http://www.pistoleros.no/animals/brown_hyena/1.htm

What is the picture used with this story? I didn’t see that it was identified in any way. To me the photo looks like a museum display of an Archaeotherium, fossil relative of today’s pigs. For a comparison visit: National Geographic New Photo Gallery.

Just curious!

“Michigan Wolf Killed in Missouri

The list of animals you can see in Missouri continues to grow. A Grundy County man, returning from bowhunting for deer Oct. 23, spied what he thought was a coyote peering into his sheep pen. Fearing for the safety of his livestock, he shot and killed the animal. Then he discovered the “coyote” was wearing an ear tag and a radio collar. Realizing he had killed a wolf, he did the right thing and brought the carcass to a conservation agent.

Conservation Department. Furbearer Biologist Dave Hamilton later verified that it was a gray wolf and traced it back to Michigan, where it had been marked and its movements tracked as part of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ wolf management program.

Also known as timber wolves, gray wolves once lived in Missouri. They were extirpated here and elsewhere in the eastern United States by the end of the 19th century. Timber wolves persisted in Minnesota. From there, they dispersed back into Wisconsin and Michigan, which now have wolf populations of their own.

The wolf killed here was a 2 1/2-year-old male weighing 80 pounds. Michigan biologists tracked it for nine months after capturing and tagging it in July 1999. After that, biologists lost track of the animal. Now they know why. It was on a 600-mile road trip.

The gray wolf is classified as federally endangered in Michigan, Wisconsin and Missouri. However, the species has grown numerous enough in Minnesota that it is considered threatened there, and federal officials are considering downgrading its status to threatened in other states. This would allow more flexibility in managing gray wolves when they cause problems for people. The man who shot the wolf here will not be prosecuted because he was protecting his livestock and reasonably assumed the animal was a coyote.

“For years, we have believed and told people that there were no wild wolves in Missouri,” said Hamilton. “We can’t say that anymore, though the likelihood of seeing a wolf here still is extremely small.”

Hamilton said the Conservation Department has never stocked wolves and has no plans to restore them to Missouri. He said the state lacks wilderness areas large enough to sustain wolves without unacceptable human conflicts.”

This wolf traveled 600 miles across farmland without detection. Like Sschaper said, it would be no big deal for wolves to follow one of the rivers out of Glacier or Yellowstone into a farming/ranching area. There is often quite a bit of color variation amongst gray wolves. Grayish brown is common, but black and white wolves are not unknown and wolves with even more brown than gray wouldn’t be unusual. The Mexican subspecies is even yellowish. There are documented cases of wolves and coyotes interbreeding with feral or free-ranging dogs so ‘manipulated breeding’ is not necessary to create hybrids. Some wolf-dog hybrids may be a bit unusual looking from the normal wolf profile. I don’t think this mystery predator will turn out to be too mysterious.

This reminds me. The woman who shot the dog…I mean chupacabras in Texas, sent the head off for DNA analysis. I’ve not seen any report on the results of that test. Surely by now, someone would have some results. After all the hubbub she made and the media circus, I think we are owed the outcome of the tests even if it anti-climatic (which I am confident it was). Mr. Coleman, if you learn anything about this, please post it although I recall that you were disgusted with these ugly dogs being turned into cryptids by the media. Thanks.