I have a house in the hills in Abeta village, Nabari City, Mie Province.

es, something should be done to protect what is left of the species.

Regards

I don’t think that the evolution of domestic dogs is nearly as straightforward as some would have us believe. When dogs are left to their own devices, in long-term feral situations for instance, their overall appearance never reverts to a wolf-like appearance, but always begins to approximate the appearance of a dingo-like animal. Some multi-generational offspring of feral dogs look a bit like the Honshu wolves shown here. And so-called “Irish spotting” (the kind of white markings typically found in collies, for instance – white toes, tail tips, central facial blaze, and sometimes white throat or collar – is found in the wild in Arctic foxes and dingos, as well as in pariah-type dogs, but not in wolves. I believe that there are many, many missing pieces to the puzzle of canine evolution.

In a somewhat related story, I read today at this link that some Korean scientists, who claim to have already succeeded in cloning dogs – specifically Afghan hounds – reported today that they have successfully cloned an endangered species of wolf. The article did not say what species it was. I am a bit skeptical since one of the people associated with the project is Hwang Woo-Suk, who is now an object of international disgrace because of fraud and other ethical issues. But if the news is true, it may mean that the numbers of some “extinct” or highly endangered species and subspecies could be increased in this way. It’s not a solution to the problem of extinction; only through protection and habitat preservation can we hope to prevent endangered animals from going extinct. But used judiciously, cloning could possibly help to prevent the total loss of critically endangered animals, or even to resurrect recently extinct species and subspecies.

I’m sure I’m not using all the correct technical terminology, but I feel certain you understand what I mean.

I’m going to keep looking for those refs. I believe that I saw the references to dog/fox matings in one of my books, but so far they have eluded me.

We didn’t go to the dogs – canines went to the people

New evidence means new theories, which is always exciting.

It is the so-called “civilized” (read: agriculturalized) people, who forced their agriculture, and their massive herds of livestock, and later their (our) industries, into permanent, unnatural residence in relatively small, confined areas who began to see wolves and other predators as “simple killers possessed of an evil nature”. Of course, those people (“we”) are the ones who overran the world, and we also decided that the nomadic and semi-nomadic native peoples were also “simple killers possessed of an evil nature”, and therefore (since our agriculture and our livestock and our industries required more land to replace that to which we had already laid waste), we thought it was just fine to wipe them out right along with those bloodthirsty predators.

Thank goodness that the latter half of the twentieth century saw our kind beginning to look up from wantonly destroying wildlife, and listening to the saner minds among us, from John Muir and Adolph Murie, to Rachel Carson and Dian Fossey, and continuing with George Schaller and Jane Goodall. Even though habitat and wildlife destruction continues at an alarming rate around the globe, I am an optimist. I think there is hope for our kind yet, and just maybe there is hope for animals like the wolves too.