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‘Wolf had diarrhoea’

DNA research has shown that the farmer from Beuningen, Overijssel, has indeed seen a wolf in his pasture in early September. The farmer’s attentiveness was essential in the confirmation of the observation.
Marijn Flipse

The wolf faeces were examined in Wageningen. ‘It turns out the animal had diarrhoea,’ says genetic researcher Arjen de Groot of Wageningen Environmental Research. ‘We were lucky that the farmer spotted the wolf and saw it defecate. A forest warden proceeded to immediately pick up the faeces, which we in turn picked up from him shortly after. The scat was very fresh, which made researching it quite easy.’

You can usually recognise a wolf scat because it is larger than that of a dog.

Arjen de Groot, researcher at Wageningen Environmental Research (Alterra)

De Groot indicates that if the farmer from Beuningen had not seen the wolf defecate, it would have been much more difficult to find the droppings. ‘You can usually recognise a wolf scat because it is larger than that of a dog, but in this case it was no more than a stew because the wolf had diarrhoea. As the farmer knew where it was, it could be handled quickly by the forest warden. It turned out to be a full match in the study.’ It is the second wolf to have been spotted in the Netherlands in a hundred years. There is currently no further investigation as to where the wolf comes from.

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