India revealed as first home of the wolf

Scotland on Sunday ^ | Sun 21 Mar 2004 | DAVID ORR

[VinayFromBangalore]

NEW research by Indian scientists has claimed that wolves evolved in India, not North America as originally thought.

Genetic analysis of the creature, which has haunted humans and preyed on livestock since the dawn of man, suggests it originated in the foothills and mountains of the Himalayas.

The research also suggests that dogs did not originate on the Indian subcontinent as has been widely believed.

Yadvendradev Jhala of the Wildlife Institute of India said: "When we started our research with Indian wolves, we thought they were just another sub-species of the common wolf. But then we explored further, examining wolf DNA samples and found a completely different species that is nearly a million years older than the other wolves found in the world."

Most of the world’s wolves belong to a much younger lineage than those found in India, having emerged only 150,000 years ago. Having appeared on the subcontinent, wolves of this lineage travelled huge distances across plains and mountains to settle in Europe and North America. In India, they can only be found today in the mountainous regions of Kashmir and Ladakh.

"We now realise that the Himalayan wolf has the oldest wolf lineage in the world", said Jhala. "The other endemic species of wolf in India, the Peninsular wolf - also known as the Gray wolf - originated about 400,000 years ago. There’s a good case to be made for calling these separate species".

The researchers, based at Dehradun in northern India, examined not only live animals but also museum specimens from a number of institutions including the Natural History Museum in London.

Another group of scientists working at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad have focused on zoo samples and come to similar conclusions.

Hunting and loss of habitat have drastically reduced the numbers of Himalayan and Gray wolves, both of which are endangered species. It is estimated that the population of Peninsular wolves is not much higher than 2,000 to 3,000 while the number of Himalayan wolves in the wild could be as low as 350 animals.

[VinayFromBangalore]

http://www.wildlife-tour-india.com/wildlife-in-india/

[VinayFromBangalore]

http://www.wildlife-tour-india.com

[VinayFromBangalore]

Since the native man was not bound by any artistic constraints, the pictures come to life in full freedom and expression. The native man was an expert in simplifying life; he has drawn animals and birds with just two or three strokes. He has also made a good use of symbols and highlights, so a trunk denotes an elephant, a long feather represents a peacock, and a decorative horn illustrates a female deer. Some are single line sketches, and some are finished with a fair stroke. Some are really attractive with colors and shades. © K. L. Kamat http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/

[sociotard]

Hunting and loss of habitat have drastically reduced the numbers of Himalayan and Gray wolves, both of which are endangered species. Quick! Reintroduce wolves into populated areas! </ bitter idahoan mode >

[Leroy S. Mort]

Hardy creatures, to have made it through China without being eaten.

[Socratic]

"...wolves evolved in India, not North America as originally thought."

According to lore, weren't Romulus and Remus raised by a wolf? Therefore, ancient Romans knew of wolves centuries before the "discovery" of America.

[ElkGroveDan]

Hunting and loss of habitat have drastically reduced the numbers of Himalayan and Gray wolves, both of which are endangered species.

Well then it sounds like it wouldn't be that hard to finally eradicate them once and for all.

[Consort]

[muir_redwoods]

"Therefore, ancient Romans knew of wolves centuries before the "discovery" of America."

The notion of North American evolution is independant of human travel since the wolf, had it evolved here 400,000 years ago could have spread throughout the world via any number of land bridges and even across the arctic

[blam]

The Dixie Dingo

[WhiteyAppleseed]

The wolf is our friend. The wolf is a part of nature. Man is not. Local schools here recently had an activist, a travelling evangelist with guitar come to schools and play for the children, exposing them to the fashionable wolf ideology, singing songs that humanize trees, bouncing squirrels on their knees. The same thing probably happens in your neighborhood, as the guys website suggests that is the case.

[BlazingArizona]

According to lore, weren't Romulus and Remus raised by a wolf?

Yes, but since at the time Rome was just a small, poor village with an uncertain future, the canny Romans decided to outsource the twins-suckling job to save precious denarii.

And the rest was history...

[Brian_Baldwin]

Very interesting post, thank you very much. This is not actually surprising news, but seems to confirm what many have considered as likely in the study of animal and human life in relation natural science and to life during ancient and very ancient periods. We can also find that many birds we are familiar with today have linage back to Kashmir and India, and the elephant of India is also unique. The Asiatic Lion (as was found in Iran, Israel, Iraq, etc.) which is now extinct, is likely related to the Lion of India (of the Gir forest), which is likely the origin of all Lions. There is of course, the Bengal Tiger, but likely the Tiger did not originate in India but came from Southern China and Indo-China. There are many fruits and citrus that originated in India. I also believe that tea cultivation did not originate in China, but spread to China from Northern India. In many ways, India is the origin of "modern" man - the Indo-Arya people came down from "Mount Meru" (likely a sacred, tribal, mountain of the Caucasus mountains) and then spread West (towards Europe "Ar"ope/Arya) all the way to Lithuania and even to Ireland ("Arya" Land) and East (all the way to Iran, "Aryan"), coming in waves over several thousand years, on chariots, and were called "Aryan which is an old root word for the metal they learned to use (today called "Iron"), Linguistics pretty much prove that the mother tongue of Euro-languages and others is Sanskrit, and in fact in Lithuania many of the words parallel Sanskrit exactly. But of course, that subject is far removed from wolves ... so how did I go from wolves to Sanskrit? Well, anyway, India is an interesting "mother" of many things "human" and animal, food, etc... thanks for the post.

[ASA Vet]

There’s a good case to be made for calling these separate species

Easy to prove either way. Can they breed?

[ApplegateRanch]

Ligars, tigons, beefalo, and other *fertile* crosses make that a very unreliable test of specieshood.

[ASA Vet]

From the Encyclopedia Brittiannica:

"Species"
"biological classification comprising related organisms that share
common characteristics and are capable of interbreeding."

From the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary:

"Hybrid"
"an offspring of two animals or plants of different races, breeds, varieties, species, or genera."

From www.greenapple.com

"The liger hybrid is more common than the tigon because the mating process is easier."

One point from the Beefalo.com FAQ page:

"Why breed Beefalo?
strong Hybrid Vigor"

[ASA Vet]

Here's another site which I believe finally nails it.

sparknotes.com

"Today, a species is defined as a group of organisms that shares the same gene pool and can successfully mate."

Successful mating meaning the offspring can reproduce.
So if the two wolves can breed, then if their offspring can
successfully breed they were the same species.

[VadeRetro]

While many specimens (like the gigantic liger above from your link) show hybrid vigor, the fertility of lion-tiger hybrids is decidedly low, well below anything that would allow replacement in the wild. That's one reason for the instinctual preference for "own kind" versus different.

This page on tigons explains some of the problems.

Speciation is not a sharp line. We can find in nature essentially every degree of relatedness. That's just what you'd expect from a dynamically branching tree of life.

[ApplegateRanch]

FAQ About Beefalo Breeding http://www.beefalobeef.com/faqbreeding.htm

1. Why breed Beefalo?

Long production life

2. What percentage of bison do you need to consider an animal a Beefalo?

Beefalo must be from 17 % bison content to 37.5 % bison content. Any less bison content is considered a bovine hybrid. Any more bison content is considered a bison hybrid.

There are eight common levels of Beefalo:
Fullblood Beefalo = 3/8 or 37.5 % Bison & 62.5 % Bovine
Purebred Beefalo = 22.5/64 or 35.15 % Bison & 64.85 % Bovine
7/8 Beefalo = 21/64 or 32.81 % Bison & 67.19 % Bovine
3/4 Beefalo = 9/32 or 28.12 % Bison & 71.88 % Bovine
1/2 Beefalo = 3/16 or 18.75 % Bison & 81.25 % Bovine
3/8 Beefalo = 9/64 or 14.08 % Bison & 85.94 % Bovine
1/4 Beefalo = 3/32 or 9.375 % Bison & 90.625 % Bovine
1/8 Beefalo = 3/64 or 4.69 % Bison & 95.31 % Bovine

when breeding Beefalo to Beefalo fertility and hydrops are not a problem,

********************************************

For that matter, beefalo is a self-fertile hybrid across genus lines.

My point was that the hybrid offspring are fertile, though both parents are unquestionabley seperate species.

Therefore, even though the offspring are hybrids, there needs to be further qualification than the simple fact of breeding capability to define the parent species as a species. If not, we end up with the absurdity that cattle & bison are 'the same species, even though they are different genera.

There was no intent to label the offspring as a 'species'.

BISON: genus Bison, sp bison
Cow: genus Bos, sp taurus (most common US cattle)
genus Bos sp indica; Brahman & other humpbacked cattle.

Bottom line, what works as an general, everyday working definition, is insufficient to decide the technical scientific problem of whether the two types of wolves are the same or separate species.