India revealed as first home of the wolf

Genetic analysis of the creature, which has haunted humans and preyed on livestock since the dawn of man, suggests it originated in the foothills and mountains of the Himalayas.

The research also suggests that dogs did not originate on the Indian subcontinent as has been widely believed.

Yadvendradev Jhala of the Wildlife Institute of India said: "When we started our research with Indian wolves, we thought they were just another sub-species of the common wolf. But then we explored further, examining wolf DNA samples and found a completely different species that is nearly a million years older than the other wolves found in the world."

Most of the world’s wolves belong to a much younger lineage than those found in India, having emerged only 150,000 years ago. Having appeared on the subcontinent, wolves of this lineage travelled huge distances across plains and mountains to settle in Europe and North America. In India, they can only be found today in the mountainous regions of Kashmir and Ladakh.

"We now realise that the Himalayan wolf has the oldest wolf lineage in the world", said Jhala. "The other endemic species of wolf in India, the Peninsular wolf - also known as the Gray wolf - originated about 400,000 years ago. There’s a good case to be made for calling these separate species".

The researchers, based at Dehradun in northern India, examined not only live animals but also museum specimens from a number of institutions including the Natural History Museum in London.

Another group of scientists working at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad have focused on zoo samples and come to similar conclusions.

Hunting and loss of habitat have drastically reduced the numbers of Himalayan and Gray wolves, both of which are endangered species. It is estimated that the population of Peninsular wolves is not much higher than 2,000 to 3,000 while the number of Himalayan wolves in the wild could be as low as 350 animals.