Maned wolf: habitat and description

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:54

There is a unique animal in the world, equally similar to a domestic dog and a red wild fox. At the same time, the legs of this pseudo-fox are not at all fox-like or dog-like. They are quite long (in relation to the overall dimensions of the body) and thin, as if specially adapted for hunting in the grassy and bushy thickets of the savannah.

This is a maned (maned) wolf. Otherwise, it is also called guara or aguarache. Refers to predators from the canine family. The Latin name of this creature - Chrysocyon brachyurus - in translation sounds like "golden dog with a short tail".

Description

The height at the withers is quite large, but not more than 87 cm, and the body length, together with a short tail, rarely reaches 130 cm., a muzzle very similar to a fox, together with such paws, create a feeling of grace and some kind of ballet grace. Still it's a predator with allwith animal habits due to him, and his nature, as the name implies, is really wolf.

The long, thin and strong legs of this predator are without a doubt an evolutionary acquisition. They help him not so much to move with good speed through the grassy flat thickets of the South American pampas, but to survey the surrounding expanses, looking for prey.

The front limbs of the animal are shorter than the hind limbs, so it runs downhill much faster than it goes up.

Interesting fact: the cubs of this wolf are born with short legs. The length of the legs increases due to the subsequent growth of the lower leg. However, the maned wolf is not the best runner. Comparing the speed of his run with a cheetah, for example, is not worth it.

The general color of the maned wolf is usually reddish-yellow. There are dark spots on the body. The part of the neck below the chin and the lower fragment of the tail are white. The hair on the nape and along the spine is black, long (up to 12-13 cm), resembling a mane. It may rear up if the animal is in an aggressive or anxious state.

The weight of the animal usually does not exceed 22-23 kg.

What is the lifespan of a guar in the wild is still unknown, but in captivity, a wolf usually lives from 12 to 15 years.

Behavior

Maned wolves rest during the day, hiding in the grass thickets. Like most predators, they are active at night or at dusk. They don't get together in packs.

These are the so-called "territorial animals" - they livein pairs, each wolf family occupies a plot of about 30 square kilometers. True, "couple" is a relative concept. Spouses hunt and even rest separately, the male guards the territory from strange wolves, the female raises puppies.

The maned wolf hunts like this: using his keen hearing, he marks his prey and, getting closer to it, beats the ground with his paw, forcing the victim to give himself away by movement. After that, he jumps completely fox-like on straight legs, and, if necessary, skipping after the victim.

Males communicate with each other with a special throat bark or long-sounding eerie howl at night and at a distance. Faced in the same territory, two males growl at each other.

If several males are placed in one zoo enclosure, they will fight until a leader is determined and a hierarchy is established. Further, all individuals usually coexist peacefully, and males even help females care for offspring.

There were no cases of attacks on a person when he met a maned wolf.

Where the guar lives

The maned wolf lives in South America. Once it was found in parts of Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru and Argentina, but it has long been considered extinct there. Today, the range of the maned wolf extends from the terminus of the Parnaiba River, the largest in northeastern Brazil, to eastern Bolivia.

The favorite places of this animal are thickets of grass and shrubs on the plains, light forests, forest edges and edgesswamps. In mountains or areas with dense forests, you are unlikely to meet this animal.

What eats

The maned wolf is not a gourmet at all. Hunts because of its medium-sized and not particularly powerful data on small flatland animals. In the savannah, these are rabbits, armadillos, agouti, tuko-tuko. The predator can also attack the bird, ruin the nest, eat the masonry. Sometimes it catches reptiles, picks up snails and insects. His favorite food, however, remains the wild guinea pig.

If necessary, it digs the ground not with its front paws, but with its teeth. The jaws of this wolf are rather weak - it cannot tear or chew its prey, which is why it swallows it almost entirely.

Probably for this reason, approximately half of his diet consists of plant foods: bananas, fruits, sugarcane and tubers of various plants. Willingly eats one of the types of nightshade, which thanks to this even received the name "wolf fruit" from the natives.

In captivity (Antwerp Zoo, Belgium), a pair of maned wolves eats two pigeons a day and a kilogram of bananas per brother.

Offspring

Female maned wolves can bring up to 7 cubs, but usually a litter consists of 2-4 cubs. At birth, the cubs are still blind and deaf, their coat is black. Only after 3-3, 5 months they will become red, like their parents.

Despite being helpless at birth, wolf cubs grow quite quickly. On the ninth day they have sight. And three weeks later - the ability to eat not onlymother's milk. Usually at this time, their parents feed them by regurgitating food for them.

Maned wolves become independent sexually mature individuals in a year.

And yet: a wolf or a fox?

The maned wolf in its appearance and habits really looks like some species of half-foxes-half-jackals and the American gray fox from North and South America.

Among fox-like wolves, scientists also know the red wolf, which today lives in very small numbers in India, Mongolia, and northern Tibet. This is an almost unexplored species. In adult individuals of the red wolf in appearance there are a number of differences from the maned one: a black tail, strong small paws and a not so graceful body. Yes, these animals are distinguished by other habits. So it is impossible to combine the red and maned wolf into one species.

However, it has been proven that the guar, despite the coincidence of a number of noticeable features, is unlikely to have foxes in its "pedigree" - it does not have a vertical pupil that unites these animals. There was another version that the maned wolf was the ancestor of the varraha (Falkland fox), an extinct species from the Falkland Islands, but during the research it did not justify itself.

Currently, scientists have settled on the assumption that this is a relic species, in other words, one of the species that survived the extinction of the most ancient canids that lived on earth in the Pleistocene (Ice Age) era.

Slightly digressing from the topic under consideration, we note that this era ended on our planet about 11.7 thousand years ago. Then -it’s even hard to imagine - giant animals, representatives of the Pleistocene megafauna, walked around the fields and forests: mammoths, cave lions, woolly rhinos … Marsupial lions and diprodotons (the largest known extinct marsupials) lived in Australia.

Finally, we note that the fossil remains of maned wolves are negligibly small, hence the many unsolved questions about the origin of this animal.

Endangered Maned Wolf

According to very old studies, the population of the maned wolf is endangered, with which status it is listed in the international Red Book.

Brazil has less than 2,000 animals left at last count.

Why is the maned wolf dying out if it has no natural enemies in nature? His main enemy is man. Hunting for animals with any valuable fur has always been considered a profitable occupation among people. In addition, local residents attributed the mystical properties of amulets and talismans to parts of the body and bones of a dead wolf. But that was before.

Today, wolf cubs are mainly caught for sale to keep them in captivity (in private and city zoos).

In addition, sometimes the wolf encroaches on the offspring of sheep and pigs in households, which causes righteous anger and a desire to destroy the predator among livestock owners.

Expansion of the area of land given for sowing agricultural plants, burning grass in the savannah also harms the population and reduces the range of the maned wolf.