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Wolves and some things you mightn't know about them.

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Wolves feature in folklore and mythology of cultures ancient to modern across the northern hemisphere; from the Norse legend of the giant Fenrir to more sympathetic depictions in Central Asia and the suckling of Romulus and Remus in the foundation of Rome.

More familiar still are the fairy tales where the wolf appears as a villain such as Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs.

Wolf legends have also given rise to the popular horror figure of the werewolf.

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Iberian Wolf
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Conservation Dependent
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Canidae
Genus: Canis
Species: C. lupus
Subspecies: C. l. signatus
Trinomial name
Canis lupus signatus
Cabrera, 1907

The Iberian Wolf (Canis lupus signatus), known locally as Lobo is a subspecies of Gray Wolf that inhabited the forest and plains of North Portugal and North-Western Spain.

Features and adaptations
The Iberian wolf differs from the more common Eurasian Wolf with its thinner build, the white marks on the upper lips, the dark marks on the tail and a pair of dark marks in its front legs that give it its subspecies name, signatus ("marked").

The subspecies differentiation may have developed at the end of the Pleistocene Ice Ages due to the isolation of the Iberian Peninsula when glacier barriers grew in the Pyrenees and eventually reached the Gulf of Biscay in the West and the Mediterranean in the East.

Males can weigh up to 90 lbs (40 kgs) with females usually weighing 22 lbs (10 kgs) less.

Diet
The Iberian Wolf lives in small packs is considered to be beneficial in keeping the numbers of boar stable, thus allowing some respite for the endangered Capercaillie populations which suffer greatly from boar predation. It will also eat, rabbits, Roe Deer, Red Deer and even small carnivores and fish. In some places it eats calves and other domestic animals.

History
Until 1900s the Iberian Wolf inhabited the major part of the Iberian Peninsula.

However, the Francoist Government started an extermination campaign during the 1950s and 1960s that wiped out the animals from all Spain except the NW part of the country and some isolated areas in Sierra Morena.

Similar politics in Portugal led to the extinction of the animal south of the Douro river.

Luckily, some Spanish naturalists and conservationists like Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente claimed for the end of the hunting and the protection of the animal.

Today, the hunting of wolves is banned in Portugal, but allowed in some parts of Spain but not others.

Overall, the Iberian Wolf is expanding to the South and East.

There are reports of wolves returning to the Basque Country and to the provinces of Madrid and Guadalajara.

A male wolf was found recently in Catalonia, where the last native wolf was killed in 1929.

However, this animal was not a member of the Iberian subspecies, but (surprisingly) an Italian Wolf (Canis lupus italicus). It reached the region from France, probably from a reintroduced pack.

Some authors claims that the South-Eastern Spanish Wolf, last sighted in Murcia in the 1930s, was a different subspecies called Canis lupus deitanus.

It was an even smaller and more reddish in color, without dark spots. Both subspecies were nominated by Ángel Cabrera in 1907.

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