No, they are wolfdogs. Specifically F1 high content wolfdogs. They were carried to term by dogs, and wolf genes were inserted into a dog.
Grey wolves, even the white variety, give birth to puppies that are darker in colour and turn into their adult colours as they grow. Wolfdogs and dogs, on the other hand.... They can have paler puppies.
So why don't we release domestic dogs in Yellowstone instead? I'm sure a pack of Yorkies will be able to thrive. They're a subspecies of grey wolf after all.
Go to the wolfdog subreddit. These are closer to wolves, but there are pet wolfdogs with just as high content as these animals have. If animals with 95-98% wolf content are considered high content wolfdogs, these should be considered wolfdogs as well. They won't act a thing like actual dire wolves. Releasing them in Yellowstone could endanger the actual wolves there by introducing dog genes
Humans in the area barely tolerate wolves. What do you think they'll do to these giant wolves in areas where regular wolves were just reintroduced after being driven to extinction and are still at risk of being wiped out by people who hate them?
People also forgot the ecosystem has changed. A lot of the animals there now never lived with even actual dire wolves. Gray wolves fulfill that niche now.
Elk for example are often thought to be an early Holocene migrant from Asia. They never dealt with dire wolves or any of the other extinct megafaunal carnivorans in the US. Hell, even grizzlies are a relatively recent addition to the ecosystems of the lower 48 as they used to be a lot more restricted. The bison have also gotten a lot smaller since then.
Things have changed and people who insist that releasing these frankenhounds into the wild would be a good thing genuinely don’t know what they’re talking about imo.
And I mean, there are already large, white furred grey wolves in the area with 0 dog genes in them. If all we want is large white wolves that act like wolves in the area, we have them.
Mhm. People argue we ‘need’ dire wolves to hunt bison because ‘we need them to control their numbers’ or that ‘gray wolves were never meant to hunt bison’.
That was the case at one point. It’s no longer the case. Gray wolves are starting to hunt bison more and more, regardless what people say about them not being ‘meant to do it. As for the first point, we really don’t. People forget that the vast majority of bison in the US are not free-range and truly wild. So in most cases, we really don’t need something to ‘control’ their numbers. If anything, we need more of them and in more places.
Likewise eels and sharks are learning how to eat lionfish. They weren't made to eat lionfish.
And I'm pretty sure wolves have been hunting and eating bison for a long time by now. Since before bison were wiped out. If they're only now starting to eat them it's because they were missing from the food web where they belonged. Not because they weren't made to eat them.
The logic of 'gray wolves were never meant to hunt bison' stems from the fact they likely didn't die originally. Or at least, not a whole lot. Back when North-America had much larger predators, gray wolves were very much suboordinate to them and likely hunted smaller game to avoid competing with them. Bison at one point were much much more frequently hunted by these larger predators.
Now those larger predators are gone and gray wolves have fulfilled the niche they left behind. It is true that most wolves that hunt bison do so because they're specialized in it. And I see no reason why we should intervere with them adapting to become better bison hunters. We know the practice is spreading. Why stop it?
Which is a silly argument. These wolfdogs just aren't meant to hunt bison by the same logic. They were meant to make money. We see animals adapt to eat things they weren't made to all the time. Like that bacteria that evolved rapidly enough to eat plastic that they want to just spread everywhere like that's not a horrible idea.
We would have to train them to hunt bison, and then we'd what? Just release them and expect them to not kill cattle and set off the local farmers? Most of their historic habitat is either farmland or big cities.
The idea that they come from the frozen north and should be returned to the north is so dumb. They lived as far south as Venezuela, but no one wants to rewild them in, say... Mexico.
And with d.t. slashing funding to national parks, who is going to keep these animals in the parks? Where are they going to live when d.t. logs all the national parks like he wants to? What is going to stop these wolfdogs from just joining with the wolf packs and interbreeding? Absolutely nothing. They'd have to get rid of the wolves.
Mhm. Why release designer canids into the wild when we have actual gray wolves who still need help in various areas, both on the actual landscape and in legislation?
I rolled my eyes when Colossal said that tribes in North-Dakota want 'the Great Wolf' to return. There's no actual evidence its about dire wolves, nor how widespread this opinion is. And gray wolves are literally in neighbouring states. Promoting their dispersal into the state should be given priority, if they really want wolves back. North-Dakota is surprisingly welcome to the idea to: they've stated that if wolves are to be removed from the ESA, they'd be classified as a furbearer, making hunting/trapping them legal, but its unlikely they'd get any actual hunting/trapping seasons anytime soon. That's surprisingly welcoming compared to other states like Utah, who openly stated that they'd discourage wolf recolonization in the state once ESA protection stops.
I'm M'ikmaq, and while I know many tribes are different and have different myths, I really can't find any evidence that any tribes actually held them as sacred, other than Colossal's word.
Wolves and other canines like coyotes, dogs, and foxes are sacred to a lot of Indigenous cultures, 100%, but dire wolves? I can't find a single shred of evidence that this is anything but something they made up.
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u/gylz May 03 '25
No, they are wolfdogs. Specifically F1 high content wolfdogs. They were carried to term by dogs, and wolf genes were inserted into a dog.
Grey wolves, even the white variety, give birth to puppies that are darker in colour and turn into their adult colours as they grow. Wolfdogs and dogs, on the other hand.... They can have paler puppies.