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Submitted: September 5, 2010
Image Size: 6.9 MB
Resolution: 4000×3000

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Comments: 28
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Make:NIKON
Model:COOLPIX P90
Shutter Speed:508905/100000000 second
Aperture:F/5.0
Focal Length:110 mm
ISO Speed:64
Date Taken:Sep 5, 2010, 1:27:53 PM

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Big Blueby ~soyrwoo

Photography / Animals, Plants & Nature / Wild Animals

Don't adjust your monitor; that wolf's eyes are blue.

It's a common (and totally, completely, and erroneous) misconception that adult wolves cannot have blue eyes.
Blue eyes are unusual in gray wolves, though not terribly rare; you'll find them once in a blue moon, but several times before the next solar eclipse. In fact, I have seen at least two blue-eyed wolves in person and several more in photographs.

Some say the blue-eye gene sometimes emerges, but only in leucistic wolves. The wolf above clearly isn't leucistic (he's a faded agouti), and another blue-eyed wolf has even darker markings.

Others say the gene comes from dogs.
Now this is something I don't know, but I'll leave you with this: wolves do not naturally come in black. The black fur gene came from dogs, but it survived so many generations that many "pure" wolves today are black.
None of the blue-eyed wolves I know have dogs or wolfdogs in their known ancestry.

And yet others would say this must be shopped.
I'd tell them to get their heads out of their textbooks and take a look at the real thing from time to time.

Taken at the Wildlife Prairie State Park near Peoria, Illinois.
Possibly the best park ever, that one!

Edit: Additional information:
Other photos of these wolves: [link] [link] (with absolutely no editing/post-processing/trick photography)
They are eastern timber wolves, and yes, I really want to know why they have blue eyes. It's killing me.

Edit 2: a lead?
Some biologists now claim that the eastern timber wolf or eastern wolf may be a separate species, an older resident of North America than the gray wolf and more closely related to coyotes and red wolves.
Some coyotes (and red wolves) have been found with blue eyes. The last image on this page is especially interesting: [link]
As is this photo: [link]

Here's a photo someone else took of one of the wolves I photographed: [link]

If you have any information or even theories as to why these wolves have blue eyes, please comment!

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~officer495 Nov 9, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

wow... animals are so awesome, though those dudes that think there no way a wolf could have blue eyes, i so want to throw a stick at them right now -_-
is that normal? O_o

~soyrwoo Nov 9, 2012

Is what normal? The blue eyes or wanting to throw sticks at people?

Generalizations don't work too well in biology; there are usually exceptions to the rules somewhere out there. While it would be correct to say that wolves generally do not have blue eyes, it's incorrect to say there's no way an animal could have blue eyes and be considered a wolf.

~officer495 Nov 9, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

lol the wanting to throw sticks at people which is odd for me its normally a book O___o so back to topic,
i just learned that eye color can also reflect of the color of skin some one has (f they have light eyes)
might be his eyes are reflecting of his light fur color of some thing like that,

~soyrwoo Nov 9, 2012

Oh, but the poor books! D:

I don't think fur and eye color are so related in wolves. This guy used to be a normal agouti, but has since faded. His one blue-eyed brother is a non-faded agouti.

=ProfelisAurata Apr 18, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

quote: "I really want to know why they have blue eyes. It's killing me."
Why not simply answering: environmental conditions or mutation? Brimstone butterflys are usually bright yellowish but they can be black as well (when they're living in a city)

~soyrwoo Apr 18, 2012

It's likely a mutation of some sort, but what I want to know is how it came about. Since two of the wolves in that generation have blue eyes, we can assume it was inherited. But neither parent has that phenotype, so it must have been inherited from both parents. Unless the parents are closely related, this suggests that more wolves within the captive population have the blue eye allele.

So I'm curious about the allele's origins: is it only common in captive populations? Did it originate in coyotes or dogs, then enter the Eastern wolf population through crossbreeding? Or did it come about independently in each of those groups?

That's why; simple just ain't gonna cut it here! XD

~hemlockXD Jul 19, 2011

he looks depressed or curious

~soyrwoo Jul 19, 2011

Heheh, he was just waiting for noms

*Wolfyone Feb 20, 2011 Hobbyist General Artist

Beautiful wolf. There's a wolf named Reudi at Wolf Park who has light green eyes that look blue in a lot of the photos I've seen of him. But blue or green, these wolves have striking, unusual eyes. Great photo.

~soyrwoo Feb 21, 2011

I love Reudi! He's one of the most adorable wolves I've seen

The Wildlife Prairie Park wolves' eyes are definitely blue though, (it's more obvious in the photos linked in the description) so I'm trying to find out why blue eyes occasionally occur in "pure" wolves, and then why so many people dismiss the possibility of blue-eyed wolves; such wolves are frequently labelled as wolfdogs, when they show no other signs of doggy heritage.

So far, my quest has come up with... almost nothing, but it has been rather interesting nonetheless

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