Mammals
Maned Wolf
Chrysocyon brachyurus · also called guará, lobo-guará
The maned wolf looks like a red fox that was stretched. It is the tallest wild member of the dog family, it lives alone in the grasslands of South America, half its diet is fruit, and it marks its territory with urine that famously smells of cannabis.
Overview
Maned wolves inhabit the cerrado — the vast tropical savanna and grassland of central South America — along with marshy areas, scrub, and the edges of forest and farmland, mainly in Brazil but also in Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, and Peru. They are crepuscular and nocturnal, resting in dense cover by day and roaming widely at night. A monogamous pair shares and defends a large territory of tens of square kilometres, but the two animals forage separately and usually only meet to breed — an unusually loose social arrangement for a canid.
A dog like no other
- The build. Long, slender, dark legs raise the maned wolf’s eyes and ears above the tall grass; the body is light, the muzzle long, the ears large, and a black mane runs along the neck and shoulders, raised when the animal is alarmed.
- The relationships. Genetically it is its own thing — no close ties to wolves or foxes, with the small bush dog as its nearest relative.
- The smell. Its scent-marking urine carries a strong pyrazine odour, chemically shared with cannabis and skunk, used to communicate across its big, thinly patrolled range.
Half a fruitarian
The maned wolf’s diet is roughly 50% plant matter, dominated by the “wolf-apple” (Solanum lycocarpum), a bitter, tomato-like fruit, plus other cerrado fruits and tubers. The rest is small animals — rodents, rabbits, armadillos, birds, reptiles, and large insects — caught by a slow stalk and a stiff-legged pounce. As a fruit-eater it is a key seed disperser; wolf-apple seeds that pass through it often end up germinating on the nutrient-rich refuse mounds of leaf-cutter ants.
Reproduction
Pairs breed once a year, and the female gives birth to two to six pups in a den or dense thicket. Both parents may bring food (regurgitated and whole) to the pups, though the female does most of the rearing. Young disperse at around a year old.
Threats and conservation
The maned wolf is Near Threatened and declining. The overwhelming pressure is the conversion of the cerrado — one of the world’s most biodiverse savannas — into soy fields and cattle pasture, which fragments its range and removes the fruiting shrubs it depends on. Added to this are road mortality (a leading cause of death), shooting by farmers who blame it for poultry losses, disease from domestic dogs, and capture for skins and body parts used in folk medicine.
Maned Wolf: common questions
Is the maned wolf a wolf or a fox?
Neither. Despite the name and a foxy face, the maned wolf is the only species in its genus, Chrysocyon ("golden dog"), and it is not closely related to true wolves, foxes, or jackals. Its nearest living relative is the bush dog, a small, stocky South American canid — an odd pairing, given how different the two look. The maned wolf is a survivor of a group of South American canids that were once far more diverse.
Why is the maned wolf so tall and leggy?
Its long legs are for looking, not running. The maned wolf lives in tall grassland, and raising its eyes and ears above the grass helps it spot and listen for prey and predators. It hunts by stalking slowly and then pouncing with stiff front legs to pin small animals, a technique more like a fox's than a wolf's coursing chase. It is not a fast or an endurance runner, and it does not hunt in a pack.
Why does maned wolf urine smell like cannabis?
Its scent-marking urine contains high levels of a sulphur compound (a pyrazine) that also occurs in cannabis, hops, and skunk spray, producing a pungent, unmistakable smell that the wolf uses to mark its large territory and communicate with its mate. It is strong enough that visitors and staff at Rotterdam Zoo once called the police believing someone was smoking marijuana near the maned wolf enclosure.
What does the maned wolf eat, and why does fruit matter so much?
Its diet is unusually plant-heavy for a dog — around half fruit by volume, above all the tomato-like "wolf-apple" (lobeira). The maned wolf is the main disperser of this and other cerrado fruits, and there is evidence the fruit helps protect it against a kidney parasite. It balances this with small vertebrates and large insects hunted on the ground. Because it needs both fruiting shrubs and open hunting country, conversion of the cerrado to soy and cattle pasture hits it hard.