Black Wolves the Result of Interbreeding With Dogs

Biologist Tovi Anderson of Stanford University and her team compared the genes of wolves from Yellowstone National Park and the Canadian Arctic to those of domestic dogs and coyotes. They found that, in each species, the black individuals have the same mutation, which first arose about 45,000 years ago. And molecular-clock analysis showed the mutation was oldest in dogs, suggesting it originated with them and then spread to wolves and coyotes through interbreeding.

This all happened in North America, because there are no black wolves in Europe or Asia (except for an Italian population that has hybridized very recently with dogs). And wolves picked up the black-coat mutation in the distant past, perhaps 12,000-15,000 years ago, when people first crossed the Bering Land Bridge from Asia.

The black coat seems to provide an advantage to forest-dwelling wolves, meaning dogs passed on some useful genetic diversity to their wild cousins.

Source

My Friend Zak (when bad tattoos come full circle and become awesome, part II)

My friend Zak is quite possibly the coolest dude ever. He has great taste in music. He's super nice and friendly. He has a black belt in karate. He likes space and d&d and being awesome. And he is willing to share his ridiculous stick-n-poke tattoos with us.

In the same vein as this dude, Zak and his friends like to get tipsy and tattoo each other. And ridiculousness ensues.

I'm going to post his tattoos in installments, because they are just that amazing, so here is the first, of many.



Here's the story behind it, if I'm remembering correctly... he decided to get a wolf tattoo, because wolves are RAD (p.s. I have a bunch of amazing tribal wolf tattoos to share with you guys). However, no one could tattoo a wolf, so he just went with the word "WOLF!". Then, apparently, there's a Chinese saying "horse, horse, tiger, bear" which brings good luck, I think? So he went with writing those next to "WOLF!" to round out the tattoo. But the words kept getting progressively crappier as he went on, so you can barely read the last one.

This might be one of the worst tattoos I have ever seen, but it is also one of the best.

If you have a silly stick-n-poke tattoo, or have a friend who does, by all means EMAIL ME!