It's HUGE.
People were shocked recently by this viral video clip showing a dog engaging with a strange black creature in the forest. At first glance, the person taking this video seemed to think it was a bear, but when the animal stood and sprang at the dog, there was no mistaking it for anything other than another canid, completely with pointy ears, majestic, fluffy tail, and the lean muscular flanks of a canine predator.
But what was it?
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In the comments section, people are speculating wildly. Some imagine that it's a bear (with, um. a tail and pointy ears?). Others claim that it's actually a horse (wait, what?). I'm with the viewer who asked, "Are you all seriously so disconnected from nature that you don't recognize a wolf when you see it?"
Many viewers liken the wolf in this video to the "direwolves" made famous as the rare and mystical pets of the noble Stark family in the television show Game of Thrones. In the show, direwolves were a rare, positively enormous breed of wolf.
In reality, however, dire wolves, a now-extinct species that roamed North America and Asia during the Ice Age was about the same size as modern grey or timber wolves, only a bit stockier and with a heavier jaw.
Wolves, of course, are far larger than your average Labrador retriever (which appears to be the dog engaging with the black animal in this video), and males are commonly around a hundred and fifty pounds. But whether this is a melanistic timber wolf, or a stray Newfoundland dog, it is not a creature out of a George R. R. Martin novel.