Minnesota Wolf That Has Grown Extra Tooth Discovered, Baffling Biologists

Scientists have discovered a wolf in Minnesota that has grown an extra tooth.

The Voyageurs Wolf Project, a research group that tracks wolves roaming the Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota, made the incredibly rare discovery while putting a GPS collar on a young wolf.

Pictures show the wolf, known as P2L, with its mouth open. An extra upper incisor tooth–which wolves use to strip meat from the bone—can be seen growing right above where the normal one is placed.

"Must be something in the water because wolves are growing extra teeth now," the research group said in a Facebook post.

This particular wolf is a yearling from the Lightfoot pack, which roams a territory in the center of the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem in Minnesota.

Voyageurs National Park has a population of between 30 and 50 wolves, divided into six to nine packs. This has remained relatively unchanged since the 1990s.

The research project wrote in a Facebook post that it has never seen anything like this before.

Thomas Gable, project lead of the Voyageurs Wolf Project and PhD researcher at the University of Minnesota, told Newsweek: "We suspected some folks would naturally assume that a physical abnormality such as this must come from inbreeding.

"But there is no evidence this is the case as we have seen no evidence that inbreeding occurs in our area."

The project consulted wolf biologists who have studied the species for decades, to ask if they had ever seen anything like this before.

"They all said they hadn't. So we think it is fair to conclude this is pretty rare occurrence as we don't know of a single other instance of this. It almost certainly does occur in other wolves, we just don't know of other examples," the project wrote on Facebook.

Adult gray wolves usually have around 42 teeth, with six incisors.

"My guess is that this is just the result of a weird genetic mutation or quirk. But this is coming from someone who really doesn't know the answer," Gable told Newsweek. "Other animals can have supernumerary teeth (extra teeth), and it appears this also is true for wolves on rare occasion."

The Voyageurs Wolf Project focuses on one of the "biggest knowledge gaps in wolf ecology," which is what the animals do during the summer. The project charts this by attaching GPS collars to the wolves and setting up trail cameras.

The research group reviews the footage throughout the year, which provides insight into the lives of the elusive species.