Great Plains wolf
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The Great Plains wolf (''Canis lupus nubilus''), also known as the buffalo wolf or loafer, is a
subspecies of gray wolf There are 38 subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' listed in the taxonomic authority ''Mammal Species of the World'' (2005, 3rd edition). These subspecies were named over the past 250 years, and since their naming, a number of them have gone extinct. T ...
that once extended throughout the
Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, a ...
, from southern
Manitoba Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...
and
Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada, western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on t ...
in
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
southward to northern
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
. The subspecies was thought to be extinct in 1926, until studies declared that its descendants were found in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. They were described as a large, light-colored wolf but with black and white varying between individual wolves, with some all white or all black. The Native Americans of
North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, ...
told of how only three Great Plains wolves could bring down any sized
bison Bison are large bovines in the genus ''Bison'' (Greek: "wild ox" (bison)) within the tribe Bovini. Two extant and numerous extinct species are recognised. Of the two surviving species, the American bison, ''B. bison'', found only in North A ...
.


Taxonomy

This wolf was first recorded in 1823 by the naturalist
Thomas Say Thomas Say (June 27, 1787 – October 10, 1834) was an American entomologist, conchologist, and herpetologist. His studies of insects and shells, numerous contributions to scientific journals, and scientific expeditions to Florida, Georgia, the R ...
in his writings on Major Stephen Long's expedition to the Great Plains. Say was the first person to document the difference between a "prairie wolf" (
coyote The coyote (''Canis latrans'') is a species of canine native to North America. It is smaller than its close relative, the wolf, and slightly smaller than the closely related eastern wolf and red wolf. It fills much of the same ecological nich ...
) and on the next page of his journal a wolf which he named ''Canis nubilus''. He described one of these wolves that had been caught in a trap: In 1995, the American mammalogist Robert M. Nowak analyzed data on the skull morphology of wolf specimens from around the world. For North America, he proposed that there were only five subspecies of gray wolf. One of these he described as a moderate-sized wolf that was originally found from Texas to Hudson Bay and from Oregon to Newfoundland which he named ''C. l. nubilus''. This proposal was not recognized in the taxonomic authority ''
Mammal Species of the World ''Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference'' is a standard reference work in mammalogy giving descriptions and bibliographic data for the known species of mammals. It is now in its third edition, published in late 2005, ...
(2005)'', which classified this wolf as one of the 27 subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' in North America.


Lineage

Gray wolves The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly u ...
(''Canis lupus'') migrated from Eurasia into North America 70,000–23,000 years ago and gave rise to at least two morphologically and genetically distinct groups. One group is represented by the extinct
Beringian wolf The Beringian wolf is an extinct population of wolf (''Canis lupus'') that lived during the Ice Age. It inhabited what is now modern-day Alaska, Yukon, and northern British Columbia. Some of these wolves survived well into the Holocene. The ...
and the other by the modern populations. A
haplotype A haplotype ( haploid genotype) is a group of alleles in an organism that are inherited together from a single parent. Many organisms contain genetic material ( DNA) which is inherited from two parents. Normally these organisms have their DNA o ...
is a group of
genes In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...
found in an organism that are inherited together from one of their parents.
Mitochondrial DNA Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial D ...
(mDNA) passes along the maternal line and can date back thousands of years. A 2005 study compared the mitochondrial
DNA sequences A nucleic acid sequence is a succession of bases signified by a series of a set of five different letters that indicate the order of nucleotides forming alleles within a DNA (using GACT) or RNA (GACU) molecule. By convention, sequences are us ...
of modern wolves from across North America with those from thirty-four specimens dated between 1856 and 1915 collected from the western United States,
Mexico Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...
and the
Labrador Peninsula The Labrador Peninsula, or Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, is a large peninsula in eastern Canada. It is bounded by the Hudson Bay to the west, the Hudson Strait to the north, the Labrador Sea to the east, and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the so ...
. The historic population was found to possess twice the
genetic diversity Genetic diversity is the total number of genetic characteristics in the genetic makeup of a species, it ranges widely from the number of species to differences within species and can be attributed to the span of survival for a species. It is dis ...
of modern wolves, which suggests that the mDNA diversity of the wolves eradicated from the western US was more than twice that of the modern population. Some haplotypes possessed by the Mexican wolf, the extinct
Southern Rocky Mountain wolf The southern Rocky Mountain wolf (''Canis lupus youngi'') is an extinct subspecies of gray wolf which was once distributed over southeastern Idaho, southwestern Wyoming, northeastern Nevada, Utah, western and central Colorado, northwestern A ...
and the extinct Great Plains wolf were found to form a unique "southern
clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English ter ...
". All North American wolves group together with those from Eurasia, except for the southern clade which form a group exclusive to North America. The wide distribution area of the southern clade indicates that gene flow was extensive across the recognized limits of its subspecies. A study published in 2018 looked at the limb morphology of modern and fossil North American wolves. The major limb bones of the
dire wolf The dire wolf (''Aenocyon dirus'' ) is an extinct canine. It is one of the most famous prehistoric carnivores in North America, along with its extinct competitor ''Smilodon''. The dire wolf lived in the Americas and eastern Asia during the Late ...
, Beringian wolf, and most modern North American gray wolves can be clearly distinguished from one another.
Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of the Pleistocene Epoch withi ...
wolves on both sides of the
Laurentide Ice Sheet The Laurentide Ice Sheet was a massive sheet of ice that covered millions of square miles, including most of Canada and a large portion of the Northern United States, multiple times during the Quaternary glacial epochs, from 2.58 million year ...
Cordilleran Ice Sheet possessed shorter legs when compared with most modern wolves. The Late Pleistocene wolves from the
Natural Trap Cave Natural Trap Cave is a pit cave in the Bighorn Mountains, in northern Wyoming, United States. Excavations in the cave are an important source of paleontological information on the North American Late Pleistocene, due to a rich layer of fossils fr ...
, Wyoming and
Rancho La Brea Rancho La Brea was a Mexican land grant in present-day Los Angeles County, California, given in 1828 to Antonio Jose Rocha and Nemisio Dominguez by José Antonio Carrillo, the alcalde of Los Angeles. Rancho La Brea consisted of one square le ...
, southern California were similar in limb morphology to the Beringian wolves of Alaska. Modern wolves in the Midwestern USA and northwestern North America possess longer legs that evolved during the
Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togethe ...
, possibly driven by the loss of slower prey. However, shorter legs survived well into the Holocene after the extinction of much of the
Pleistocene megafauna Pleistocene megafauna is the set of large animals that lived on Earth during the Pleistocene epoch. Pleistocene megafauna became extinct during the Quaternary extinction event resulting in substantial changes to ecosystems globally. The role of hu ...
, including the Beringian wolf. Holocene wolves from Middle Butte Cave (dated less than 7,600 YBP) and Moonshiner Cave (dated over 3,000 YBP) in
Bingham County, Idaho Bingham County is a county in the U.S. state of Idaho. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 47,992. The county seat and largest city is Blackfoot. Bingham County comprises the Blackfoot, ID Micropolitan Statistical Area, wh ...
were similar to the Beringian wolves. The Mexican wolf (''C. l. baileyi'') and pre-1900 samples of the Great Plains wolf (''Canis lupus nubilus'') resembled the Late Pleistocene and Holocene fossil gray wolves due to their shorter legs.


Ancestor

In 2021, a
mitochondrial DNA Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial D ...
analysis of North American wolf-like canines indicates that the extinct Late Pleistocene
Beringian wolf The Beringian wolf is an extinct population of wolf (''Canis lupus'') that lived during the Ice Age. It inhabited what is now modern-day Alaska, Yukon, and northern British Columbia. Some of these wolves survived well into the Holocene. The ...
was the ancestor of the southern wolf
clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...
, which includes the Mexican wolf and the extinct Great Plains wolf. The Mexican wolf is the most ancestral of the gray wolves that live in North America today.


Description

The Great Plains wolf's distribution once extended throughout the
Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, a ...
from southern
Manitoba Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...
and
Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada, western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on t ...
southward to northern
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
. They are described as a large, light-colored wolf but with black and white varying between individual wolves, with some all white or all black. The average body length ranges from to with a weight of the male averaging and the heaviest recorded at . The Native Americans of
North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, ...
told of how only three of these wolves could bring down a buffalo, including a large old bull. Early records indicate ''C. l. nubilus'' being very abundant throughout the Great Plains. After the mass extirpations of the
American bison The American bison (''Bison bison'') is a species of bison native to North America. Sometimes colloquially referred to as American buffalo or simply buffalo (a different clade of bovine), it is one of two extant species of bison, alongside the ...
(''Bison bison''), they were poisoned and trapped for their pelts until few remained. The pioneer Alexander Henry wrote about these wolves several times during his trips to North Dakota, noting how they fed extensively on buffalo carcasses. They were bold around humans, sometimes approaching people and entering their tents while they slept. He recorded that Indians occasionally dug up wolf pups from their prairie dens and dug large pitfalls to capture wolves and foxes. Members of his group dug up wolf pups and found them very tame and easy to train. In 1833 Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied recorded that these wolves were common in the upper
Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...
, where the Indians operated wolf pits and traded wolves to him in exchange for two rolls of tobacco each. He found the Indian's dogs to be more of a personal danger than the wolves. In 1856, Lt. G. K. Warren gathered together a collection of this wolf's skulls which now reside in the
National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...
. He noted that some wolf skull specimens appeared not to be full-blooded wolves as their molars indicated a hybrid. There have been many stories in this region about ferocious hybrid wolf-dogs, and it is possible that the wolf's tameness and lack of fear of humans might be due admixture with domestic dogs. In North Dakota, by 1875 sightings of the wolf became rare, by 1887 they were almost gone. On the
Canadian Prairies The Canadian Prairies (usually referred to as simply the Prairies in Canada) is a region in Western Canada. It includes the Canadian portion of the Great Plains and the Prairie Provinces, namely Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. These provin ...
, bounty payments for wolves commenced in 1878 in Manitoba, and 1899 in Saskatchewan and Alberta. In North Dakota, two were sighted in 1915 by
Remington Kellogg Arthur Remington Kellogg (5 October 1892 – 8 May 1969) was an American naturalist and a director of the United States National Museum. His work focused on marine mammals. Early life and career Kellogg was born in Davenport, Iowa, and quick ...
. The last known wolf was shot in 1922. The Great Plains wolf was declared extinct in 1926. However, later studies found wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Upper Michigan that were descendants of Canis Lupus Nubilus. Even then, their number became fewer and fewer until they were federally protected as an endangered species in 1974. Since then, their population became larger in the Great Lakes region and by 2009, their estimate grew to 2.992 wolves in Minnesota, 580 in Michigan and 626 in Wisconsin. A R


See also

*
Three Toes of Harding County Three Toes of Harding County was the nickname given to a solitary North American male Great Plains wolf who killed livestock at ranches in Harding County, South Dakota, over a thirteen-year period in the early 20th century. His hunting range exten ...


References


External links


International Wolf Center
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Great Plains wolf The Great Plains wolf (''Canis lupus nubilus''), also known as the buffalo wolf or loafer, is a subspecies of gray wolf that once extended throughout the Great Plains, from southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada southward to northern Texas ...
Carnivorans of North America Mammals of the United States
Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...
Extinct animals of the United States
Great Plains wolf The Great Plains wolf (''Canis lupus nubilus''), also known as the buffalo wolf or loafer, is a subspecies of gray wolf that once extended throughout the Great Plains, from southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada southward to northern Texas ...
Fauna of the Plains-Midwest (United States) Mammals described in 1823
Great Plains wolf The Great Plains wolf (''Canis lupus nubilus''), also known as the buffalo wolf or loafer, is a subspecies of gray wolf that once extended throughout the Great Plains, from southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada southward to northern Texas ...
Species made extinct by deliberate extirpation efforts