Falkland Islands Wolf - History

History

The first recorded sighting was by Capt. John Strong in 1690. Captain Strong took one of the animals on his ship, but during the voyage back to Europe the creature became frightened by the firing of the ship's cannon and jumped overboard. Louis Antoine de Bougainville, who established the first settlement in the Falkland Islands termed it a loup-renard ("fox-wolf"). The name "warrah" is a corruption of the term aguará (meaning "fox" in Guaraní, a Native American language), because of its similarity to the maned wolf ("aguará guazú".) The warrah's Latin name translates into "foolish dog of the south", because of its apparent lack of fear of people.

When Charles Darwin visited the islands in 1833 he found the species present on both West and East Falkland, and tame. However, at the time of his visit the animal was already very rare on East Falkland, and even on West Falkland its numbers were declining rapidly. He predicted that the animal would join the dodo among the extinct within "a very few years." It was hunted for its valuable fur, and the settlers, regarding the wolf as a threat to their sheep, poisoned it. There were no forests for the animal to hide in, and it had no fear of man; it was possible to lure the animal with a chunk of meat held in one hand, and kill it with a knife or stick held in the other. However, it would defend itself occasionally if it needed to, as Admiral George Grey noted when they landed on West Falkland at Port Edgar on December 17, 1836:

I landed in the creek and had hardly put a foot on shore, when one of the foxes of the country was chased by Pilot. I ran up as they were fighting and came to the poor dog's assistance who had nearly met his match, and a rifle ball soon settled the business, but the Pilot had received a terrible bite in the leg.

A live wolf was taken to London Zoo, England in 1868. Another "Antarctic wolf" arrived in 1870. Neither animal survived long. Only a dozen or so museum specimens exist today.

In 1880, after the animal became extinct, Thomas Huxley classified it as related to the coyote. In 1914, Oldfield Thomas moved it to the genus Dusicyon, with the culpeo and other South American foxes. (These other canids have since been removed to Lycalopex.)