The Last Warrah (Falkland-Malvinas wolf-fox): Isla Pavón Santa Cruz - 1875

Llaras Samitier wrote an article back in March 1965 (La Argentina Austral, No. 401 Leyendas del Río Santa Cruz, Tadición de un Zorro. p.8) in which, among others, he tells the following story about the now extinct Warrah. The author mentions Pavón Island, which was set in the middle of the Santa Cruz River (see it in Google maps), it was here that Argentine naval officer Luis Piedrabuena had set up his fortified enclave and traded with sealers and Tehuelche natives. From here George Musters set out in 1869 towards Carmen de Patagones on an expedition that covered more than 2,300 km (1,430 mi).

Below we quote Llaras Samitier's text

"A FOX'S LEGEND.
 
There on Pavón Island, there also lived a warrah, the Falkland Islands fox (Dusicyon australis or Canis antarcticus), which, according to the inhabitants of the trading post, disappeared at the end of the summer of 1875. It is generally accepted that the last one in the Falklands was hunted in 1876, since from that date onward, there was no further news of the existence of this animal. But at the end of 1874, a sealing vessel that docked in Port Louis established a camp on land so the crew could rest and also to caulk the boats, badly damaged during a brief Antarctic campaign. During their stay, a fox cub approached the tents and became familiar with the crew members working on land, from whom it meekly accepted food and a few kicks. One Sunday, when the first officer, after preparing and greasing his boots, he placed them at the entrance of the tent. The little animal, unable to think of anything better to do, started gnawing on those greedily greased or oiled leathers, as if they were meant for him. Furious, the first officer fired several revolver shots at him, missing his target, but the fox wasn't frightened; he just stood there gazing mockingly at him from a short distance. Amid laughter and comments after such a summary trial, it was decided to spare his life and take him on board as a pet the next day, if he was still around. Indeed, the next day the American-registered schooner set sail, taking the puppy on board. On their return, they stopped at Santa Cruz to replenish their salt supplies, and everyone was fed up with the pet, as it punctuated its endless days of leisure on board by gnawing on anything made of leather, especially the crew's footwear. When some of the laborers at the island's trading post inquired about this unusual "specimen of a dog," it was immediately offered as a gift, an offer that was accepted, particularly by Juan Razo, who considered himself the dog's owner. Although at first it didn't get along well with the pack of dogs living on the island, little by little they grew accustomed to tolerating it. The truth is that one cool April night, while his owner was fishing on the riverbank, the fox that accompanied him began to howl. He howled plaintively, sitting on the shore, until, driven by some strange force known only to God, he resolutely plunged into the water. It is assumed that the river became his grave, for he was never seen again. Perhaps he heard the call of a riverside fox and managed to cross the river, disappearing into the Patagonian pampas. The fact is the name of one of the last specimens of that breed of canid, which became extinct in 1876, is linked to the great [Santa Cruz] River, contributing to its first legend.

This same story was reported in Chebez, J. C., Bertonatti, C. (1994). Los que se van: especies argentinas en peligro. Argentina: Editorial Albatros, p. 50.

Did the Warrah survive extinction?

Liborio Justo, (1902-2003) was an Argentine author known also by his pseudonym Lobodón Garra (name that combines the words wolf, mylodon, and claw – in Spanish, lobo, milodón, and garra). Between 1926 and the early 1930s, he traveled extensively to Patagonia and wrote about his experiences in his book "La Tierra Maldita" (The Cursed Land), which has a gripping and natural Jack London style.

In one of his fictional works written in the 1930s, "Las Brumas del Terror", he tells about an old man at Dumas Peninsula on the Fuegian island of Hoste, is accompanied by a "uarrah". Justo suggests that maybe some warrah had managed to survive and were taken to the mainland by seal hunters that frequented the islands. Probably a case of fiction inspired by facts.

2021 Warrah Fox Falkland Island 50p.

Embalmed Warrah Fox . Source

The possibility that a warrah brought from its island home to the continent is exciting, and if it managed to breed in the wild it opens the possibility that warrah genes could still be found among Patagonian dogs or even its foxes.

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Dogs and the peopling of America

An interesting article on the arrival and dispersal of dogs in America. It was published last June and has some interesting points regarding the dating of their introduction into the New World. (Aurélie Manin, et al., (2025). Ancient dog mitogenomes support the dual dispersal of dogs and agriculture into South America. Proceedings of the Royal Society, June 18 2025. Volume 292 Issue 2049 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.2443)

I will quote the main points:

Dogs (Canis familiaris) accompanied early waves of people who entered North America at least 15 000−16 000 years before present (BP)... Ancient DNA analyses have shown that all dogs preceding contact with European settlers (hereafter referred to as pre-contact dogs) possessed mitochondrial haplotypes belonging to the mitochondrial A2b clade that is specific to the Americas...
Dogs belonging to the A2b clade spread throughout the Americas, except in the Amazon basin where linguistic data suggest that they were unknown until the Europeans arrived, during the sixteenth century...
The earliest commonly accepted dog remains in Mexico, Ecuador and Peru are dated to 5200−5000 BP...
the reasons for their delayed dispersal in the region remain contentious...
The indigenous American A2b mitochondrial clade, and its associated nuclear ancestry, has now almost vanished from the continent. Pre-contact maternal lineages have only been found in two modern American dogs so far: a village dog from Nicaragua and a Chihuahua from the United States...
Evidence from nuclear DNA indicates that the proportion of Native American ancestry in modern American dogs (such as the Chihuahua and the Xoloitzcuintli) is approximately 3–4% at most

It makes me wonder if there was a large variety of Native dogs and all but the A2b haplogroup was the only survivor.
Did the American dogs suffer from death due to diseases brought to America by the European dogs? Did they die out in droves like the Amerindians did when confronted with new diseases?

Perhaps there were other lineages, vanished and ignored because we have not yet found remains of these dogs?

The authors of this study acknowledge that "To date, archaeogenomic studies of American dogs have largely focussed on North America while ancient Central and South American dogs are poorly represented." So they analyzed canine remains across this region and 42 newly mitochondrial genomes, all of which are part of the A2 lineage. It should be noted that they excluded some dogs belonging to B, C, D, haplogroups assigning them to post-contact dogs.

The authors suggest that maize agriculture spread into South America with dogs: "[evidence supports that ] movement of people and dogs in association with the spread of agriculture rather than supporting the hypothesis that dogs were introduced during the initial peopling of South America by hunter–gatherers. This dispersal happened in a context of early agrarian societies" some 7,000 years BP.

Meaning that dogs and farming went together into South America. There were no dogs there before 7,000 BP

Does this mean that the original Paleoindians living in South America since at least 15,000 BP did so without dogs? They didn't hunt with them, or share their company?

The paper addresses these concerns as follows:

"This long delay is surprising, as human populations were already present in South America for at least 8000 years prior to the arrival of dogs and different hypotheses can be proposed. The earliest fisher–hunter–gatherers that inhabited central America and reached South America may have not found many subsistence advantages from keeping dogs. Moreover, crossing the Central American land bridge required the dogs to adapt to a tropical environment characterized by many new diseases, insects and parasites, and they may have been easy prey for local predators...
Under this scenario, only few dogs may have reached South America during its initial peopling, albeit it is important to note that, to date, no dog remains have been confidently identified in these early settlements. According to the data produced in this paper, this (still hypothetical) early population would have been replaced by the later arrival of dogs accompanying the development of agrarian societies"

It should be noted that both the Chono and the Fuegian boat people had dogs when encountered by Europeans in the 1500s. So dogs did provide subsistance advantages, at least to these natives. These dogs have not been dated, but, they may have reached this region later, after the wave that this paper argues brought dogs into South America 7,000 years ago.

Patagonian Dogs

As I mention in my book's second edition, the first evidence of pre-Hispanic dogs in Patagonia comes from two sites: Angostura site, in Rio Negro Province, on the river of the same name, and in Lihuel Calel, La Pampa, dated to around 1,080 AD. We do know that all Patagonian and Fuegian peoples had “dogs” before 1,080 AD, but they were not necessarily of the modern domestic dog variety (Canis lupus familiaris) derived from wolves. The South American Culpeo and Dusicyon avus fox-like canids were domesticated in lieu of wolves. The remains of the prehistoric dog Canis (Dusicyon avus) have been found across southern Patagonia in Paleo-Indian sites. Avus was a big and wolf-like animal that shared several features with the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) warrah wolf-fox.

Dusicyon avus was the only carnivore that became extinct after the late Pleistocene extinction 2 million years ago, and it died out before the arrival of the Spaniards to America. Why?

It was a large foxlike animal like the culpeo fox (Lycalopex culpaeus) but bigger (weighing around 15 kg – 33 lb.) Its habitat covered all of Patagonia, including the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, and north of it, the Pampas, and parts of the Cuyo region in Argentina.

In 2024, the remains of D. avus that were found in Cañada Seca, Mendoza, were dated to 1,500 years ago. They were buried beside humans. Isotopic analysis showed that it shared a human diet which was different from that of other foxes, suggesting it “could have been a companion, even a pet of the hunter-gatherers […] that lived there.” The study also found that Dusicyon avus didn’t disappear due to interbreeding with domestic dogs. D. avus was “the most commonly identified canid in Fuego-Patagonian archaeological sites until its extinction” around 400 years ago. Something else led to its demise, but what? We don't know.

Current consensus is that dogs were domesticated around 40,000 years ago (source). Could the first Amerindians have reached the New World Before this date? This could explain why they didn't bring dogs with them.

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

New World Dogs and Homo erectus

 

Homo erectus and the first dog. Copyright © 2011 by Austin Whittall [*]

There is evidence at Zhoukoudian, China, that our ancestor Homo erectus shared its “time and space, food and shelter with wolves”[1] half a million years ago.

A similar association was found in Boxgrove, Kent, UK, (400,000 years ago) and in Lazeret, France (150,000 years ago).

All of these three sites predate modern men, and indicate that "archaic" forms of humans were capable of domesticating wolves. Note that wolves are not dogs, they are (Canis lupus variabilis), but this gives us an idea that “old” erectus and wolves lived side by side.

On the other hand, perhaps the bones found together are just a casual accumulation of remains and not proof that they lived together.

However, an article by Stanley Olsen [2] reports that “the genus Canis […] is reported from the Villafranchian (it spans a period from 3.6 to 1.2 Million years ago) or lower Pleistocene levels in North China at the archeological site of Chouchia-yu-fang.”, these may be a “small wolf or an early domestic dog (that is, a tame wolf)”.[2] This is long before modern men appeared on Earth.

Erectus and dogs

Regarding domestication of dogs, something which has been attributed to modern humans (H. sapiens), it is possible that wolves domesticated themselves, attracted by the food and shelter that small roving groups of hominids could have offered them.

Humans would also have benefited from this association as the tame wolves would have provided defense, an alarm system against predators or intruders and, food (in the form of pups).

Susan Crockford, a University of Victoria noted that dogs may have “undergone "self-domestication" from wolves more than once over history, which could explain why the animals appear and then seemingly disappear from the archaeological record”. [3]

So, it is probable that erectus domesticated wolves into dogs in Asia. But, what if they brought them with them into America, or, domesticated local American breeds into their own variety of dogs?

In previous posts I have mentioned the mysterious Falkland Islands warrah, a mammal that lived on those isolated islands, hundreds of kilometers from the continent, and nobody know how they got there.

At one time it was believed that they reached the islands on some native canoe, but, as we will see below that option is not possible. Alternatively they could have walked across the continental shelf when the sea levels were lower during the Ice Ages.

A recent study of their mtDNA [4], has given us a timeline for this strange wolf: the time of the most recent common ancestor (tMRCA) for the Falkland Islands wolf is 330,000 years, while its 95% HPD (Highest Posterior Density) is between 70,000 and 640,000 years respectively. [4]

The study notes that though “the maned wolf is the closest extant relative of the Falklands wolf, a morphologically similar species, Dusicyon avus, survived in South America until the mid-Holocene [7]. This species may have an even closer relationship with the Falklands wolf” [4]

However, as the researchers assume that modern humans appeared in America not earlier than 15 to 20,000 years ago, they conclude that “ a human-mediated origin of the Falklands wolf is unlikely” [4] and give it a natural origin.

So, considering their peculiar features, I wonder if it could have been "mediated" by H. erectus before the arrival of modern man in America?

The timeline fits a plausible time range for erectus to have selectively bred the warrah from maned wolf stock. The divergence age corroborates this. Perhaps they worked with the now extinct Dusicyon Avus or even the mysterious cryptid, the Andean Wolf.

Sources.

[1] Mark Derr, (2004). Dog's best friend: annals of the dog-human relationship. Univ. of Chicago Press. pp. 19.
[2] Olsen, Stanley. J. & Olsen, John.W., (1977). The Chinese wolf ancestor of new world dogs. Science, 197: 533-535. Aug. 5, 1977.
[3] Jennifer Viegas, (2008).World's first dog lived 31,700 years ago, ate big . Online.
[4] Slater G.J., Thalmann O., Leonard J.A., Schweizer R.M., Koepfli K.-P., Pollinger J.P., Rawlence N.J., (...), Wayne R.K., (2009). Evolutionary history of the Falklands wolf Current Biology, 19 (20).
[*] Cartoon by Austin Whittall, derived from two Online Cartoons (See them here and here).

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall © 

More on the Warrah

 

A website on the controversial Chinese voyages of discovery (Menzies "1421" book), states the following:

Investigations into the warrah, a thought-to-be indigenous, but now extinct fox or wolf-like animal whose origins are disputed. While DNA tests are carried out to resolve its ancestry, there are also tests being sought to argue for the warrah being descended from Chinese dogs left behind by Hong Bao's sailors (Whipple 2003: 80-1; Menzies 2002: 135). This research may take some time, considering that much doubt has been cast upon the whole theory by academics.

The paper mentioned is: Whipple, D. 2003. Histories: Alas, Poor Warrah. NewScientist. 20/27 December 2003 - 3 January 2004: 80-1.

See my original post on the Warrah.

Yet a recent paper by a team led by Graham Slater[1] indicates that the warrah's closest relative is the maned wolf. They sampled DNA taken from the remains of Falkland wolves stored in museums and concluded that it shared a common ancestor with the maned wolf at least 70000 years ago. So, they had arrived to the islands long before there were any humans in Southern South America.

This was some time before the last ice age, so this rules out the theory of a domesticated dog being taken there from the mainland by native Americans in their canoes.

However, the Falklands wolf diverged from the mane wolf some 6 million years ago and that is long before the first Canids appeared in South America (2.5 million years ago). This means that they evolved in North America and then moved south.

Slater's team believes that their closest relative was the Dusicyon avus another Canid that became extinct some 7000 years ago.

Sources.

[1] Slater, Graham et al. (2009). Evolutionary history of the Falklands wolf. Current Biology, Volume 19, Issue 20, R937-R938, 3 November 2009

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall © 

The enigmatic Malvinas (Falklands) fox-wolf or warrah

 

The Malvinas (Falkland) Islands fox-wolf, was unique, it lived cut-off from the world on a remote group of islands.

Charles Darwin surprised by its isolation, wrote that “as far as I am aware, there is no other instance in any part of the world, of so small a mass of broken land, distant from a continent, possessing so large a quadruped peculiar to itself”. [1]

It also holds the sad distinction of being the only species of canid to have become extinct in modern times (Canidae are a family that includes wolves, jackals, foxes, the domestic dog and the coyote).

Warrah. A 1838 engraving from Darwin's Zoology of the Beagle. From [7].

Known as warrah or guará (Dusicyon australis) the fox-wolf of the Malvinas (Falkland Islands) belonged to the same genus as the domestic dog, the wolf and the coyote.

A veritable Patagonian wolf, it probably evolved from a now extinct South American wolf taxa, the Theriodictis and Protocyon.[2]

Though slightly smaller than a wolf, it was much larger than the Patagonian fox, measuring 1,2 to 1,6 m (4 to 5 ft.) from the tip of its snout to the tip of its tail. Its legs were also shorter than those of a wolf, measuring 60 cm [24 in.] at the shoulder. It had a large wolfish head and thick fur to protect it from the islands’ harsh cold weather; it barked just like a dog.

It was named by the Argentine gauchos who lived on the islands until they were forcefully occupied by the British in 1833. They found it similar to northern Argentina’s Maned wolf or aguará guazú (Chrysocyon brachyurus), an unrelated canid species. The name was later corrupted into its Spanish (guará) and English names (warrah).

Their isolation was, in the end, their downfall. Being the only predator on the islands, and lacking human contact, they were fearless and curious. Their scientific name Dusicyon australis reflects this, as it means in Latin “foolish dog of the south”, alluding to its lack of fear of man, who first arrived at the islands in the early 1600s.

Captain FitzRoy who visited the islands in the 1830s remarked about their daring “all who have seen these animals alive have been struck by their eager ferocity and disregard of man's power”, as did Byron (of Wager Island fame) “four creatures of great fierceness, resembling wolves, ran up to their bellies in the water to attack the boat!”.[3]

Darwin’s prophetic words “Within a very few years […] this fox will be classed with the dodo, as an animal which has perished from the face of the earth”,[1] were fulfilled in less than half a century.

The warrah was hunted to extinction by the island’s shepherd settlers who considered it a predator of their herds of sheep. The last one is said to have died in 1873.[4]

All that remains of them are a couple of jaws, eleven skulls, six stuffed furs and two embalmed foxes stored in different museums around the world.

Its origin. Unsolved mystery.

A mystifying point is how a large wolf-like predator could have evolved on the small and isolated Malvinas Islands more than 450 km (280 mi.) from the Patagonian mainland, completely surrounded by the icy and windswept waters of the South Atlantic Ocean.

Several theories have been put forward.

One proposes that its ancestors somehow drifted across the ocean on icebergs from the Patagonian ice fields.

A second theory suggests that it is the only survivor of the well-stocked pre-glacial forests that once covered the islands. At that time, about 2 million years ago, during the Pleistocene, when the islands were joined to the mainland by a land bridge, because the sea level was lower, the Warrah’s ancestors could have simply walked across. This does not explain why other animals (ñandú, guanaco or puma), or even humans did not also cross to the islands. Though, perhaps they did and died out.

A more likely option is that a group of Paleo-Indians that would later evolve into the Fuegians, who had domesticated these Patagonian foxes, took them on their canoes to the Islands. Some of these fox-dogs may have stayed behind after their masters departed or died out, and somehow adapted and survived there. However there is no evidence of the Patagonian boat people having visited these islands.

Their origin is still debated though recent DNA studies have found that its closest relative is the coyote and that it is quite distant genetically from the other South American foxes and the Aguará guazú.[5]

Read my post on Patagonian wolves.

Extinct?

An unreferenced Online source[6] mentions “news notices” during the 1982 Malvinas (Falklands) war between Argentina and Britain that spoke of a living canid that attacked the islands’ sheep.

So it may be barely possible that some of the warrah’s genes have survived through interbreeding between the last of the fox-wolves and the Border Collie type of sheep dogs brought to the islands by the Scottish shepherds.

UPDATE - Sept. 20, 2010.

Today I posted on some recent findings regarding the warrah's origin and a possible tie to the Maned Wolf and the Dusicyon avus.

Bibliography

[1] Darwin, C., (1987). The Voyage of the Beagle. Ware: Woodsworth Editions. pp. 185.
[2] Berta, A., (1987). Origin, diversification, and zoogeography of the South American Canidae. Fieldiana: Zoology 39, 455-471.
[3] FitzRoy, R. Op. Cit. vii. pp. 251.
[4] Skottsberg, C., (1911). The wilds of Patagonia; a narrative of the Swedish expedition to Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands in 1907-1909. New York: Mac Millan. pp. 13.
[5] Serpell, J., (1995). The domestic dog: its evolution, behaviour, and interactions with people. Cambridge University.Press. pp. 13.
[6] Drinnon, D., (2007). Honshu Wolf Survival? (Comments). Cryptomundo.com. Online.
[7] Darwin, C., ed. (1838). Mammalia. The zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle... Part 2 No. 1. Plate depicting the: Falkland wolf (Dusicyon australis). Original description: Canis antarcticus.


Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters

Stamps and mythical creatures

 

As a child my mother taught me to love stamps. I remember my first album which my mother and I began (I was only five years old then) in Australia (we lived there for a year around 1964). Time has gone by and although I still love stamps, I haven't got the time to collect them. Nevertheless, I still enjoy their concise and neat format, the way that they can convey an idea, or illustrate a subject.

So today, I will continue what I posted previously on cryptid stamps (Nahuelito), and include some more examples of mythical beings.

Unfortunately stamp issues in Patagonia, that is, in Chile and Argentina are limited and there are very few stamps dealing with our subject of cryptozoology or mythical beings.

Here is what I have found. Enjoy.

Northern European mythical beings.

The UK. The Royal Mail recently (June 16, 2009) issued a series of stamps on mermaids, giants, dragons and more. Very interesting. Below [1] is a link in case you want to check them out. The following image is of a mermaid:

Mermaids, United Kingdom stamp. Royal Mail. From [1]

Faroe Islands. Have their issue on selkie and a giagantic snake that fought with Thor, midgard. Below are two of these stamps. More at [2].

A captured Selkie, Faroe Islands stamp. From [2]

Thor, Ran and the Midgard serpent Faroe Islands stamp. From [3]

Scandinavia. More stamps with mythical creatures of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Greenland or Iceland can be found at www.topoftheworld.nu [4].

Patagonian stamps

Some Patagonian stamps now. The following set is from the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) and depict an extinct warrah. This was an amazing creature and even though it is not a cryptid, it is a mystery in itself and next week I will post an entry on it.

Falkland (Malvinas) Islands wolf warrah, Falkland / Malvinas Islands stamp.

Chiloé mermaid and female troll (Pincoya and Fiura).

And having seen the Northern European mermaids, here we have a genuine Patagonian mermaid, "Pincoya" from a 1997 series on Chilean mythology at Chiloé Island.

Pincoya Mermaid at Chiloé stamp. Correos de Chile. From [5].

Fiura Troll at Chiloé stamp. Correos de Chile. From [6].

I will post about both Pincoya and Fiura next week.

Bibliography.

[1] Royal Mail.
[2] Monstropedia. Selkie.
[3] Thor, Ran and the Midgard serpent .
[4] Top of the World stamps. Nordic Stamp Issue 2006.
[5] Correos de Chile. 1997 - Mitología de Chiloé. La Pincoya.
[6] Ibid. Fiura.



Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters