Editing Red wolf (section)

=== Extirpation in the wild ===
[[File:The fur animals of Louisiana (1931) Louisiana black wolf.png|thumb|Melanistic red wolf at [[Audubon Park, New Orleans]] (1931).]]
In 1940, the biologist [[Stanley Paul Young|Stanley P. Young]] noted that the red wolf was still common in eastern Texas, where more than 800 had been caught in 1939 because of their attacks on livestock. He did not believe that they could be exterminated because of their habit of living concealed in thickets.<ref name=young1940/> In 1962 a study of skull morphology of wild ''Canis'' in the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas indicated that the red wolf existed in only a few populations due to hybridization with the coyote. The explanation was that either the red wolf could not adapt to changes to its environment due to human land-use along with its accompanying influx of competing coyotes from the west, or that the red wolf was being hybridized out of existence by the coyote.<ref name=mccarley1962/>