Hungry like the … wolf ?
Montana authorities struggle to identify animal found on ranch
In Montana, it’s legal to shoot wolves that get close to people or livestock. That’s exactly what a rancher in Denton thought he did, putting a bullet into something with four legs and canine teeth that came within stalking distance of his herd. But when he summoned wildlife officials to investigate, something was off.
The dead animal’s canine teeth were too short, the front paws were tiny for a wolf, and the claws on those paws were too long. The ears were too big as well, experts told The Washington Post and the coat was wrong. This was no wolf.
It was a young, non-lactating female and a canid — or member of the dog family — Mon- tana wildlife officials concluded, but that’s about as far as animal experts got.
“We have no idea what this is,” Bruce Auchly, information manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “And we won’t know until we get the DNA tests back.”
But from that vacuum of information has sprung notquite-educated guesses from armchair taxonomists and conspiracy theorists — people who have spent too much time staring at a picture of a wolfish creature on the back of a truck.
Their leading theories about the mystery creature:
It’s Bigfoot: Because it’s large and hairy and unexplained.
It’s a dog-man: Think bigfoot with a snout. Or, as a website dedicated to dogman encounters defines them: “cryptozoological beings that are large and sometimes described as looking like upright canids.”
“They’re spotted each day and the government quells any and all reports,” one person on social media said, according to the Great Falls Tribune. “Several people report being strong armed into keeping quiet about their reports by men wearing black suits. These are just facts.” Some dogmen look like a stretched out dog that walks on two feet. Others look like a Sasquatch with a Doberman’s face.
There has been only one reported dogman sighting in Montana, according to the dogman encounters website, which includes a handy map.
“I sat up in my bed, frightened, but I didn’t feel the need to yell for my parents or anything,” the anonymous Montana poster said. “It just kind of stared at me. While looking at it, I saw that it had pointed ears, with tufts of fur, like lynx have, and a muzzle like a German Shepard.”
After the dogman stepped over the poster’s fence, “I heard it yip and bark while on the other side, which was prairie, with a butte and then forest. It was almost like it was calling to others.”
It’s a dire wolf:
Dire wolves were native to the Americas and larger than their cousins, the grey wolf. But they went extinct more than 10,000 years ago, The Washington Post’s Karin Brulliard reported.
Thousands of dire wolf skeletons have been found in the La Brea Tar Pits, according to the BBC.