NOTE: In case if you are wondering if I typed all of this.....the answer is
"Yes I did..........maybe."
DON'T BE AFRAID TO READ SOME OF THIS STUFF...YOU KNOW YOU WILL LEARN SOMETHING!
For hundreds of years people thought that wolves were
ferocious monsters. In fairy tales the wolf has always been pictured as
creatures with long fangs and lolling, red tongues. People have feared and
made up stories about these wild members of the dog family, people still
think of wolves as chasing sleighs across the snowy wastes of Russia and
Canada.
You may have seen wolves in zoo's, pacing back and forth in cages.
But have you ever seen them in the woods or mountains; Even two hundred
years ago, wolves were kings of the forest in Europe and North America.
Know there are only a few left in Spain, Poland, Scandinavia, Siberia,
China and Tibet and some in North America. As farming has taken more and
more land and woods have been destroyed, these creatures have become fewer
being pushed back into the few last areas of forest and mountains. For the
wolf, man is the worst enemy.
In reality wolves are shy creatures. They are
expert hunters, and will only attack humans if they feel trapped or are
desperate. Normally, however they run off when they come across humans;
Wolves, like dog’s, mark the limits of their territory with a few drops of
urine on landmarks such as stones and bushes. Every week, they patrol their
territory. It is always large enough to supply all their food, and is close
to a water source such as a stream or pool.
In winter, a pack of five to eight wolves group together under the leadership of a dominant wolf and his
dominant female. They are the two strongest wolves; Only this couple will
breed, though all the pack will hunt together to feed the cubs. Wolves walk
in single file, nose to tail, through the snow leaving only one set of
print's. But when they go around curves, they fan out, and you can tell how
many wolves there are in the pack.
In spring, they look for a quiet spot
where they can raise their young; Usually they shelter under a rock or a
fallen tree, or in a fox's old den. After nine weeks, the she wolf gives
birth to as many as seven jet black cubs, which she suckles. As soon as
they learn how to walk, the cub's set off exploring. Their mother fetches
them back by the scruff of the neck. They like playing and scrapping
together until they collapse with tiredness. Bit by bit, the wolf cub’s are
taught how to behave in the pack. The pack members are very patient with
the playful, and inquisitive cub's.
In winter wolves eat moose, deer and
caribou, prey very much bigger than the wolves themselves. However, in
summer, small animals such as beavers, hares and even mice and frogs make
up an important part of the wolves diet. When food is short, wolves aren't
choosy they will eat snakes, worms, slugs and even grubs. A wolfs stomach
can hold up to four kilos of food. All the wolves in the pack will chew up
meat to feed the cubs.
Trotting upstream, wolves drive the salmon into
shallow pools where they can be caught with one snap of the wolves powerful
jaws. Wolves know how to turn over stones to hunt for crayfish and they
never kill for pleasure, only for food. So that they don't waste energy,
wolves test the moose and the caribou before launching an attack. They
follow about a hundred meters behind, and set the animals running, if one
runs quickly they will leave it alone and keep searching until they find a
slower animal, one that is old, ill or even wounded.
The wolves surround their pray and , bit by bit, draw closer together. At last the animal is
brought to bay, the wolves leap and the pray is killed quickly by their
sharp fangs. The strongest wolves always eat first while the oldest and
youngest wait their turn, watching avidly, dog's and wolves have a lot in
common like you know that when a dog wags his tail he's happy or if he
tucks it between his legs he's upset wolves do exactly the same.
However wolves are faster and stronger than dogs. A wolf's jaw is incredibly
powerful. With only one bite, it can snap the leg from an adult moose, over
short distances they can run up to fifty kilometers an hour, while just
jogging along steadily they can travel a hundred kilometers a day. Wolves
have all sorts of different cries such as growling, snarling, barking and
howling. They all mean different things; When hunting at night wolves will
howl to keep in touch with each other and to keep the pack together in the
dark.
Before people had gun's, villagers used to hunt wolves with sturdy
dog's and strong sticks, team's of dog's were needed to keep up with the
fast running wolves. Some dog's like Irish wolfhounds, were bred especially
for this, the last wolf in France was killed in 1977.
When people lived in small villages, herding sheep and cattle and often not far off starvation,
a wolf taking a lamb or a calf could mean disaster. Wolves were the main
enemy for the farmers, and they would try any means they could to kill
them. They used traps, guns and poison wolf traps caused terrible pain to
wolves caught in them. And hunting wolves from helicopters meant simple
slaughter, however this kind of massacre is absolutely forbidden now.
In England around 1550, a whole forest was burnt down to drive wolves out. But
now, in the countries where wolves still survive wolf hunting is carefully
controlled, or banned altogether. Every creature has it's place in nature,
wolves ate the weak and wounded animals, those who were not strong enough
to escape, by doing so they helped to keep the balance of nature, where
only the strong survive and breed. Now that they have disappeared from our
woods and forests, wolves have been replaced by other predators, such as
foxes. As a result, foxes have multiplied and now they are almost as big a
plague as the wolves were ever thought to be; Particularly as foxes can
carry the killer disease RABIES. Farmers have to kill the foxes and if the
foxes all die out then the rabbits and mice that the foxes eat would begin
to multiply. Soon farmers would have to hunt them. The balance of nature is
a delicate thing.
