Hybrid Wolves and Dingoes

The B.C. government's Vancouver Island wolf extermination program has allowed "monster" hybrids to take over the region, a team of scientists have said. From the 1920s until the 1970s, provincial officials tried to rid Vancouver Island of wolves so sport hunters would find it easier to hunt black-tailed deer, the wolves' principal prey.

So when a few hardy wolves swam across from the northern B.C. mainland in the early 1980s, some were unable to find mates. Instead, they mated with stray dogs. The result, according to researchers from the University of Sweden, the Smithsonian Institution and the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, was something never documented before in the wild, animals that were neither wolves nor dogs. Their research is published in the latest edition of the journal Conservation Genetics.

So-called wolf hybrids are bred purposely by some breeders as pets, though they are regarded by animal welfare groups as potentially dangerous. They had never been documented in the wild before.

This hybridisation is known in Australia too, between dingoes and stray dogs, usually dogs that have been lost by hunters. As some of these stray dogs are used for catching wild pigs, they are large and ferocious. Some bushwalkers have reported seeing wild dingo/dog hybrids with Great Dane heads and bodies. Clearly these are very dangerous animals. As well, the hybrids can breed twice a year, instead of only once year as dingoes.

Some of the last purebred dingoes in Australia are now believed to be on Fraser Island, where the Government is killng them off by starving them to death, and killing them if they think they may be a risk to tourists.