Truth about Wolves
Wolves, are they really the vicious man-eaters they are portrayed to be? The truth is, they are not. Wolves got this reputation through stories meant to instruct children to beware of danger. The stories actually portrayed what we refer to as a modern day predator as a wolf.
The story of Little Red Riding Hood portrays a wolf that could change clothes to look like a grandmother. This actually was used to teach children that even people they knew could have a bad side and do evil things. We all know that a wolf could never actually do something like that.
The biggest myth known about wolves is that of the werewolf. Were there ever such a thing? The answer is actually in the 1500's and early 1600's many people would go around wearing wolf skins on their backs pretending to be werewolves. These people actually had a psychological disorder and they really thought they were werewolves. Some people actually have a genetic disorder called hypertrichosis (werewolfism), which is growth of hair in excess of the normal. This may have been part of the misconception of wolves turning into people and vice versa. Some of this may have also come about by people playing mischievous pranks on their neighbors and families.
There is a myth that wolves will attack any human that comes near it. The fact is you stand a better chance of being hit by a meteor, than killed by a wolf. Although wolves are powerful animals, they are very timid and will run from a human, rather than attack a human. Scientists discovered this, when they went into the dens of wolves; to check the health of pups, in the wild. The adult wolves instead of attacking them ran from them. Once the wolves were certain that the scientists had left the den, they then went back to check on the pups.
A study done in 2002, shows that there has never been a documented case of a pure bred wild wolf attacking anyone. In comparison, the Center of Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 10 and 20 people are killed and 4.7 million attacked each year by man’s best friend, the domestic dog. You may have heard of a wolf attack, but if you research farther into the attack you are certain to find it was not a pure bred wolf, but a hybrid, a mixture of a wolf and a domestic dog.
The only attack on record, in the world, of a pure bred wolf attacking a person was in Canada. The wolf was in captivity and severely abused by the owner. The wolf in self-defense attacked and killed the owner, when he started to abuse him once again. Needless to say, the poor mistreated wolf had to be destroyed, due to the horrible way it had been treated.
Many people believe that wolves will eliminate or substantially reduce prey species in their areas, if they are reintroduced into their local areas or destroy all their stock. The true story is that wolves have lived side by side with large grazing animals for tens of thousands of years. Recent studies, in Yellowstone, on the elk population and wolves found that weather and hunter harvests affect elk declines more than by wolf predation. The fact of the matter is that wolves enhance the prey population by culling the weak and sick animals from the gene pool leaving only the strongest to reproduce.
Food availability and weather regulates wolf populations. When their prey is scare wolves also suffer. They breed less frequently and have fewer litters and they may even starve to death. The only reason a wolf will go near a farm is if it sick or starving. Wolves will avoid humans at all cost, unless this happens.
Farmers are afraid that they will not be allowed to protect their stock if a wolf attacks it. On the contrary, if a wolf attacks there is a designation, in the regulation, that gives the farmers a limited right to kill the problem wolf. Since 1978, wolves listed as threaten have been managed under a special regulation that controls individual wolves that kill livestock or pets.
Some people believe that if wolves are place in public lands that the lands can’t be used for anything else. This is also untrue; the US Fish and Wildlife Service shows that there are very few restrictions necessary to facilitate wolf recovery in an area, such as Montana and Minnesota. The service reported that land used is only restricted if wolves are illegally killed at high levels.
A few facts you may not know about these majestic creatures include they range in heights from 26 to 38 inches at the shoulders and may weigh between 70 and 135 pounds. The heaviest recorded wolf was 175 pounds and the smallest was 22 pounds at full maturity. The tallest wolf ever recorded was 45 inches at the shoulder and 5 feet from tip of its nose to the tip of its tail. The female of the wolf community is normally 20% smaller than the male counterpart.
Wolves are built for stamina. They have narrow chests, powerful backs and legs that facilitate sufficient locomotion. They are capable of covering several miles at a pace of 6 miles per hour and have been known to reach speeds approaching 40 miles per hour during a chase. They can cover up to 16 feet per bound while sprinting.
Their paws tread easily on a variety of terrain especially snow. On their front paws, there is a slight webbing. Their front paws are larger than their hind paws and have a fifth toe called the dewclaw. This claw allows an enhanced grip on slippery surfaces, for the wolf. Also, in their paws are special blood vessels that keep the wolves’ paws from freezing.
The wolf has scent glands between their toes that leave trace chemical markers behind to help them navigate and to keep others from the pack informed of its whereabouts. Unlike the domestic dog, wolves do not have sweat glands on their feet.
Wolves’ bulky coats consists of two layers, a tough guard hair to repel water and dirt and a second dense water resistant undercoat that insulates the wolf from the cold and is shed in late spring or early summer. This coat is normally gray in color. Their coats change from a winter pelage to a summer pelage usually during spring and fall with the female keeping her winter coat longer than the male. Their coats can vary in color from gray to gray brown to all the way through the contrast spectrum of white, red, brown, and black. They may even be a solid color such as all white or all black. The colors generally correspond to the environment of the wolf.
Compared to the domestic dog wolves have more powerful sense of smell due to smaller orbital angles in their snouts. The wolves’ snout, brains, paws and legs are larger than the domestic dogs. Wolves are shy, social, and live in family groups called packs that can be as large as 60 in a single pack unlike the domestic dog.
There is one leader in a pack of wolves; this is the alpha male. The alpha male will pick a female from the pack and mate with her until either he dies or she dies. This female wolf is called the alpha female. She will be the main wolf to procreate and bear pups, to maintain the pack. The alpha male and alpha female of the pack are the only wolves allowed to mate, because the pack can only support one litter at a time. Therefore, the alpha wolves will stop others of the pack from mating because of this.
Wolves only mate once a year and their litters are small compared to the litters of the domestic dog. The litter generally has between four and six pups. One thing, many people don’t know is a wild wolf will not mate with a domestic dog in the wild; they will kill the dog rather than mate with them. The wolf hybrid is the product of man’s breeding wolves in captivity with the domestic dog.
The pups are usually born in the late winter or spring of the year, around February to May, depending on the packs geographical location. They are born deaf and mute. Their eyes and ears will open between 8 to 10 days after birth. The alpha female will stay with the pups in a den near a water supply not hunting for food, but depending on the rest of the pack to bring her food, so that she can care for her pups. The dens are usually in the side of a river bank, under a fallen tree or under the roots of a large tree.
The pups will suckle upon their mother until they are old enough to eat solid foods around the age of 6 to 8 weeks old. At that time when the adult wolves come back from the hunt they will nudge, poke, or nibble at the adults mouths until the adults regurgitate, the pups then eat the half digested food. At about 7 to 8 months olds the pups will start going with the pack on the hunt for food. It is at this time the whole pack will help care for the pups not just the alpha female.
The wolves normally hunt for large prey such as caribou, bison and deer. If wolves cannot get the big prey they will eat rabbits, rodents and other small animals and. believe it or not wolves also eat trees. This is one of the many reasons that the forestry service has such a problem with wolves because they actually are very destructive of our forest. They eat the trees to supplement their diet when prey is scarce. If they are
desperate that is the only time you will see a wolf chose to go after live stock.
Wolves communicate in a very special way. You may think they are howling at the moon, but in reality they may be calling to a lost pack or possibly letting other wolves in the area know to stay away from this tract of land, it is their territory. They may be just howling for the shear joy of it and when a pack howls together they are trying to confuse their enemies, making them think that there is actually more in the pack than there actually is. But wolves don’t only howl they whimper, bark, growl, snarl, and yip. Each of these things mean a different thing to the pack; that is their way of letting the pack know what is happening.
A wolf's territory may be the size of 200 to 1500 square miles. This generally depends on how big the pack is. More packs are formed when the omega wolf leaves the pack and becomes a lone wolf or finds his own mate from another pack and they start their own pack.
In conclusion, I wish to invite you to explore the world of wolves, with me. There is so much more to learn about them.
