Card #016 · Mammals
Maned wolf
Chrysocyon brachyurus
Uncommon NT · Near Threatened
Field notes
- Classification
- Order Carnivora · Family Canidae
- Range
- Central South America
- Size
- To 110 cm (43 in) at shoulder
- Weight
- 20–30 kg (44–66 lb)
- Lifespan
- 12–15 yrs
- Diet
- Wolf apple fruit, small prey
Most Notable
Not a wolf, and not a fox. It is the only species in its genus and the tallest wild canid alive, and its closest living relative is the bush dog, a short-legged animal that looks nothing like it.
About half its diet is fruit. The wolf apple, a tomato relative that grows all over the Cerrado, runs from 40 to 90 percent of what it eats depending on the season, and the seeds pass through unharmed and germinate in the dung. No other canid of this size lives mostly on fruit.
The legs are the whole animal. They are long enough to clear the tall Cerrado grass and see over it, which is what a hunter of small prey in that habitat needs more than speed.
Its territorial urine is famously strong and smells to most people like hops or cannabis, which has earned it the nickname skunk wolf.
About 17,000 mature animals remain, more than nine in ten of them in Brazil, and the Cerrado they depend on has been cleared for cropland faster than almost any other habitat in South America.
Range: Cerrado and grasslands of central South America.