.I lived in Tucson at the time I created this piece where the Tucson Sonara Desert Museum has a breeding program to reestablish the desert wolf and save it from extinction.

The desert wolf is the most distinct subspecies of the North American gray wolf with their wide ears and camel like feet. There isn’t the extreme cold that would freeze off such long thin appendages so the desert wolf developed larger ears than their northern relatives did. As the desert gets quite chilly at night they have developed a very distinct top cape which insulates them if they are not out hunting. They dig a bed in the cool soil and the top cape insulates them from the cold desert nights.

..