Hyacinth Valley Camps

Maned Wolf

A 120-pound, 4-foot tall Maned Wolf is now visiting the Hyacinth Cliffs project house every other evening to retrieve handouts.

This rare, very shy, endangered wolf, which lives solitarily in the grasslands and grassland-forest mosaics of eastern Brazil and eastern Bolivia, is thought by many wolf and fox biologists to be the most beautiful of all the world's canid species.

The animal looks like a gigantic Red Fox in that its body is all rusty red, with huge, pricked-up ears, very long, black legs, and a white patch on the chest. Its tail is bushy but very short. This species is the tallest and most graceful of all the canids (wolves, wild dogs, foxes, and jackals) of the world. Its extremely long legs seem to be designed to allow it to walk and trot in the tall grasses of the savannahs of South America as it searches for its main food--small rodents.

In addition to rodents, the Maned Wolf eats a kind of wild tomato, which means that its favorite meal basically is "Mouse Marinara" (or would it be "Mouse Bolognesa", as it is not a vegetarian plate?).

Visitors to the Hyacinth Valley Camps have a very good chance to see and to video tape or photograph this wolf from a special-built blind near the project site headquarters.

The Hyacinth Cliffs site is the only place in the world where one has such an excellent chance to see and photograph this most beautiful of all canids in its natural habitat.