• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Gray, Red, Or Ethiopian: What Is The Largest Wolf Species?

November 19, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

We’ve seen Game Of Thrones and secretly dreamed about what it would be like to have an absolutely massive dire wolf as a pet. However, since the reality is that they’ve been extinct for over 10,000 years, we might have to content ourselves with some big wolf watching from a respectable distance. But exactly what species would we be gazing lovingly at? We delve into the biggest wolves in the world.

Wolf species

Immediately, the wolf species debate gets a little controversial. Some suggest there are just two species of wolf: the gray wolf (Canis lupus) and the red wolf (Canis rufus). Others, however, throw a third or a fourth into the mix; the Eastern wolf (Canis lycaon) from North America and the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis). Depending on which ones are counted, there are thought to be nearly 40 subspecies of wolf.

Advertisement

Which wolf species is the biggest?

Adult gray wolves are thought to be the biggest; females typically weigh between 23 to 55 kilograms (51 to 121 pounds) while the males are bigger, sometimes weighing up to 80 kilograms (176 pounds) and measuring around 76 centimeters (30 inches) tall at the shoulder.

Smaller than the gray is the red wolf, at roughly 66 centimeters (26 inches) at the shoulder, and ranging in weight from around 20 to 36 kilograms (45 to 80 pounds). Unlike the more widespread gray wolves, red wolves are found only in eastern North Carolina. 

The Ethiopian wolf is the smallest of the group, only weighing 11 to 20 kilograms (24 to 42 pounds). 

In Yellowstone National Park, a tracking device was placed on a male wolf known as 495M, as part of a longstanding tracking project. His weight is said to have been 65 kilograms (143 pounds), the largest wolf ever recorded in Yellowstone. According to the Guinness World Records, however, “the largest widely accepted grey wolf on record is an individual from the Yukon, Canada, that reportedly weighed 103 [kilograms] (227 [pounds]).”

Largest wolf ever

All of the above are the biggest living wolves, but what was the biggest wolf that ever lived? 

The dire wolf (Canis dirus) was said to be around the size of the largest gray wolves, with a shoulder height of 97 centimeters (38 inches) and weighing around 59 to 68 kilograms (130 to 150 pounds), with heads that were much larger than those of grey wolves compared to their body size – though some argue they were not really wolves at all. 

Dogs

While these wolves roam wild, there’s space for a brief mention of the dogs (Canis familiaris) that humans have bred to be larger and taller than even these wolves. The heaviest dog breeds are the Old English Mastiff and the St Bernard, which regularly top 77 to 91 kilograms (170 to 201 pounds) in weight. The title for the tallest dog breed, however, is held by the Great Dane; an individual named Zeus was the tallest dog ever at 1.118 meters (44 inches), but sadly died in 2014. 

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Cricket-Manchester test likely to be postponed after India COVID-19 case
  2. EU to attend U.S. trade meeting put in doubt by French anger
  3. Soccer-West Ham win again, Leicester and Napoli falter
  4. Was Jesus A Hallucinogenic Mushroom? One Scholar Certainly Thought So

Source Link: Gray, Red, Or Ethiopian: What Is The Largest Wolf Species?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • 2024 Saw Higher Levels Of Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere Than Ever Before
  • Halloween Fireballs Will Grace Our Skies As The Taurid Meteor Showers Arrive
  • Newly Discovered Hunting Megastructures Suggest Pre-Bronze Age Societies More Sophisticated Than Previously Thought
  • What Is Spectroscopy And Why Is It So Important To Science?
  • Parkinson’s “Trigger” Seen For The First Time: Scientists Image The Toxic Molecules Inside The Human Brain
  • What Flying Animals Exist That Are Not Birds?
  • DNA Evidence Uncovers Surprising Origins Of Native Americans
  • Single Gene Swap “Transfers A Behavior” Between Two Species For The First Time
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Has A Rare “Anti-Tail”, New Observations Confirm
  • Asteroid Apophis: Animation Shows Asteroid’s Nail-Biting Close Approach To Earth In 2029
  • Titan Breaks A Key Chemistry Rule: What That Means For Alien Life
  • Scientists Studied “Chicago Rat Hole” – They Have Bad News, The South Atlantic’s Magnetic Field Weak Spot Is Growing, And Much More This Week
  • Could This Be The Real Reason Humans Survived And Neanderthals Died Out?
  • Newly Discovered Snail Species Named After Studio Ghibli Co-Founder Is A Hairy Beauty
  • 2025 SC79 Is The Second-Fastest Asteroid Ever Found – And Only The Second Within Venus’ Orbit
  • When Red Devil Spiders Arrived On A New Island, Their Genome Dramatically Shrank In Half
  • Is This The World’s Oldest Story? Ancient Human Tale About The Seven Sisters May Be From 100,000 BCE
  • This Pill Is Actually A Tiny Printer That Repairs Internal Injuries Using Biocompatible Ink
  • “This Is Amazing”: Scientists Have Found Evidence Of A Long-Lost World Deep Within The Earth
  • From The Shiniest World To Lava And Eternal Darkness, These Are The Weirdest Known Planets
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version