The Arctic wolf (
Canis lupus arctos), also known as the
Melville Island wolf is a possible subspecies of gray wolf native to the
Canadian Arctic Archipelago, from Melville Island to
Ellesmere Island. It is a medium-sized subspecies, distinguished from the northwestern wolf by its smaller size, its whiter coloration, its narrower braincase, and larger carnassials. Since
1930, there has been a progressive reduction in size in
Arctic wolf skulls, which is likely the result of wolf-dog hybridization.
Contrary to its mainland counterparts, the Arctic wolf has never been seriously hunted or pursued, as the high Arctic holds few human settlements. As a result, the Arctic wolf is relatively unafraid of people, and can be coaxed to approach people in some areas. It has occasionally acted aggressively toward humans.
Otto Sverdrup wrote that during the
Fram expedition, a pair of wolves attacked one of his team-mates, who defended himself with a skiing pole. In
1977, a pair of scientists were approached by six wolves on Ellesmere Island, with one animal leaping at one of the scientists and grazing a cheek. A number of incidents involving aggressive wolves have occurred in
Alert, Nunavut, where the wolves have lived in close proximity to the local weather station for decades and become habituated to humans.
The Arctic wolf was first described as a distinct subspecies by
British zoologist
Reginald Pocock in 1935, after having examined a single skull from Melville Island.
As of 2005, the Arctic wolf is still recognized as a distinct subspecies by
MSW3. However, studies undertaken on Arctic wolf autosomal microsatellite
DNA and mtDNA data indicate that the Arctic wolf has no unique haplotypes, thus indicating that its colonization of the
Arctic Archipelago from the
North American mainland was relatively recent, and thus not sufficient to warrant subspecies status.[8] However, the research of
Chambers et al. (
2012) that dismissed the Arctic wolf's genetic integrity became controversial, forcing the
USF&WS; to commission a peer review of it, known as NCAES (2014).[9] This peer review highlighted numerous flaws in the research such as the erroneous merging of the coastal BC island wolves with the inland
Canis lupus nubilus as well as suggesting that gray wolves never lived in the eastern third of the US, etc, and thus concluded unanimously that the Chambers' review "is not accepted as consensus scientific opinion or best available science".
- published: 07 Mar 2015
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