Andean Wolf

For the Patagonian Fox, sometimes referred to as the "Andean Wolf", see Culpeo.

The Andean Wolf, or Hagenbeck's Wolf is an unsubstantited wolf-like canid, reportedly from the Andes.

Pelt

In 1927 Lorenz Hagenbeck bought one of three pelts from a dealer in Buenos Aires who claimed that they had come from a wild dog of the Andes. When Dr. Ingo Krumbiegel studied the skin in Germany in 1940, he concluded that it belonged to a new and still undescribed species. Scientists in the 1960s discovered that the pelt belonged to a domestic dog, possibly a Sheep dog. A 2000 attempt at DNA analysis of the remaining pelt at Munich’s zoological museum failed because it was contaminated with human, dog, wolf, and pig DNA, and had been chemically treated (Eberhart, 2002).

Skull

In 1947, Krumbiegel connected the pelt with a skull he had discovered about ten years earlier. He claimed the skull was 31 centimeters long and belonged to an omnivorous canid substantially larger than a Maned wolf, as Maned wolf skulls are smaller, about 24 cm. He published a paper describing the animal and suggesting a scientific name for it: Dasycyon hagenbecki, though the skull had allegedly been lost in 1945 during World War II and was not available for peer review.

See also

• List of Cryptids

References

• Heuvelmans, Bernard. "On the Track of Unknown Animals". Farrar Straus & Giroux, January 1965. ISBN 0-8090-7451-6.
• Shuker, Karl. "The New Zoo: New and Rediscovered Animals of the Twentieth Century". House of Stratus, 2002. ISBN 1-84232-561-2
• A review of canid classification. American Museum novitates ; no. 2646
• Eberhart, George M. Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2002.