High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A black wolf is a melanistic color variant of the grey wolf (Canis lupus). Black specimens are recorded among red wolves (Canis lupus rufus), but these color variants are probably extinct. Genetic research from the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California, Los Angeles revealed that wolves with black pelts owe their distinctive coloration to a mutation which occurred in domestic dogs, and was carried to wolves through wolf-dog hybridisation.