Wolf World

• The WRONG definition of a wolf: A carnivorous animal, related to the dog, which kills livestock and attacks humans.
• The RIGHT definition of a wolf: A carnivores animal, related to the dog, which is misunderstood by humans; it is a valuable predator in the food web. There is no record of a healthy wolf attacking a human.

The gray, or timber, wolf, once widely distributed in North America, Europe, and Asia. The red wolf lives only in Texas and Louisiana. An adult timber wolf measures up to 1.6 m (6.5 ft) in length, including the tail (which is less than half the body length), and may weigh up to 80 kg (175 lb). The animal is red-yellow or yellow-gray, with black patches above and white below; those in the far north, however, may be pure white, and black or brown timber wolves also occur. The red wolf is somewhat smaller in size and usually darker in color, and may represent a cross with the coyote. Powerful teeth, bushy tails, and round pupils characterize all wolves, and they are distinguished from domestic dogs (some breeds of which they otherwise resemble) by certain characteristics of the skull.

Wolves are equally at home on prairies, in forestlands, and on all but the highest mountains some are found in the desert.

Small animals and birds are the common prey of wolves, which also eat berries, but a pack may sometimes attack reindeer and other large mammals, usually selecting weak, old, or very young animals for easier capture. When no live prey can be found, wolves feed on carrion. A wolf likes to eat moose and elk. Sometimes they may travel anywhere from 40 to 60 miles in search of food, but most of the time they don’t have to go that far. When food is really hard to find they may hunt mice! When hunting moose they often catch only 1 out of every 16 moose. Each wolf eats about 20 pounds of meat! Wolves hunt in a special way a lot like lion prides. They also chase the prey down.

The den, or lair, of the wolf may be a cave, a hollow tree trunk, a thicket, or a hole in the ground dug by the wolf. The breeding season is in the spring, and the female has a litter of one to fourteen pups. The pups normally stay with the parents until the following winter but may remain much longer. Usually only 1 or 2 pups survive the first winter. Parents and young constitute a basic pack, which establishes and defends a territory marked by urine and feces. The pack leader is called the alpha male, and its mate is the alpha female. As social animals, wolves exhibit behavioral patterns that clearly communicate dominance over or submission to one another; the communal howling of a pack may serve to assemble its members, communicate with other packs, advertise its territorial claims, or simply be a source of pleasure.

Although wolves are still abundant in Eastern Europe and in Asia, only remnant populations now exist in Western Europe, and their numbers in North America also have been greatly diminished. They are fairly abundant in Alaska and Canada, but remnant populations of timber wolves south of Canada occur only in Minnesota and Mexico. The decreasing numbers of wolves are the result of encroachments on their territory by humans, who have long regarded wolves as competitors for prey and as dangerous animals in them. The fact is that few, if any, healthy wolves have attacked humans, whom they instead try to avoid, and wolves are valuable predators in the food web. They eat mice and other pests.

Wolves are the ancestors of every single dog in the world! Many things humans like about dogs are traits of the wolf. We like dogs for their intelligence; the dog, from the wolf inherited this. We like the dogs because of their loyalty and friendliness, that is another trait the dg inhered from the wolf.So why do we consider the wolf to be sneaky and cowardly? The reason is because we don’t understand the wolf!

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