- Dogs and wolves are genetically 99.9% identical. The idea that the domestic dog descended from the grey wolf was originally established in 1993 using comparisons of wolf and dog mitochondrial DNA. This investigation showed that no other living animal was more closely related to the domestic dog than the grey wolf.
- Wolves are the largest members of the Canidae family, which includes domestic dogs, coyotes, dingoes, African hunting dogs, many types of foxes, and several kinds of jackals.
- Wolf pups are usually born between March and May. A wolf pup’s eyes are blue at birth. Their eyes turn yellow by the time they are eight months old.
- Unlike other animals, wolves have a variety of distinctive facial expressions they use to communicate and maintain pack unity
- Wolves run on their toes, which helps them to stop and turn quickly and to prevent their paw pads from wearing down.
- Wolves have about 200 million scent cells. Humans have only about 5 million. Wolves can smell other animals more than one mile (1.6 kilometers) away.
- Wolf gestation is around 65 days. Wolf pups are born both deaf and blind and weigh only one pound.
- Under certain conditions, wolves can hear as far as six miles away in the forest and ten miles on the open tundra.
- Wolves were once the most widely distributed land predator the world has ever seen. The only places they didn’t thrive were in the true desert and rainforests.
- Among true wolves, two species are recognized: Canis lupus (often known simply as “gray wolves”), which includes 38 subspecies, such as the gray, timber, arctic, tundra, lobos, and buffalo wolves. The other recognized species is the red wolf (Canis rufus), which are smaller and have longer legs and shorter fur than their relatives. Many scientists debate whether Canis rufus is a separate species.
- The North American gray wolf population in 1600 was 2 million. Today there are an estimated 7,000 to 11,200 gray wolves in Alaska, 3,700 in the Great Lakes region and 1,675 in the Northern Rockies.
- A hungry wolf can eat 20 pounds of meat in a single meal, which is akin to a human eating one hundred hamburgers. The smallest wolves live in the Middle East, where they may weigh only 30 pounds. The largest wolves inhabit Canada, Alaska, and the Soviet Union, where they can reach 175 pounds
- Biologists describe wolf territory as not just spatial, but spatial-temporal, so that each pack moves in and out of each other’s turf depending on how recently the “no trespassing” signals were posted.
- Wolves howl to contact separated members of their group, to rally the group before hunting, or to warn rival wolf packs to keep away. Lone wolves will howl to attract mates or just because they are alone. Each wolf howls for only about five seconds, but howls can seem much longer when the entire pack joins.
- During the Middle Ages, Europeans used powdered wolf liver to ease the pain of childbirth and would tie a wolf’s right front paw around a sore throat to reduce the swelling. Dried wolf meat was also eaten as a remedy for sore shins.
- The Cherokee Indians did not hunt wolves because they believed a slain wolves’ brothers would exact revenge. Furthermore, if a weapon were used to kill a wolf, the weapon would not work correctly again
- In 1934, Germany became the first nation in modern times to place the wolf under protection. Influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) and Oswald Spengler’s (1880-1936) belief that natural predators possessed more vigor and virility than their prey, the protection was probably more for an “iconic” wolf than the actual wolf, particularly since the last wolves in Germany were killed in the middle of the nineteenth century.
- In 1500, the last wolf was killed in England. In 1770, Ireland’s last wolf was killed. In 1772, Denmark’s last wolf was killed.
Comments
Just a few updates:
1. Breeding dogs, as shown by Dmitri Belyayev’s fox experiments, resulted in both behavioral and physical phenotype effects – genes have multiple uses and different effects when expressed at different developmental stages (some stages can last for VERY short periods).
Neurons, the mediators of ALL behavior and cognition, express more of the genome than any other cell, by far. Knowing this you can see why Belyayev’s domestic friendly foxes looked like floppy-eared dogs. The covering scientific term relevant to us is: neoteny, form the Latin for holding onto the new[ness[, or holding on to youth.
2. There exist epigenetic effects that can shut off permanently, temporarily for very specifically varying periods [I can hardly speak about this to lay people, it’s pretty complex. But it is NOT random.] or change genes, along with the important fact that many or most genes can be regarded as being for the purpose of turning the activity of other genes on or off. this is even done in cascades: one turns another off, which would normally turn another off, so, the first can be seen as turning the third ON! So even if you have the EXACT genes of another, you will be different as soon as anything occurs in the womb! These differences increase, and can never decrease. Remember that whenever you think of any two or any group of organisms being “exactly alike”.
3. Breeding, again, caused dogs to lose a LOT of wolf things, and living on their own in nature would select a lot of te breeding characteristics back out of any surviving wild dog. One of these things is annual reproductive cycle.
Wolves are beautifully adapted to get more assertive and sexy with a rise in December and January. they sort out just what will be going on in the way of reproduction. From late Jan or Feb, JUST when all the other animals are really suffering from winter and snowcover, wolves are made to respond to the increase of available food. That’s why their reproduction drifted to that perfect time of year, when they could be at best health and strength for the coming pups.
. That time of year is also the most common time for subadults to choose to leave to find a place and a mate. So all that increased assertion has this perfectly timed value as well.
Dogs don’t have that, nor do they retain the immense generosity toward the new pups characteristic of wolves, who ceased to be children who are solely focused on their own selves, as soon as the first winter hormonal changes have done their developmental job.
Neoteny, remember.
So dogs were not subject to certain social and dietary annual cycles. Just humans in artificial darkness or light drift from our diurnal sleep/awakeness patterns, so were dogs unmoored from nature.
4. In addition to the 40x difference in the number of canid to human olfactory cells, their olfactory bulb is MASSIVE compared to ours, on the level of a shelled walnut to a pea. This multiplies their ability to remember and associate the things they smell. the Connections made in their associative cortex are vastly greater than human or any primate associative capacity. While this may be hard for you to understand, our long-term memory is so widely dispersed in the associative cortical areas, as well as in subcortical areas, and strongly linked to the nonconscious areas involved in heart, breathing, and internal communication – form hormones to immune system, that our perception of the value of smell to them is like a blind clam’s is of a human (maybe not that far, but closer than you think!).
5. The word used for the undeveloped state of wolf pups is altricial, . Wolf devleopment stages are also linked to important limitations on when they can accept emotional bonds, and what types of bonds can occur.
Even though they open their eyes in a couple weeks, they cannot see at all far. this capacity grows slowly enough over many more weeks, that it has several related effects. They do not wander too far before they have learned enough (Their brains are also growing in a manner very like their eyes). They are most safely and firmly acquainted with those with whom they interact , their family or pack. You can infer their rather rigid behaviors toward strangers from this, although as they grow toward adulthood, they certainly recognize other animals as living agents, and when at need, will accept some other individual animals who signal things they understand. This is a cognitive issue, as the wolf evaluates seemingly more variable signals than practically any other animal (I have not studied the more social African Painted dog, but the wolf’s ecological niche is more apex in the community, although neither originally in the earlier Pleistocene, and having had to adapt to Homo sapiens; so there’s good reason for the larger brain and the more complex cognition of the wolf.
6. Biologists ahve considerrably reduced the number of assumed subspecies. the original morphological classification methods have been both shown to be too subject to mistaken variation in individuals (let’s not go into this here), and were in any case, pretty chaotic, as the people doing the 38 were not in good communication with one another, and taxonomists (a science branch in itself) who did the deciding, were and are mostly inhabitants of labs and museums, and have to deal with so many genera that they allowed overstatement (let’s not go into abstruse scientific argument either!). Now, , even in the last couple years, the more concise exposition of wolf genome, has led to extreme reduction in subspecies. This has NOT caught up to the nonscientists and wildlife decisionmakers involved in wolf recovery , especially in state agencies, which are more politically driven even than the fearful USFWS biologists and project staff.
7. Yes, wolves can eat a lot. But they are also subject to some torpor, or transport the food to others, along with regurgitating some for later reingestion. Also, Haber and many others have shown that wolves sometimes eat up to 85% carrion in some seasons.
We also know that wolves after eating that much may not eat for 3 to several days. They are really UNLIKE humans in dietary habits.
Another uncommon bit of knowledge, is that they will search out preferences, temporarily abandoning some prey or body parts, going to others. Think of the recent human advertisement of “probiotics”, in order to understand that any wolf KNOWS its dietary needs. this is one area far from the understanding of most modern humans. While liver and lungs and some other foods are the most anabolic, they are too rich for the steady wolf diet, so the individual will seek out the full spectrum of food types, including the aged parts. So apparent abandonment or immediate consumption is mistaken by humans, especially those who want to moralize about the endless appetites of wolves and the crazy calculations of possible dead elk. I’m a bit conversant on this subject of diet and specific digestion needs, but with the public, it always devolves into emotional stuff,and it is one of the reasons why I don’t speak in combative public discussion on wolves. The science is there, and even most wolf biologists have not gathered it sufficiently..
8. Yup, spatiotemporal motion of wolves goes back to the need to spend about half the year raising pups by the family, as well as to sensory and molecular science, including development, memory, stress response,and the psychological and neurohormonal, and pheromonal stuff. I don’t think anyone who hasn’t studied it all can really understand it. But just to cover what’s important in spatiotemporal occupation, go to the work of the Yellowstone Wolf project and Doug Smith’s work, and tie it in with the migratory activity of North American and African animals, and include the work published in Canada that is not on the radar of popular and general talk down here in the US.
Dr. Bob Sapolsky at Stanford will inform you that you cannot define or understand anything about brains, nutrition, genetics, hormones, behaviors, social structure, cognition, without going deep into ALL of it. He also cautions that NO one or few of these viewpoints should be used to think of why an individual (or species) does something. I’m making this long comment precisely because any of the short points of the article can quickly be misconstrued, because incomplete without a deep understanding of all of them.
9. Wolf vocal communication seems simple, but to anyone who wishes to understand and/or develop intimacy with wolf communication must parse out the actual complexity, the context-dependency in the light of their sophisticated Theory of Mind (a psychological term that, because of conflation problems in the scheming and deceptive maestro that is the human, has been made confusing to any who just enter for a moment, into T.o.M. and think they have a grasp on it or wolves from afar). they only speak when useful or desperate. Most of their communication are not vocal, and even their howling is highly responsive to the sounds of confidantes’ howling. Simply, that latter act is sometimes readable by a sensitive human. Wait for the sound research to build up – we’ve found a lot about whales and birds, because they have been intense subjects. They, too, say far more than people believed.
9. All kinds of Nordic names mean wolf – Ulf Olaf, Rudolf, Adolf, and many others. The ancient beliefs of those people involves lessons and stories that teach morality and worthy traits to develop, just as did and do all the Northerner Peoples of the World who lived with the wolf. The people of tens of thousands of years ago there revered the wolf, but the influx of farming culture messed that up, and worse, the invasion of mideastern christian religion destroyed the continuity of original regard for the wolf. The poisoning began here, long before they took to using the exciting new way of “safely killing”birds and mammals in the late 17s and early 1800s.
Because of the overpopulation in Medieval Europe wolves got the reputation pf eating like crazy, so the dietary comment is probably related to the sudden use of poison by Europeans to get rid of wildlife. You can infer from such English phrases as “wolfed down his supper” .
the quiet way a wolf leaves and appears, and the half year when wolves radiate out sometimes singly or in pairs to find spring and summer food for the family and pups also can translate to wolf in several wolfland peoples’ languages. The “lone wolf” crap I’ve argued against with several journalists and urban writers, is another illustration of trying to use the human imagery not relating to true reality.
This species, humans, are so far off the deep end, that I really want to stop trying to explain, and just like the rest of Earth, wait for their diminution.
Wolves are far more efficient than Spengler or other philosophers know, they sleep and play and love and rest and put experience together to learn.
And it is wisest of you to ignore philosophers of the past, as they are just propagandists, trying to extract whatever they admire or excoriate from the unrelated, fuller, more fulfilled and magnificent beauty of real, vulnerable, mortal life and lives.
Don’t fall into their ignorant conceptual trap – it lead directly to hubris, demeaning of others, hate, violence. It is NOT knowing.
Somehow, my love and gratitude for my Brother who is gone, has caused me to use my time online to make myself injured and ill trying to explain his kind to the fighting squabbling killing human masses.
I did this so you can learn. Please get out there wherever you are led to go, and learn for yourself. This killing of my Brother’s relatives must not continue, and everyone’s arguing and hating must be changed into eager learning, as the wolf spends his life doing.