 Brother Wolf Wolves - an Introduction Communication First Nations and Wolves Wolf Links Adopt a Wolf Monty Sloan's Photographs Thoughts |
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Description The wolf is the largest wild dog. Nearly twice the size of a coyote, it stands up to 34 inches at the shoulder, measures 57 to 76 inches from nose to tail tip and weighs 70 to 120 pounds. An adult leaves paw prints more than 4 inches long and 3.75 inches wide. The gray wolf's pelt may be any color from black to white, or a mix. Social Behavior Wolves are highly social and when established in an area, live in packs, which are complex social structures that include the breeding adult pair (the alpha male and female) and their offspring. Size of the pack varies with the size of available prey. A hierarchy of dominant and subordinate animals within the pack help it to function as a unit. Wolves communicate with fellow pack-mates and other wolf packs by scent marking, vocalizations, facial and body postures. Also use barks, whimpers, growls and howls to express themselves. Hunting Members cooperatively hunt a variety of big game, including deer, elk, caribou, and moose. Packs that feed on deer may average only 3-6 animals, while those preying on moose can be as large as 15. To a lesser extent, wolves also feed on beaver and other small mammals. They rarely kill livestock. from "Dances With Wolves" 
Reproduction Wolves mate in February or March. Breeding of wolves generally takes place only between the pack's leaders. The wolves prepare for the birth of the pups by building a den which provides a warm, dry place for the pups to begin life. This den is often built on high ground from which the wolves can watch for enemies. Females give birth two months after mating, usually in April, to a litter of from four to seven pups, but there can be as many as 11 pups. Litter size and pup mortality depend on food supply, weather and the health of the mother. At birth, the pups are blind and deaf; they live on their mother's milk and grow rapidly until about 60 days when they weigh approximately seven kilograms. The pups run and play with the pack but are not able to go hunting with it. All members of the pack help take care of the pups bringing home food in their stomachs (that can hold up to nine kilograms) for the pups to eat. This food is regurgitated for the pups to eat. As the pups grow and the fall season approaches, the pups begin to travel with the pack. At ten months of age, the pups are as large as the adults. Social bonds and hunting skills are developed at a series of "rendezvous sites" up to a mile away from the den. The pack shares the responsibility of raising the pups. Communication Howling is an important and effective way to send long distant messages to other wolves; it serves to find individuals that get separated from the rest of the pack; define territory, defend a fresh kill, and assemble the pack. Actually wolves howl for a variety of reasons: including to warn or greet other wolves, to search for other members of the pack, and to express sheer happiness and joy. Pups begin to howl at one month old. Survival Threats Human encroachment into wolf territory is the largest single survival threat to wolves. Wolves need open land and an abundant supply of prey to survive. The illegal killing of wolves is a serious problem, especially for small populations. Almost one-quarter of the wolves in Minnesota are illegally killed each year. |
Photo © Monty Sloan / Wolf Park
Contact him for more information
Wolf and Man
A long history of friendship and enmity
By Dr. Erik Zimen
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Wolves are an exception among the animals. Apart from humans, no other mammal has a bigger natural distribution. From the high
tundra in the north to the rain forests of the south, in the high mountain regions as well as in the steppe, in the Earth's last
wilderness regions and immediate vicinity of humans — it manages every environment, as a hunter of large prey or making use of
garbage, as loners as well as in the pack. Its adaptability is second to the human's only, and its inner species variation even beats
humans.There are completely white or black wolves, maroon and grey ones. There are wolves weighting not more than 50 pounds
and others, more northwards, that weight four times as much.
In fact no animal is closer to humans concerning the way of life and feeding. As opportunistic hunters, wolves fill the same ecologic niche our eolithic ancestors once filled. Like them, wolves preferably live in extended families, together with several generations. And they defend their territory against intruders in the same way. So for a long time, both hunters lived next to each other (and most likely also from each other). The wolves regularly plundered the rubbish heaps of the humans and kept their camps clean this way. The other way round, the humans were for sure able to wrest prey from the wolves at times to survive food shortages. A bilateral alliance, even though it was already obvious who was the more dominant of the two - the man. Towards the end of the last ice age, approximately 15,000 years ago, this easy confederation became a new dimension. Someone started to raise wolf pups. Presumably it was a woman, for only women were in charge of milk, which was essential for the pups to survive. There were no other domestic animals. So she gave the pups the breast, tamed them and raised them in her hut together with her own children afterwards. The wild wolf turned to a domestic wolf, which became our first pet many generations later - the dog. 
Photo © Monty Sloan / Wolf Park Contact him for more information This was the ignition of a long and successful friendship. Soon they hunted together, even so efficient that a lot of wild prey became rare. Searching for new hunting grounds, they advanced to new continents and to remote regions of the Earth and finally populated almost the entire planet at the end of the ice age. Since that time, aside from very few exceptions, there were no human civilizations without dogs. Taking dogs as an example, they even started to domesticate new animals, initiating the largest cultural revolution of all times: the development of mankind from hunters to farmers and herdsmen. Only the future can show whether this serious evolutional step was good for man and dog or not. For the wild wolf however, the consequences were fatal. He became a rival of hunters and dogs concerning the decreasing prey and additionally the worst enemy of farmers and herdsmen. Still it took many millenniums until the wolf was given the completely bad reputation it has nowadays, as a seducer of little girls with red hoods, as a gluttonous rake, as a dangerous beast. In many North American indian tribes, the wolf was known as a symbol for the Creation and for the ethnic identity. Also, the "secret history of the Mongoles" reports that Dschingis-Chan descended from a wolf. In the Teutonic mythology the highest god, Odin, is accompanied by two wolves that protect him from all dangers. Finally, legends tell that ancient Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus, who owe their lives to a she-wolf. So even nowadays, the she-wolf is still a symbol for motherly love and sacrifice in Italy. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the wolf became a symbol for the evil. So Karl der Große instructed his knights not only to fight against the heathen Saxons, but also the wolf. And this war lasted longer than to unite the empire. So the still existing "Louveteriequot; in France originates in the wolf hunters that were introduced by the emperor more than one thousand years ago. Now that the wolf is defeated, they perform other tasks, of course. But at that time it was necessary to protect wild and domestic animals against wolves. Because of the increasing deforesting of central Europe and the enormous hunting impact of the aristocracy on the wild animals, wolves had to prey on the few livestock of the farmers. Even though the problem was caused by the humans themselves, their hatred and fear of the wolf at that time is understandable. The existence of whole families was at stake whenever wolves intruded in the hamlets, stables and pastures. And for sure they didn't always only kill livestock, but sometimes also lugged children in the woods with them. 
Photo © Monty Sloan / Wolf Park Contact him for more information But not even at this time there was no uniform bad look at wolves. In countless fables, wolves were depicted as clumsy fools who were always being outwitted by the smaller but a lot smarter foxes. Centuries later, he became the stooge of the devil, the incarnation of the evil as such. It was the anxious time of the Reformation and the Anti-Reformation, the time of long wars and great distress in the country, when countless women have been accused of witchcraft and also a lot of men were burnt on pyres as werewolves. People understood how to blame unpleasant fringes for their problems. Now, after more than thousand years of persecution, wolves were members of these fringe groups as well. In the middle of the last century they practically disappeared from whole central Europe. So our attitude to wolves reflects our relation to nature in general, which again is considerably dominated by the stage of development of your environment. So it's not astonishing that the attitude to wolves slowly begins to change again. In Jack London's tales, the wolf's already not the gross villain of the past anymore, but the king of the remaining nature of remote northern forests. It was the time of early capitalistic exploitation and evolving of power, when -according to Charles Darwin- the Survival of the Fittest was promoted. And so it's also not astonishing that the Nazis misinterpreted the wolf as well and adjudged to the leader (of the pack). And the recent wolf-romantic is just as logical in our times. The wolf is "in" nowadays. Especially among the middle classes of the restricted urban verges. A diffuse yearning for a untouched wilderness takes effect here, the break with the dreary daily grind with all its proofs for the failing of man. Only at his roots, nature, the man could be good. And at this roots the wolf stood as well — not completely wrongly, as we know. After unprecedented persecution the wolf has disappeared from most parts of his former distribution area in North America and Europe. In the last few years however, we observed a new increase of the wolf populations in some of his remaining withdrawal regions, and as a consequence of that, a recolonization of the areas where wolves have been extinct for a long time so far; in Spain, the northern Appenines of Italy, in France, central Sweden and lately in Germany too. The first wolves populate the Bavarian-Bohemian Forest and for a few years, wolves kept immigrating from Poland across the Oder to Brandenburg. Occasionally, wolves also appear in the Vosges Mountains, in Austria and in the past few years in Switzerland as well. The reason for this re-expansion of the wolf is the change in the utilization of the land and the forests in many regions of Europe, on the other hand also the change in the attitude towards the wolf itself which I already mentioned. This attitude is mainly found among the urban and ecologically sensitized part of the population, while amongst the rural / agricultural influenced people the fear/hostile picture of the wolf still prevails. The reactions on the return of the wolf are correspondingly controvercial and ardent. To some people wolves are a glimmer of hope for an environment that's not totally ruled by humans, a symbol for the adventurous-incalculable nature, a neo-romantic turn away from civilization and a supposed new spirituality. For the others, the wolf's return is a backslide in human dependance on nature and its dark forces, the wolf itself a concurrent of man, enemy and pest of economic interests. The outcome of this argument doesn't only determine the future of wolves. We ourselves are the ones standing at a crossroads. Either we accept the wolf as a essential part of our nature, or we will follow him - shifted by a few years - into decline. |
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