Editors’ note: This segment first appeared on Texas Monthly Presents, a television program airing on Texas PBS stations and PBS.org.
It all started when Ron Wooten’s dog was attacked and carried off by a pack of coyotes one evening in Galveston. That might have been the end of the story, but the interaction prompted Wooten to grab his camera and start documenting the animals. What he captured looked both familiar and surprising—evidence of rare red wolf ancestry in an unexpected island location. As Wilder first reported in his 2024 article, the discovery sent Wooten on a journey to connect with scientists, opening an interesting window into “ghost genetics.”
