longer legs. It also didn’t behave like I would expect a domestic to based on experience. The road we were on is pretty quiet, even in daylight. This was at night, which allowed me to make numerous passes of the area. On each one we saw the dog, which seemed to be going back and forth across the road and always trying to evade us. It never came near to staying still enough for me to get a good look. But I kept thinking: classic pariah dog.

The toughest thing to do with any extant cryptic wild canid in Japan, on any of the islands, if such there be and it almost seems the way to bet, may be figuring out what, exactly, it is. It’s an old story, the “stray” dog, and it seems to happen everywhere dogs have gone.

As for the bears I mentioned, I’m fairly certain that the dogs were used only for baying the animals. This stems not only from the danger posed by the power of a 650 pound bear, but also from the fact that bears were worshipped by the Ainu. As with wolves, there are certain proper ways to go about killing bears in Ainu culture.

maeko- One more thing about feral dogs and how they relate to modern day wolf sightings. I tend to think that if there were feral huskies seen near human settlements, they might just be seen as what they are, huskies. One of the dangers of feral dogs is actually that people tend to view them as just roaming house pets and don’t consider their reversion to a more wild state. One the other hand, a feral husky in the wild where one did not expect to see it might instigate a wolf sighting. So it might just depend on the circumstances behind the sighting. A husky in a dumpster is a husky, but one out running through the forest in the middle of nowhere becomes “a wolf.”

As I said, there are quite a few populations of multigenerational feral dogs throughout the world, so it is one angle to consider I think.

Just some thoughts.

DWA- The Hokkaido breed often is tasked with killing the animal themselves. They kill by throwing down the prey and destroying the nerve system at the shoulder of the front leg. This breed of dog never eats their prey, and will keep it safe until the hunter can retrieve it. These dogs were used to hunt all sorts of big game, including bear. Their usefullness didn’t stop there either. Their bold, alert, and cautious nature makes them good village guard dogs, and they were used as draft dogs as well.

maeko- Actually, feral dogs can breed and establish long term populations quite well in the wild. It has been found that the duration and intensity of domestication isn’t always a good indication of an animal’s feral potential. Just look at the dingoes of Australia. There are mulitigenerational feral dog populations in Asia, Australia, even America. They can actual be quite an ecological hazard in some areas.

There have been areas where the feral populations have moved more away from human populations as well. For instance, in the Sikkim region of the Himilayas, there have been problems with feral dog populations that have begun to make the forests their habitat, threatening native species. Feral dogs can potentially survive wherever there is a habitat and food source.

Interestingly, feral dogs over several generations will start to exhibit certain “pariah” dog traits, taking on an appearance much like the dingoes of Australia or the Carolina dogs of America. Whether puppy mill huskies have established populations in the wilds of Hokkaido remains to be seen, but it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility in my opinion.

solitaryman, cryptidsrus- The Ainu certainly had nothing to do with what the ranchers were doing. The Ainu people are the indigenous people of Japan, much like the Native Americans of America. They revered the animal, yet modernization changed the views of non-Ainu, who then went about the extermination when wolves were seen as a threat to their livlihood. The Ainu did everything they could for the wolves, but the ranching industry could not be stopped.

So yes, the Ainu are a separate group and they continued to revere the animals even as modernization simultaneously destroyed them. You can look at it sort of like Native Americans when white settlers were killing off their animals such as wolves and bison.

Hopefully the Ezo really did survive somewhere in Japan.

Solitaryman asked a very good question. Wonder what triggered the “about-face” on the Ezo. Probabaly it was the fact that religious tradition came in contact with “cold reality”.