And now there's a fair amount of inbreeding in the species because you can't help it when you have so few founders. Kristin Brzeski: The species has gone through this huge bottleneck and through that lost a lot of genetic variation. In 1980 their wild relatives were declared extinct-the captured wolves were all that was left. To conserve the species, 14 individuals were captured as part of a breeding program. But by 1972 the population was reduced to only roaming a small area along the Gulf coast due to habitat loss and hunting. The historic range of these rust-colored canines stretched from Long Island across to Missouri and down to the Texas-Mexico border. The red wolf once roamed a huge swath of the eastern United States. Samuels: This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Fionna Samuels.
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