Officials in China venture into middle of frozen lake to rescue stranded wolf
Two town officials jumped into an icy lake in northern China to rescue a wild wolf that became stranded. In the video filmed in Qinghai, two town officials saw the wolf in the frozen lake and quickly drove over.
The two picked up the rope in the car and walked into the ice lake, but the ice surface collapsed and the two also fell into the lake.
The ice water reached their waist level and the temperature was about minus 10 degrees but they still walked hard to approach the wolf. One of them managed to put the rope around the wolf. For their own safety, the two of them dragged the wolf to the water’s edge.
After more than 40 minutes, they dragged the wolf ashore. Their pants and clothes soaked by icy water had slowly frozen. Another person ashore hurriedly dragged the two people into a truck. After climbing into the truck, the two people threw the rope, and the trembling wolf ran away quickly.
In China, wolves mainly live in northern and northwestern parts of the country, however, there are also wolf groups in the south, which are believed to have derived from different ancestors from the wolves in the north.
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) sequenced six specimens from wolf skins around the provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Heilongjiang and Jilin.
They found that the gray wolves from the first three provinces derived from a single lineage, distinct from those from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and northern regions.
