
'Wolf-like' creature shot on Montana ranch puzzles experts - Fins
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44243644
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tranchms
Bears and wolves mating: [http://www.macroevolution.net/bear-dog-
hybrids.html](http://www.macroevolution.net/bear-dog-hybrids.html)

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excalibur
That link quickly led to this, which is hilarious:

[http://www.macroevolution.net/dog-cow-
hybrids.html](http://www.macroevolution.net/dog-cow-hybrids.html)

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Mbioguy
Canids are pretty much a superspecies anyways.

Consider brown bears and polar bears. We consider them 2 species yet they can
successfully interbreed. The main reason they don't is that their ranges
haven't historically overlapped. Geography, not biology, was the separator.
You could view them as one species with a bivariate distribution, in the late
stages of diverging into two.

Canids likewise viewed as one species with significant ecological clustering,
but divided this time by behavior.

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giarc
The long nails (I wouldn't call them claws) look like a dog that doesn't get
outside much. If a dog is outside, walking around, digging etc the nails get
ground down and would be much shorter. If this were a wild animal, those nails
would definitely be shorter.

I would say this was a house pet in the very recent past (whether a dog, or
some wolf-dog type animal).

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BenjiWiebe
Looks to me like it has coyote blood in it. My guess is it's a coywolf. Let's
wait and see if I'm right.

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williamscales
Agreed that this seems likely. There's the Eastern coyote which is a hybrid of
Western coyote with Eastern wolf and some dog thrown in the mix. Those paws
definitely look doglike to me.

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phyzome
It _does_ look kind of bear like, since the article mentions it...

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excalibur
> It's too far north to be the legendary Chupacabra

Perhaps some gente moved to Montana and took their pet Chupacabra with them.

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tranchms
Looks like a bear mated with a wolf. They are both from the Caniformia
suborder.

Could be an extinct Hemicyoninae, meaning “dog-bear”.

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IronWolve
Could the Chupacabra actually just be a large shaggy wolf?

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budhajeewa
There hasn't been Direwolves south of the wall for more than two centuries.

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ianai
This was way cooler when I read it as “worf-like”

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sxates
At least it was an honorable death.

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ASalazarMX
I'm not sure if animals go to Sto-Vo-Kor, though.

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elipsey
It's a... man bear pig.

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Avery3R
wolfdog?

