Crazy drug dealers have private zoos loaded with exotic animals -= illegal, unreported, black market animals. its naive to think there's a record of every maned wolf living in private hands. And if you have ever been along the Chicago river, wild animals use it as a highway, and most people have no idea of the extent of the wildlife. My neighbors kept a female wolf for a year that their son had brought home from his fraternity when she started destroying everything. It lived in the back yard and excavated a giant den. The local police liked to visit her. Your condescending comments only make you look ignorant.
You're the one who's really showing your ignorance here.
While it is true that animals are frequently illegally smuggled into the United States, this is not happening with every animal species. Large (and potentially dangerous) mammals such as Maned Wolves are very difficult to transport without leaving a paper trail. Can you really imagine someone getting one through a border checkpoint or one on a plane unnoticed? The chances are near-zero. It is even less likely that there is a person (or multiple people) with a significant collection of illegally obtained large mammals, as that would require doing this multiple times without getting caught.
Even on the crazy off-chance that one did enter the country, why would that person waste their valuable, difficult to obtain animal by releasing it or letting it escape? Nothing adds up here.
I have been along the Chicago River on many occasions, so I am well aware that it is an active wildlife corridor. But all the same caveats apply. And Chicago is also a difficult place to keep a large mammal like a Maned Wolf without it being detected.
And if you're suggesting this animal came up from the mythical Florida population, I would like to note that this would require that this animal had traveled:
-around 230 miles minimum from Florida to the Mississippi River, assuming it came from Pensacola, the closest possible place in Florida to the Mississippi.
-around 700 miles up the Mississippi River to mouth of the Illinois River
-around 250 miles up the Illinois River to the Des Plaines River
-around 13 miles up the Des Plaines River to the Chicago Sanitary and Shipping Canal
-around 36 miles up the Chicago Sanitary and Shipping Canal to the Chicago River
In other words, this wolf would have had to traverse a distance similar to the distance between the westernmost and easternmost points of their natural range, mostly through unsuitable habitat in an unsuitable climate, all while remaining undetected. That seems wildly unlikely.
