Tundra wolf (canis lupus albus) is quite mysterious to me and I’ve become a bit obsessed by it. Since this community has people knowledgeable and the wolf in question has been observed with photos in the website, I’ve decided to ask for help here.
Tundra wolf is often described as being light grey with sometimes reddish tint. “The lower fur is lead-grey and the upper fur is reddish-grey.” according to Wikipedia. A bit like this one:
However almost all the verified photos and footage of it I find on the internet (by verified photos I mean either form inaturalist or whose locations and authors are known, not the first photos that pop-up in google image that could be from anywhere) portrays wolves which look like usual Eurasian wolves rather than the ones described on in taxidermy.
original.jpg (2048×1602) (inaturalist-open-data.s3.amazonaws.com)
large.jpg (1024×576) (inaturalist-open-data.s3.amazonaws.com)
original.jpg (886×661) (inaturalist-open-data.s3.amazonaws.com)
large.jpg (1024×768) (inaturalist.org)
Then I stumbled upon a documentary about Russian/Soviet animals where you can see several light wolves and some of them almost pure white (a bit like canis lupus arctos). While I am aware that white wolves do exist in Eurasia (although rare), I find it strange to have so many in the same documentary, while photos of them are almost absent.
(The wolves from the documentary)
So, my questions are:
Do you think those wolves from the documentary are genuinely tundra wolves from the old world or did this documentary used stock footage from North America (some documentaries do it nowadays)?
Why are photos or videos of light/pale tundra wolves almost absent?
Any help, advice, link,… is highly appreciated.