The enigmatic Himalayan wolf —popularly known as the "woolly wolf" — has long vexed taxonomists, but now an international research team says they believe the animal is likely a new species of wolf and not a subspecies of the gray wolf as was previously thought.

As described in a new study published in the journal ZooKeys, after discovering the wolf in the Annapurna Conservation Area of Nepal, Madhu Chetris, a graduate student at Hedmark University College in Norway and a team of scientists analyzed the wolf's mitochondrial DNA through its droppings. According to National Geographic, after conducting DNA laboratory tests, the researchers found that the Himalayan wolf was "significantly different from any other wolves and is likely a distinct species."

"Frequent sightings and observation in the wild made me little bit suspicious as they look totally different of what was previously assumed to be a Gray wolf Canis lupus that roam in the Himalayas of Nepal before (these) findings," Chetris told weather.com in an email. "It hit me 10 years ago, when I encountered these animals visually and finally with the recent DNA technology identification of the animal become possible. We compared with the available sequences so far described on wolves and confirmed that the species belong to Himalayan wolf lineage that were not reported previously from the wild from Nepal Himalayas."

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The researchers found the animal to be under significant threat by "local communities" who "persecute wolves mainly in retaliation for livestock depredation."

At present, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has deemed the Himalayan wolf "critically endangered" with less than 350 in existence.

Robert Wayne, an evolutionary biologist at University of California, Los Angeles, told weather.com in an email that much further research would need to be undertaken before the Himalayan wolf could be conclusively deemed a new species.

"You cannot diagnosis a species based on mtDNA alone," Wayne observed.

In 2015, Wayne led a research team which exhaustively analyzed genome-wide DNA evidence to determine the "golden jackals" of East Africa and Eurasia were two entirely different species, according to ScienceDaily.

Klaus-Peter Koepfli, an evolutionary geneticist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, told weather.com in an email that he agreed with Wayne's take.

"Much more study would be needed to confirm that Himalayan wolves are a distinct species, specifically, extensive data from the nuclear genome," Koepfli explained.

Despite the uncertainty, Chetris and his team concluded in the paper that the Himalayan wolf deserved stronger protections.

"These genetically distinct Himalayan wolves deserve special conservation attention, at the same time that the conservation of this species in a context of human-wildlife conflict is challenging," the researchers said in the paper. "A species action plan needs be formulated that develops mechanisms to minimize conflict, and strategies for motivating local communities towards wolf conservation."

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