
Scientists Find Red Wolf DNA in a Unique Group of Wild Dogs in Texas - curtis
https://gizmodo.com/scientists-find-red-wolf-dna-in-a-unique-group-of-wild-1831233985
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jmartrican
In the book Coyote America [1] the author goes into detail about these Red
Wolves. One of the problems with raising pristine Red Wolves in the wild is
their penchant for mating with Coyotes. The author went on to lament the Red
Wolf breeding program for culling these Red Wolf - Coyote hybrids. The
author's point on the matter is that it is natural for similar species to
exchange genes in order to make new species that are better suited. If what is
naturally surviving in the wild are these hybrids, well then maybe we should
just let the hybrids alone and accept that the Red Wolf lineage cannot survive
as is in America today. Furthermore, the author even questions whether or not
the Red Wolf is even its own unique species, since it could be the case that
the Red Wolf is also a hybrid.

What we can tell is that there is a lot of mixing going on in the American
canines. There probably always has been and to artificially try to stop it and
preserve the snapshot of species that we saw when we got here is fool-hearted
and against how nature works.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Coyote-America-Natural-
Supernatural-H...](https://www.amazon.com/Coyote-America-Natural-Supernatural-
History/dp/0465093728/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1545575608&sr=8-2&keywords=coyotes)

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eloff
Fully agree with you. It is the ultimate hubris to meddle with nature thinking
we know best. And just foolish when we look at our track record doing that to
date.

There are other good reasons to meddle, but this is not one of them.

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foamclutching
The red wolf population now has fewer than 40 surviving members, leaving them
once again on the brink of extinction in the wild.

Maybe this discovery will lead to something positive for the their species.

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h84
>Maybe this discovery will lead to something positive for the their species.

They aren't a species. Wolves (red and grey), dogs, and coyotes are all
technically the same species, since they can freely interbreed and produce
fertile offspring (unlike horse-donkey offspring, mules, which are sterile).

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Amezarak
Some mules (a very few - something like 60 in the past 500 years) are actually
fertile. Does that change your mind about whether or not horses and donkeys
are distinct species?

The reality is that there is no good definition of species, and cannot be.
Yours is a common one, but has a lot of problems - declaring wolves and
pomeranians the same species is a tough bridge to cross for most people:
you've made the definition so broad it means little. Biology is messy and in
the real world there are no clear-cut, convenient dividing lines.

Another problem with that definition is that there is no transitivity in real
biology. Animal A and Animal B may be able to produce fertile offspring.
Animal B and Animal C may be able to produce fertile offspring. But Animal A
and Animal D [a sibling of Animal C, thanks KMag for that point!] may not be
able to.

Of course, we also would find it strange to declare that two humans incapable
of producing fertile (or any) offspring different species.

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KMag
You may want to introduce a fourth individual in your example, so it's not
limited to species (mostly amphibians and fish) that are able to morph sex or
hermaphroditic species (some molluscs, snails, etc.). Otherwise, the example
is trivially true for all mammalian species that I'm aware of; for humans, if
Arthur and Betty can easily breed fertile offspring, and Betty and Clive can
easily breed fertile offspring... then Arthur and Clive are going to have a
very low breeding success rate without technological assistance.

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nyolfen
something similar occurred with siberian wild horses of precolumbian america,
which were apparently hunted to extinction by natives but survive in traces of
present day wild populations:

[https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/neanderhorse/](https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/neanderhorse/)

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joejerryronnie
Sounds like a pack of coywolves in the making.

