After TV 2 told about brown and white wolves and animals with dingo features in Norwegian areas, we asked the Nature Inspectorate to send us pictures they have received of wolves with special fur colors and strange looks.
We were only sent one. Although they probably have many more.
– Should “Gråbein” be brown and white?
The explanation is that wolves with color variations are not specially marked in the giant wolf archive, according to director Morten Kjørstad in SNO.
Therefore, a review of the image material must be done manually for each image if you are to find the wolves that stand out.
– What is the reason why the State Nature Inspectorate has not published or discussed the pictures of wolves with a strange appearance publicly?
TAIL: This wolf in the Magnor region has a white tip of the tail, although the tip of the wolf’s tail should actually be black. Photo: Private
– As DNA analyzes over the years have shown that variation in color or the presence of white tail tips is natural in the wolf population, such variations are something that is not followed up or assessed further based on images, says Morten Kjørstad.
He maintains that the wolf database contains some images from the Norwegian Institute for Natural Research (NINA), and that these are available online.
1,770 of the images have been provided by the public over the past five years.
MANGEN: Here is a picture TV 2 has received from the Mangen area. Photo: Private
– What do you think is the reason why the wolves look strange. We have shown pictures of a wolf that is brown and white and some seem to have dingo features?
– SNO has observed wolves with variation in fur color and white tail tips right back to the beginning of the 2000s. There are eventually many areas in Scandinavia, and in Norway at least it has been in Mangen, Magnor, Kynna and Rømskog. In Sweden, it has been observed in several areas, and wolves are killed every year in connection with damage reduction and license hunting with white tail tips.
Picture we were sent
When the Norwegian Nature Inspectorate had to check a wolf den a few years ago, they discovered that two of the wolf pups had white markings.
PUPPIES: Two of the puppies have clear white markings. Photo: SNO
They were photographed and this is the only picture SNO has sent to TV 2.
– It was taken in connection with management marking in the Mangen herd in 2018. Here we saw white tail tips and fur patterns. There is nothing abnormal about this and DNA analyzes show that these are wolves, says Kjørstad.
Is this a Norwegian wolf?
The following year, TV 2 showed images from game cameras of wolves in the Mangen pack.
Some were black and white. And the question was asked whether such a thing could really be pure wolf.
On Tuesday, we showed more recent photos, both from the Mangen and the Magnor flock, which live in Viken and Innlandet towards the Swedish border.
These wolves also arouse wonder in the villages.
Per Bergum in the Facebook group “Nature for all” claims that it must be a complex phenomenon, where hybridization between wolves and several dog species has occurred over a long period of time.
But this is flatly rejected by the research team.
Senior researcher Øystein Flagstad at NINA says the cause must be extreme inbreeding in the wolf tribe.
WEIRD: This is a wolf pup photographed in the Magnor area. Photo: Private
Director Morten Kjørstad in SNO is also crystal clear that it is about pure wolves.
– There are two known cases where puppies have been born in wolf dens after mating with dogs in Scandinavia. This was confirmed with DNA analyses. In both cases, the puppies were euthanized together with the parent animals, he says.
And continues:
– The leading professional communities in the world have looked at the entire genetic pool of the wolf population in Scandinavia and there is no sign of hybridization over time or its occurrence in the population.
