An unidentified animal rescued by a woman who found it “scared and shivering” near her home has baffled wildlife experts, who can’t decide what it is.
Christina Eyth headed out to investigate around her house after discovering paw prints outside of her door earlier this week.
The woman from Pennsylvania in the US, thought she would find her neighbour's dog on the loose, but instead, she found a mystery creature she could not identify, lurking on the left-hand side of her front door.
“It was so scared and cold and shivering," she said.
“All I could think about was ‘this animal needed help’.
According to WJAC TV reports, Ms Eyth says she gently led the animal into her basement and phoned TJ’s Rescue Hideaway, who helped transport the animal to Wildlife Works.
Morgan Barron, who works for the conservation company, said she couldn’t “definitively say what it is” - despite her training.
"To err on the side of caution… and since it might be a coyote, we can keep it here, get genetic testing done and go from there,” she said.
“Behaviour-wise, he's very timid, very scared and not aggressive at all which makes me lean toward dog," she added.
Wildlife officials have confirmed the animal is being treated for mange and is being kept in isolation.
They are expecting the results from genetic testing to arrive in between two to four weeks.
Closer to home, a mystery animal corpse that washed up on a Devon beach back in 2019 left locals perplexed.
The strange-looking dead animal was barely recognisable, but for what appears to be the remnants of some tufts of reddish-brown and white fur.
The pictures of the splayed remains of the badly-decomposed animal strewn amid the stones were sent in to Devon Live.
Connor Willers, who found the unidentified animal at Teignmouth, was intrigued by his curious find and unsure what the creature could be.
He wrote: "I found this really weird and mysterious creature on the beach in Teignmouth."
