Last known Japanese wolf said killed in 1910
 

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20040229wo71.htm


The last remaining Japanese wolf was discovered to have been a wolf killed in Fukui Prefecture in 1910, according to findings published in the latest issue of Tokyo University of Agriculture's scientific journal, Animate.

Previously, it had been believed the last of the species was killed in Nara Prefecture in 1905. However, upon studying a photograph of a wolf captured five years later, specialists argued that it was a Japanese wolf.

Visiting researcher at the National Science Museum Mizuko Yoshiyuki, a former professor at Tokyo University of Agriculture, announced the results of the study along with Yoshinori Imaizumi, former head of animal studies at the museum and the leading expert on the Japanese wolf.

On the night of Aug. 3, 1910, an animal that looked like a wolf appeared at the Matsudaira Agricultural Experiment Station in Fukui and was killed by research assistants. The following day, a photographer from the city took a photograph of it.

The photo was later examined at a meeting of a Japanese society for the study of mammals in 1962. But because the animal was thought to be larger than a Japanese wolf, and a Korean wolf on display in the prefecture had escaped from a nearby zoo at around the time the photo was taken, it was thought to most likely have been a Korean wolf.

However, a recently discovered diary from the Matsudaira station showed that the wolf in the photo weighed about 18.75 kilograms, much less than a Korean wolf, which usually weighs between 25 and 45 kilograms. Also, the day after the wolf was captured and killed, employees from a nearby zoo confirmed that the animal was not the missing Korean wolf, according to the diary.

With this new information, Yoshiyuki and others reexamined the original photograph. Based on distinguishing characteristics, such as a tail that is rounded, as if it had been bobbed, short legs relative to its body length and low body weight, the researchers concluded that the animal was a Japanese wolf.

Re: Last known Japanese wolf said killed in 1910
 

SO let me get this straight: these research assistants find a wolf that may be the LAST of a SPECIES so they kill it to make sure that it IS (and was). :rolleyes: Pure genius.
-Russ

That's how people thought, back then. Americans did, too. The Victorian era is notorious as the time when "naturalists" bagged specimens of everything to document them, and would even take the last of a species so they could say they had the remains of the last of its kind. :rolleyes:

Actually back in early 2001 I read an article in a Japanese newspaper where they thought they might have stumbled across a Japanese wolf running around somewhere in Japan (Kyushu if I recall correctly). They had gotten a couple not so great pictures of it, but had been unable to catch it to check. Never heard how the whole situation panned out though.

Rennis Buchner

Kinda gives a whole new meaning to the term "Lone Wolf", huh?

But, no cub in this case, more's the pity.

At least they didn't kill it.

Thank goodness.