A wolf-like creature has been shot and killed by a rancher protecting his livestock near Denton, Montana, but now specialists are racking their brains trying to figure out exactly what kind of animal this was.
It is not a wolf, but it is also not a dog, and until a full DNA report is conducted there is not much else to do but theorize.
What is known is that the animal is a female mammal belonging to the dog family but while it shares many wolf-life characteristics, there are several other unusual features, Newsweek reported.
"The ears are too big. The legs look a little short. The feet look a little small, and the coat looks weird. There's just something off about it," said Ty Smucker, a wolf management specialist at Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
Tissue samples will be sent to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon, where DNA samples will be compared to those of known species.
Until then, officials have no way of knowing what the animal is, but Smucker thinks it is some kind of wolf-dog hybrid, which is not uncommon.
Wolves and dogs have been known to interbreed, this just occurs more often in captivity than in the wild.
"We've had a few instances of wolf/dog hybrids out there," he said, according to The Great Falls Tribune.
"One was out somewhere in eastern central Montana killing sheep like crazy. Finally, we caught it and it turned out to be a hybrid."
In the Northeast, populations of another hybrid, the coywolf, which is a canine descended from coyotes, wolves, and dogs, has dramatically increased over the past few years, and now it numbers in the millions.
While these are wild animals, wolf-dog hybrids are more often bred in captivity as pets.
Sadly, their behavior is often unpredictable and owners find them a challenge to take care of, The International Wolf Center reported.
As a result, thousands of these animals are abandoned, rescued or euthanized.
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