Warsaw, Poland (AP) – Two rare black wolves, possible siblings, were walking through a stream in the Polish forest on camera, a conservation group said Sunday.
Last year, this unusual sighting was a camera captured by Save Wildlife Conservation Fund Poland Project Projectinator JoannaToczydłowska, prompting the group to collect SCAT (feces) in the forest in an attempt to learn more about the genetics of black wolf. .
“It’s new and unusual,” Toczydłowska told the Associated Press.
Trusted news and daily joy are in your inbox
Watch it for yourself – Yodel is the go-to for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories.
Toczydłowska initially placed a camera to study beavers. When she noticed she was recording a wolf, she put the camera there and collected the black wolf footage a few weeks ago.
In one clip, a black wolf and a gray wolf slowly cross a stream in the forest, the water almost hitting their stomachs before jumping to the river bank. The second clip taken last fall recorded two black wolves and one gray wolves, tangling the same stream.
Most of Poland’s 2,5,000 to 3,000 wolves have gray or black accents. The black fur comes from a genetic mutation in dogs domesticated thousands of years ago. Dark fur is rare in Europe due to the reduction of genetic diversity, but at least half of the wolf populations in the US Yellowstone National Park have black fur.
Since the wolf travels in the family and the two black wolves travel around 30 kg (66 lbs), it is about the size of a German shepherd – Toczydłowska said they may be siblings, about one year old. At least one is a male.
The protection group for Polish wolf has been surveillance for 13 years, but has not disclosed the location of the forest to prevent wolves from poaching safely and to prevent misunderstandings about wolves.
By the 1950s, wolves were essentially extinct, but in recent years, populations have been reintroduced, especially in the middle of the country in the early 2000s. Toczydłowska and her colleagues teach other publics how to live safely in areas where Wolfpacks live.
“It’s a new phenomenon for people,” Roman Gula, head of the group’s monitoring program, told the Associated Press. “Education is one of our main goals.”
The Conservation Fund announced a sighting on Facebook last week and asked for financial support to pay for the genetic test of SCAT to learn more about the Black-fuel mutation.
