Had the most amazing walk after work today. I was walking my dog on leash in a small public reserve that is on my drive home from work. Sun is going down noticeably sooner these days, and it was already licking the tree tops.

I have been working on training as my dog is a receint rescue; I have had him about 4 months. So I was really focusing on him as we walked. I heard a sound in front of me and I look up to see some tall big figure moving through the woods.

Yup, a beautiful and VERY large deer, with white tail up. Now I am only about 30 minutes outside of Boston proper so its a pretty amazing site. He ran maybe 20 feet forward then stopped and turn around to stare at us, still as a tree. I stopped and appreciated him, then walked on. What an amazing site.

The weird thing is I spent all weekend in the White Mountains, I climbed Mt Washington. Didnt see a single larger wild animal. Then I come back to the city area to see a deer. Strange how things work.

PS the dog came with the name "Hunter" when I adopted him. Sure glad I had him on leash today! haha

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/lankyirishdood/HunterWatchDog.jpg



--Meragin O'Malamus

The muddy, tobac smellin, kneebiter (tm)

a friend of mine has a "dog" that is 3/4 wolf. I hate the thing because he scares the crap out of me. I did enjoy watching him run a dear down to exhaustion and kill it one day. I've never seen anything else like it in real life.

<<Three fourths wolf? Is that possible? Of course I am no expert, but wolves and domestic dogs are different species (canus lupus and canus familiaris iirc), and if I am not mistaken that means any offspring will be sterile, so the best it could be is exactly half.

<<I could be quite wrong, I suppose.

Three fourths would be a half-wolf, half-dog mating with full wolf.

One of the definitions of what makes a species a species is the inability to crossbreed with other species. BUT as I said this is one definition the line is blurred in many cases. This is not one of those cases though. In fact most wolves are Canis lupus, and domestic dogs are Canis lupus familiaris (a subspecies).

P.S. For some reason I can't get it to italicize lupus.

you all have already worried over it more than I did. I figure, he said it's 3/4 wolf, it looks like a wolf, it acts like a wolf, it stares at me like it want to eat me like a wolf.... it must be a wolf.

Interesting article on dogs and wolves:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,504508,00.html

The basic gist of it was that dogs can read facial expressions while wolves cannot.

<<Basically, the DNA is close enough, and no as the article states, the hybrid is fertile.

As I said, they are not seperate species. Also, as I alluded to, even species that have been deemed different can interbreed, and produce fertile offspring. I'll provide some examples:

Mule deer (Odocoileus heminous) and White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) can mate and produce succesful offspring

Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and Cutthroat trout (Onchorhynchus clarki) can also mate and produce fertile offspring.

Mallard (Anas platyrhyncos) and American black ducks (Anas rubripes), same thing.

Those are just a few examples. In some cases interbreeding can threaten a species by dilluting there genes with genes from the other species. This can make the status of an already dwindling species to that much worse.


p.s. I don't know what is up with italics. Someone let me know what I'm doing wrong.