Coyote / Gray Wolf Mix Canid
An unusual animal once roamed the Savannah River Site. Nobody knows how it got there, or exactly what it was.
The mysteries surrounding the strange creature will probably never be solved.
In 2010, researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy facility found a beast they thought was a huge female coyote.
“She was wolf-like in size and appearance, but she also looked like a great big coyote,” said John Kilgo, a research wildlife biologist with the USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station. “Everybody who saw her was shocked by how large she was.”
The scientists were conducting a study about the effect of removing coyotes on the survival of baby deer when they captured the super-sized animal. She weighed 64 pounds, which was surprising because adult coyotes typically weigh 20 to 50 pounds.
Testing revealed the odd creature had gray wolf DNA in her genetic makeup.
“The classification of canids, which include dogs, wolves and coyotes, is complicated and controversial because so much hybridization has gone on for thousands of years,” Kilgo said. “When you get an animal like this and try to put it in a pigeonhole as one or the other, it's not black and white.”
Because the testing wasn't sophisticated enough, it couldn't answer all the questions that the researchers had.
“All I can tell you is that there was some wolf DNA in her, but I can't tell you how much,” Kilgo said. “We can't say whether she was a full-blooded wolf, a first generation hybrid with a coyote parent and a wolf parent, or coyote that just had some wolf DNA in her from way back in her genetic lineage hundreds of generations ago.”
As part of the study's protocol, the scientists euthanized their surprising find, and there are no plans to analyze her hereditary material further.
“The contract lab in Canada that did the testing for us might still have sufficient tissue that they could work from, and we have a skull,” Kilgo said. “Out of curiosity, it would be interesting to find out more, but there isn't any money for that.”
A group of reintroduced red wolves live in the wild in eastern North Carolina. However, the testing done on the scientists' discovery “suggested” her tissue contained “gray wolf DNA from the Great Lakes region,” Kilgo said.
No other animal like it was found among the nearly 500 coyotes involved in the study. Nothing else like it has been spotted among the other coyotes observed at the Savannah River Site.
“The bottom line is that we don't know where she came from,” Kilgo said. “But we do know there are wolves in captivity all over the continent, and that people move wolves as well as coyotes around, legally and illegally. It's impossible to tell whether she was an animal that escaped from captivity or was released illegally somewhere nearby. It's not impossible that she came here from the Great Lakes region, but it's highly unlikely.”
Dede Biles is a general assignment reporter for the Aiken Standard and has been with the newspaper since January 2013. A native of Concord, N.C., she is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. - AikenStandard
**********
Fact, fiction or fraud - those are the words being bandied about in cyber space about a headless woman seen waving at a car during the Ching Ming Festival last Saturday.
Ching Ming is, after all, an occasion for paying respects to loved ones. But the apparition spotted by netizen Teresa Wong near Shing Mun Reservoir at midnight while driving home with her husband and two friends, and uploaded to the internet, was enough to draw gasps and a muffled scream from inside the car.
The husband said he looked back after passing the apparition and noticed it was a young woman and she had a head.
While some netizens expressed fears, others suggested they go haunting, while yet others felt it was an elaborate hoax.
**********
SETI Hires New Chief
The SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) selected a new organization head.
A press release issued by the SETI Institute on Wednesday, April 9 announced that Dr. David Black has been named the organization’s new President and Chief Executive Officer. The press release describes:
Black, who is President and CEO Emeritus of the Universities Space Research Association and Visiting Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, is a widely recognized researcher in the fields of star and planet formation, and the search for exoplanets. Black also served as the Chief Scientist for the Space Station and Deputy Chief for the Space Science Division at NASA Ames Research Center. He has chaired numerous advisory committees for NASA and the National Science Foundation.
The SETI Institute is largely known for its efforts related to collecting radio telescope data in search of potentially extraterrestrial communication. But this is just one area of SETI’s research. The organization actively participates in a broad range of research arenas. SETI explains, “More than 75 research scientists lead studies that bear on the search for life, past or present, on Mars or on moons of the outer solar system, as well as the location, composition, and history of asteroids, meteors, and interstellar dust.”
SETI scientists have also contributed to exoplanet discoveries made by the Kepler space telescope. Black states, “With the discovery of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of planets orbiting distant stars, the mission of the SETI Institute is more relevant now than when it began.” - OpenMinds
**********
Vatican hires a hawk to protect Pope's doves
A hawk has been taken on by the Vatican to protect the Pope's doves after two were killed in front of horrified crowds by a crow and seagull.
The bird of prey named Sylvia, who was specially trained for the task in northern Italy, has been taken on by the Swiss Guards.
It is hoped the Harris Hawk, with a wingspan of 120cm (47in), will scare off predators looking to make a quick meal of a holy dove.
The doves are traditionally released from the Vatican a few times a year as signs of peace, but when two children let fly the white-feathered birds from the window above St Peter's Square on 26 January this year, they immediately came under attack. The doves did not survive the brutal mid-air collision.
**********
Interaction With Aliens
Concord, CA - unedited: First I will start off by sayin I been havin interaction with alien beings every since I was a child.and this is just one encounter of many,but on this pacific night I was on my way to pick my fiancée from work she worked in concord we lived in Vallejo,my alarm clock went off and awoke got ready to go get her checked on the kids and started my way out the house, soon as I got to my door I had a six sense which was giving me a feeling like I shouldn't leave my apartment.but I had no chose she had to be pick up,so I opened my door and steeped out the house first thang I notice was that it was a very thick and dark fog outside thicker and darker then I ever seen and it was a little unsettling,I mean I could barely see walkin to the car.so I got in the car started makin my way,as I got on the freeway it was like driving blind,but I knew the freeway from driving to pick her up.on the freeway I was seeing weird and scary things,which I thought it was just the signs on the freeway coming thru the fog.so I arrive at her work and I instantly went to my facebook and posted something about the fog i couldn't find my post later.so here comes my fiancée coming out she gets in the car she says ha babe and gives me a kiss and settles in,I looked at her and told her I don't know how I made it here the fog is so thick I couldn't see nothing.and if the kids wasn't home by them selves we would be gettin a motel until the morning, and laughed at me I said no I'm serious,so as we started driving and got on the freeway she oh my god you wasn't lying u can't see the street I said I told u this is dangerous.so we made it to the toll bridge payed the toll and stewarded crossing the bridge then all he'll brakes loose as I was driving across the my fiancée let off a sound I thought I would never hear I call it a death scream it's a scream u hear once in a lifetime cause your usually dead after hearing it,and as looked over to the passenger side at her she had her head between her legs I'm shaking while writing this and then I was capture by darkness I couldn't move no parts of my body my eyes was open I was no longer in my car drivin on the freeway to my amazement I could still see my fiancée who still had her head between her legs but we was not in the car it was if we was floating in darkness and,and I could feel something happening to me like wen u at the dentist and they numb your mouth but you still feel your teeth begin pulled it was sort of like that,so I started thinking about kids my family I started prayin thinkin I don't won't to die ain't nobody go know what happen to us they probably find your car in morning crashed saying we died from the thick fog.and just as I was thinking that I had a fallin sensation in my stomach as if I was fallin then all of a sudden I was back in my car back on the freeway and hurry and grab the steering wheel and as I looked out the window there were to red lights in front of the car and I thought these lights was tail lights from another car so I looked to the passenger side of the car to see if my fiancée was ok and to my shock she still had her head between her legs and I told her it's go be ok I'm go try to follow this car in front of us and hopefully we make it to safety,so as I turned back to the freeway to follow these two red lights which I thought was a car the lights suddenly jump over as if to switch lanes,not to forget I don't know we're I'm at on the freeway last thing I remember was being on the bridge,so as the car jumped and switch lanes so did I and as soon as I did the two reds lights shot off as if they was a jet plane,and as they did some of the fog cleared up and shockingly there was your freeway exit so I took it and as I did my fiancée rose up and I looked at her said what just happen to us she said I don't know all I know is every thang went and said it at the same time every thang went dark,and I said either we went thru a portal or we was takin out your and somebody had us and was doing something to us,cause I don't know how we got to your exit cause I didn't drive here.i said we was on the bridge which is a city or more away and at least 30 miles from our exit what happen to us,still to this day we have no answer I'm still terrified to go outside when there's cloud cover or fog outside. I was watching this show on tv unsealed alien files about alien implants and notice that I had the same implant bumps as the person on the show said they had got from there duct ion the bumps look like the three stars of Orion's Belt. - MUFON CMS
**********
**********
TODAY'S TOP LINKS
In Search of an Ancient Martian Lake
Is Consciousness a State of Matter?
19th Century Chupacabras
Is playing with a Ouija Board wrong?
Reincarnation Case Report from Japan
UFOs Caught on Film: Amazing Evidence of Alien Visitors to Earth
A UFO Hunter's Guide: Sightings, Abductions, Hot Spots, Conspiracies, Coverups, The Identified and Unidentified, and More
Solving The UFO Enigma: How Modern Physics is Revealing the Technology of UFOs
Phantoms & Monsters: Strange Encounters
