Researchers capture video of possible wolf-dog hybrid in northern Minnesota

Researchers with the Voyageurs Wolf Project have captured footage of what could be a wolf-dog hybrid roaming the forests of northern Minnesota.

The animal was spotted on Feb. 29 and again on March 3, traveling with two wolves. In a Facebook post about the footage, the researchers with the University of Minnesota project say in their 10 years of work studying the wolves in and near Voyageurs National Park, they’ve never seen a wolf that looks like this animal.

The video shows a line of three animals trotting through the woods. The first and third are thin wolves with light grey and tan fur — typical of mature adult wolves in the area.

The middle animal is larger and bushier, with black and brown coloring and a rounder face.

“It stands out like a sore thumb,” the scientists wrote.

Project lead Tom Gable told MPR News “There’s just really no wild wolf in our area that we've seen that's ever looked even remotely similar to that.”

He said he is not certain the animal is a wolf-dog hybrid, but said it seems plausible given how drastically different it looks from a typical wolf.

“It’s much larger, it’s taller, it has fluffy fur like a malamute, and its tail has a kink that wild wolves in the area don’t have. And its face has features that just look more dog-like than wolf-like.”

“Everything kind of put together, this animal just looks really unique,” said Gable. “And so it’s either a wolf-dog hybrid of some sort, or some wolf that has some very interesting physiological mutations or characteristics that are very unique relative to other wolves in northern Minnesota.”

If it is a hybrid, Gable speculates the animal was either released, or it escaped, since there is no evidence of wolves breeding with dogs in northern Minnesota.

He said people who own wolf-dog hybrids sometimes discard them because they can be very challenging to raise, especially animals with a high genetic makeup of wolves.

“So it doesn’t seem totally implausible that someone might do something like that in northern Minnesota,” Gable said.

After the two observations of the animal traveling with the two wolves— which were not members of a resident pack but were wandering through— cameras captured video of the animal by itself 10 more times between March 11 and March 20.

After that, it likely left the area.

Shared evolution

Gable and colleagues at the project discovered the sightings while reviewing footage from trail cameras from this past winter.

Wolves and dogs share an evolutionary past. They can interbreed and produce viable offspring, according to the International Wolf Center, a wolf education center based in Ely and the Twin Cities.

Hybridization can occur naturally in the wild, but is rare, because wolves are extremely territorial and protect their ranges from intruding dogs, coyotes and other wolves.

For the past decade researchers with the Voyageurs Project have used GPS collars and a network of trail cameras to uncover the secret summertime habits of wolves in and around the national park.

Over the years they’ve uncovered some surprising predation behavior, including that wolves hunt freshwater fish, gorge on berries and kill a surprising number of beavers, often by waiting, sometimes for hours, to ambush beavers as they leave their ponds in search of forage. 

Gable said this discovery isn’t indicative of any larger pattern or behavior or population change he and his colleagues might document as part of their project.

“It’s just a one-off, interesting observation,” he said.

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