Live Science
By Sascha Pare
April 5, 2024
Genetic tests have revealed that an animal killed in a legal coyote hunt in Michigan’s Calhoun County was actually a gray wolf, state officials say. But experts don’t know how the animal got there in the first place.
Calhoun County is located in the southern half of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, where no gray wolves (Canis lupus) have been sighted for over a century. A population of around 630 gray wolves inhabits the state’s Upper Peninsula, 250 miles (400 kilometers) away, and some wolves have occasionally been spotted in the northern half of the Lower Peninsula — roughly 130 miles (200 km) from Calhoun County.