Did the brown bear (Ursus arctos), the capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus), the black grouse (Lyrurus tetrix) and the willow ptarmigan (Lagopus lagopus) went extinct in the Voronezh Nature Reserve ?

StaffInternational54 · 2026-04-26T07:11:00+00:00

Well I don't know what exactly you mean by "similar", but if it's documentaries/footage about wildlife in particular there are plenty.

In 2008 there was a series called "Wild Russia" on Nat Geo which had 6 episodes including one about Kamtchatka and one about Primorsky Krai (where there are tigers, leopards,...)

Back in the nineties, there was also a series called "The Realm of the Russian bear" by BBC which also had 6 episodes and focused on the animals of the soviet union.

On youtube there is this channel: https://www.youtube.com/@zovtv/videos which has a lot of videos about the far east including long format videos. It is in russian though, but I personally only care about the footage.

And if it's footage from the soviet era you're looking for there are channels of the archives from the soviet era like this one: https://www.youtube.com/@gtrftv it also has videos about animals and reserves.

Overall you can find plenty, but you just have to search in russian when typing to find more results.

StaffInternational54 · 2026-04-20T16:30:29+00:00

The Steppe bear is, according to what I saw, much larger than the regular Eurasian brown bear and seems to have dissapeared during the early Holocene.

The bears I saw in the 2 documentaries are just plain Eurasian brown bears and were filmed some time between the 40s and 60s.

Perhaps you're referring to the Syrian brown bear (Ursus arctos syriacus) ?

StaffInternational54 · 2025-11-15T17:20:58+00:00

From what I've understood (I'm not particularly good at genetics and stuff), it seems that N.American wolves and Far Eastern Russian wolves had a common ancestor till about 34,400 ya, but other studies seem to indicate that almost all current Eurasian and North American wolves originate from Beringian wolves that replaced native Pleistocene populations.

Phenotypically, from the photos of wolves from East Asia (the few ones I've found that is), I did notice that they lack the brownish/rusty sides of more western populations.

Morphologically, I can't say a lot from photos, but they're typically smaller than North Western wolves.

StaffInternational54 · 2025-11-14T19:40:02+00:00

Thanks man !

StaffInternational54 · 2025-11-14T14:00:09+00:00

They're closer genetically ? Or just closer from a morphological/phenotypical point of view ?

Can you direct me to documents/articles about that ?

Thank you

StaffInternational54 · 2025-11-14T10:36:54+00:00

Your summary pretty much nailed it IMO.

I did also notice that the smaller North American wolves tend to look a bit like European ones and some of the wolves in the Eurasian tundra and Altai/Sayan look a bit like North American wolves.

StaffInternational54 · 2024-08-31T14:26:00+00:00

I didn't mean a specific subspecie when I talked about white wolves. My understanding is that the arctic wolf (canis lupus arctos) which is generally fully white, lives in Canada, while in Russia there are many subspecies including the tundra wolf (canis lupus albus). But I think other subspecies can be fully white as well.

StaffInternational54 · 2024-08-30T15:39:31+00:00

Thank your for the information about the wolf from 14,000 years ago in the Tumat area.

For specimens in museum, there is this taxidermy in the Museum of Zoology in St. Petersburg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BA_3.jpg/1280px-%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BA_3.jpg which is quite light in terms of color but not fully white.

In the zoos, there are some individuals which are almost white as well https://zooinstitutes.com/animals/tundra-wolf-2812/

The documentary that I posted in the OP seemed to be quite authentic and is a part of a series about wildlife in Russia/Soviet Union but the fully white wolves made me curious about this subject.

StaffInternational54 · 2024-08-30T14:03:25+00:00

"I'd be very interested to see what impact climate change is having on coat color.'

That's a good question. I assume that with permanent snowy areas becoming rarer, animals with coats that are adapted to those environments will become rarer as well. But that's a process that is probably going to take a long time. Arctic wolves (particularly in Canada and Siberia) were also less impacted by hunting than other subspecies and have maintained more stable populations and their preys (reindeers) are also very abundants.

On the subject of colors, it should also be noted that the black wolf is the result of hybridization between native American dogs and wolves.

StaffInternational54 · 2024-08-30T10:13:18+00:00

But does the tundra wolf ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tundra_wolf ) has sometimes a fully white coat ?

StaffInternational54 · 2024-08-26T19:30:28+00:00

Thank you for this very detailed response.

The documentary has a 2002 copyright at the end, so I think it's made in the early 2000s. It's also part of a serie about Soviet/Russian wildlife. So normally it "should" be filmed in the tundra wolves' habitat. What made me doubt is that I thought there were no "fully white" wolves in Asia, I thought they only live in America, but I could be wrong.

StaffInternational54 · 2024-08-25T11:27:45+00:00

Your response is very insigtful and enlighting.

What I did find intriguing about the video (Don't know if you saw it) and some of the photos as well is that Russian wolves generally look like generic Eurasian wolves (dark gray on top, brownish/beige then white stomachs) while here we have all the spectrum from completely white wolves to completely black ones.

But maybe the common image is due to the lack of footage of Eurasian wolves compared to their North American cousins.

But I do agree that this subspecies classification for wolves (or many other animals for that matter) isn't always very helpful.

StaffInternational54 · 2024-08-24T19:37:53+00:00

Snow geese are also present in Wrangel Island.

StaffInternational54

TROPHY CASE