The canids of Galveston Island, Texas, look almost like coyotes, prowling around the beach at night, eyes gleaming in the dark.
Look closer and you will see strange things. The animals seem out of proportion with their bodies, with long legs, broad heads and pointed snouts. Their fur is distinctly reddish in hue, with white patches on their muzzles.
The canids on the island are not conventional coyotes. The red wolves were declared extinct in the wild in 1980.
These genes have been hidden in plain sight for years, tucked away in the seemingly unremarkable animals that ate behind housing developments and the grounds of the local airport.
The canids' discovery could help revive a captive breeding program for red wolves and restore the rich genetic variation that existed in the wild population.
The genetic diversity that once characterized red wolves is no longer lost, according to an evolutionary biologist. We might be able to bring it back.
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Two scientists, one from Michigan Technological University and the other from Princeton University, looked for canids at dusk.
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The canids emerged from the dark. They are not completely coyotes, as they carry the same genetic material from red wolves that were declared extinct in 1980.
The coyotes ran off with Ron's dog one night in 2008 and he never paid attention to them again. A pack took him and carried him off.
He found the pack and the dog in a field. He blamed himself for his dog's death. He was fascinated by the coyotes with their red muzzles.
He was determined to learn more, so he asked his neighbors to alert him if they saw the animals. A friend came through and there was a pack near her apartment building.
Mr. Wooten snapped photographs as he watched a group of pups chase each other. He said they were beautiful.
He began to wonder if the coyotes were really coyotes at all when he looked more carefully at the photos. He said that they didn't look right. I thought they must have bred with Marmaduke because of their long legs and long noses.
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The canids might be coyote-red wolf hybrid and Ron was collecting genetic samples from roadkill.
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The dunes on the beach of Galveston provide a habitat for canids.
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There is a canid before dawn. The animals have been around for a long time.
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Mr. Wooten and a lawyer from League City, Texas, advocated for further study of the canids.
The history of red wolves was discovered by Mr. Wooten, a former fisheries biologist. During the 20th century, the wolves in the southeastern United States dwindled due to habitat loss, hunting and other threats.
The red wolves were saved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1970s. The red wolf is in captivity and scientists want to keep it that way.
The creatures that took his dog were red wolf-coyote hybrid, if not actual red wolves.
He was looking for dead canids to prove his hypothesis. If these are red wolves, then the only way they can tell is with genetics, he said.
He hid the skin from the two dead animals in his freezer and tried for years to get scientists interested.
He said that sometimes they wouldn't respond. Sometimes they would say, that is a neat animal. Nothing we can do about it. They are extinct. It is not a red wolf.
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Mr. Wooten was going to set up a wildlife camera in a residential area.
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Dr. Brzeski, Mr. Wooten and Mr. Barnes were looking for signs of canids in an area of Galveston.
Mr. Wooten's photos made their way to Dr. von Holdt, an expert on canid genetics.
She was struck by the animals in the photos. She said they had a special look. I bit. The whole thing is hook, line and sinker.
She asked him to send his specimen, but he lost one. He used the scalpel he had used to prepare the other sample to pack up the skin tissue he could find, hoping that the scientists could extract the genetic material from it.
It was a kind of chaos. The scientists were able to pull the DNA from the scalpel, but Mr. Wooten later found the second sample and mailed it as well.
They compared the skin samples to the wolves' genomes and found that coyotes, red wolves, gray wolves and eastern wolves had the same genetic makeup. 30 percent of the genetic material from the wolves was found in the two Galveston Island canids.
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The canids have ancestral genetic variation, which we thought was extinct from the landscape.
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There are canid tracks on the beach.
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The canids are seen regularly at the airport and a golf course.
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Dr. Brzeski said that they can start to understand what the red wolf was like.
The people on the ground were validation of the fact that there was something special here. They do.
Mr. Wooten was happy. He said it blew him away.
The researchers found that some of the genetic variations carried by the Galveston animals were not found in any of the other North American canids. The scientists theorize that the alleles were passed down from the wild red wolves.
They have ancestral genetic variation, which we thought was extinct from the landscape. There is a sense of reviving what we thought was gone.
The researchers think red wolves evaded the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service dragnet in the 1970s. There was a slippery one that got away.
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The two canids that were analyzed were mostly coyote, but had significant red wolf ancestry.
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The canid roadkill specimen was prepared by Dr. Brzeski and Dr. von Holdt and kept at the Galveston Island Humane Society.
The red wolves and their descendants bred with coyotes in other places. A group of people documented high levels of red wolf ancestry in wild canids in Louisiana in the same year that Dr. von Holdt's team published its findings.
The findings could help scientists understand the genetic variation that existed in wild red wolves. Dr. Brzeski said that they can start to understand what the red wolf was like.
Some of the red wolves from the captive breeding program were released in North Carolina. The population of animals that patrol the Carolina coast has plummeted in recent years. The red wolves are descended from a small number of animals, which could make them vulnerable to extinction.
New possibilities are raised by the hybrid. Scientists might be able to restore genetic diversity by breeding red wolves to hybrid red wolves with high levels of red wolf ancestry. They could use artificial reproductive technologies or gene-editing techniques to insert the ghost alleles back into red wolves.
Some scientists have begun rethinking the value of interspecies hybrid. Dr. Brzeski said that hybridization can be seen as a threat to the integrity of a species.
The red wolf populations declined in the wild because they interbred with coyotes. She said that the red wolves could potentially be helped by the hybrid wolves.
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The canid researchers worked closely with Josh Henderson, the animal services unit supervisor for the police department.
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Mr. Henderson helped install a camera.
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A wildlife camera is outdoors.
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A canid is near a beach.
The discovery of hybrid red wolves in Texas and Louisiana suggests that scientists and officials may want to focus their red wolf efforts on those areas, according to a University of Idaho geneticist who co-authored a paper on the Louisiana hybrid.
It would make sense to bring back captive-bred red wolves to those regions, where the animals still roam the landscape. Dr. Waits said that it could change the direction of the red wolf recovery program.
The new Gulf Coast Canine Project is studying the hybrid in Texas and Louisiana.
They are using a variety of methods to learn more about the canids, including collecting fecal samples to analyze their diet, using genetic analysis to trace pack relatedness, and collecting tissue samples from animals with the most red wolf ancestry. The goal is to create a set of samples that could be used to increase the genetic health of the captive red wolf population.
They want to learn more about how the red wolf alleles have persisted in animals that live close to humans. The island setting, which keeps the canids relatively reproductively isolated, is probably part of the explanation.
Local residents have an interest in the animals. The research team works closely with Josh Henderson, the animal services supervisor at the police department, and there is considerable community support for the canids.
The lawyer remembers hearing stories about his relatives trapping red wolves when he was a kid. He has been able to connect with many of the older generations who have passed away. He wants to be able to touch something that was special to them.
Mr. Wooten wants to set up an educational center that will teach the public about the unique animals. He said that the possibilities of what the animals hold down here is pretty valuable. I think it was the reason I pursued it. I think God told me that I had animals. Take care of them.
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A pack of canids were in the park at dawn.
