Wolves in Native American Tradition

For centuries, the wolf has been held in high regard by many Native American tribes. Many tribes had such respect for the wolves, they actually compared themselves to the pack, both in characteristics and lifestyle.

one of many native myths involving wolves

a chief, with a howling wolf by his side

Native Americans have often respected the wolf for its deep devotion to family. Native Americans hunted for their families and the entire tribe, just as wolves hunted for the entire pack. Wolves never kill more than necessary to survive, and neither did the tribes. Native American hunters even tried to imitate the hunting tactics of a wolf—being compared to a wolf was considered the highest form of praise for a hunter. While the Native Americans were not naturally aggressive, they would fight to the death to protect their own and their territory, just as wolves do. Some tribes even went so far as to mimic the wolves’ migration habits—if food became scarce in their home territory, tribe leaders would move the tribe to an entirely new territory.

a modern piece of  Native American
jewelry

This extreme respect also led to the Native Americans repeated use of the wolf as a symbol in religion and mythology. Many Native American religions regarded the wolves as magical creatures. Some religious beliefs say wolves were involved in the creation of the world. Several tribes also believe that wearing the skin of a wolf could possess magical powers, and increase the success of a hunt or bring a chief’s son back to life. In the Navajo tradition, members of the tribe believed donning a wolf skin allowed that person to transform into a wolf. Wolves are also featured in native jewelry as well artwork. They are generally portrayed as howling at the moon, and this image is often used in totems or amulets.

We should all take note of the Native American view on wolves, and learn to respect them for their redeeming characteristics.  

Come back soon for more awesome info on wolves!

http://www.wolfsongalaska.org/wolves_in_american_culture.html

http://www.helium.com/items/1707340-native-americans-and-wolves

http://www.indians.org/articles/timber-wolves.html

*images found on google

Welcome to My Crib: Wolf Territorial Behavior

welcome to our crib...now get out

Many animals have both a “territory” and a “home range”; a ‘territory’ being the area they will defend against other members of their species, and a ‘home range’ being the area an animal lives in, but does not defend.  Some wolves can have a home range of up to 1,000 miles! On average, it will generally be about 77 square miles. Since this is such a large area for one wolf pack to take over, several packs will often have overlapping territories.

By nature, wolves are very territorial creatures. However, studying territorial habits and behaviors in wolves is something researchers often struggle with. Research in this area would require them to observe the movement of an entire pack for an extended period of time, as well as determine how the pack may react to other wolves in its territory. Although some territories may overlap, it is uncommon for these wolf packs to ever actually come into contact. This is due to the low number of wolves in a pack, as well as their rapid style of movement. These factors are what make observing wolf territorial behavior so difficult.

more than 90% of deaths among wolves in conflicting
packs are a result of territorial issues

Several different factors determine the place and size of a pack’s territory. For example, when prey animals are abundant wolves tend to live in small, well-defined areas and will stay there year-round. On the other hand, when prey is less abundant or is more likely to migrate, a pack will have a larger territory. This explains why many packs have larger territories during the winter than the summer. Other factors that determine pack territory are the nature of the terrain, and the presence of large predators. Where there is a high density of people, wolves will tend to have smaller territories.

Wolves use several different methods to define and mark their territory. As seen in our Fun Fact post, wolves have actually been known to respond to human howls. Howling can serve as a declaration of territory, and when a wolf responds to a human it may be because the wolf hears the human howl as a “rival” individual. The most important of these methods is “scent marking.” They use urine and feces to mark their territory, and can actually distinguish the scent of their own pack-mate’s urine from an unfamiliar wolf’s. Scent marking urination, which is known as “raised leg urination” is different than a wolf’s normal urination. Normally a wolf will squat to urinate, but when scent marking it will raise one of its hind legs and squirt a small amount of urine onto a “scent post,” which is generally a raised object like a tree or rock.  

a wolf using raised leg urination to scent mark a post

Generally, only the alpha wolves (both the male and female) of the pack will mark territory. These higher ranking wolves will sometimes leave scent marks every 350 meters, which helps define the outsides of their territories. Wolves also tend to mark the same post over and over again as well.

humans' way of "leaving their mark"

Wolves will often place scent marks on places where other wolves, coyotes, foxes and other animals have left marks of urine. This is something that domestic dogs do as well, and it seems that the scent of any other animal on a spot can stimulate a wolf to add its own mark. Humans do this quite often as well, just not with urine. For example, if one person engraves their name on a tree, other people are then inclined to do this as well. It seems humans too feel the need to “add their mark” to any spot where other humans have. 

Come back soon for more awesome wolf facts!

sources:

http://www.wolfcountry.net/information/WolfPack.html

http://www.wolfworlds.com/wolf-territorial-behavior-and-dispersion.html

http://www.freewebs.com/alphawolfsabrina/theterritory.htm

image sources:

http://courses.moodleshare.com/mod/resource/view.php?id=7387

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-51179317/stock-photo-engraved-tree-with-graffitis.html

http://www.freeforpsp.com/free-wallpaper/anilams/201011/23706.html

http://www.freeforpsp.com/free-wallpaper/anilams/201011/23706.html

WOLFMAN

Shaun Ellis is an British animal researcher whose main passion is wolves. He spent a two years living with a wild pack and has adopted a pack of abandoned North American timber wolf pups! Ellis spent a lot of time infiltrating captive packs to learn their language and behavior at Dartmoor Wildlife Park in England and at a wolf research center in Idaho. He has learned all about wolves and tried to get as much hands on experience as possible.

After learning that a wild wolf pack had moved into an area between Idaho and Canada Ellis set out to live in the wild in the hopes of befriending a wild wolf pack with little previous human experience. After months of living alone he finally met the wolves and slowly (and painfully) worked his way into their good graces. Ellis became a full pack member, living and eating with the wolves, and was even allowed to guard the newborn pups. Once, one of his pack brothers even saved his life from a grizzly bear! After two years with the pack, Ellis was forced to return home due to malnourishment from living the diet of wolves. Back home, he used all of the knowledge he gained to improve the lives of captive wolves and help increase our understand (or lack thereof) of wolves an their behavior.

 

After finding three abandoned North American timber wolf pups at near the Combe Martin Wildlife Park Ellis decided to raise them for the wild, but he decided to do this in an unconventional way – by living with the pups and pretending to be one of them! Ellis lived with his wolf pups for 18 months, teaching them all they needed to know about being a wolf and surviving in the wild. The pups names are Yana, Tamaska and Matsi and as far as I can tell Ellis was successful at raising them for the wild and they have been released.

The video below shows Shaun Ellis teaching one of his pups to howl for the first time!

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1243709/My-life-wolf-British-naturalist-dared-infiltrate-pack-wilderness.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Ellis_(wolf_researcher)

http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/newsforyou/pdfs/newsforyou066-download.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1gxa-Dij3k

The Evolutionary History of Wolves

The animal that most canids are
descended from is the tomarctus.

Kingdom - Animalia 


Phylum - Chordata (animals with notochords)


Subphylum - Vertebrata (animals with a skeleton of bone or cartilage)


Class - Mammalia


Subclass - Eutheria (placental mammals)


Order - Carnivora


Family - Canidae


Genus - Canis


Grey Wolf - Canis Lupis 


Red Wolf - Canis Rufus 


Domestic Dog - Canis Familiaris

Dingo - Canis Familiaris Dingo 


Coyote - Canis Latrans

The canidae family evolutionary lineage
is represented by the color blue.

The wolf is a product of 63 million years of carnivore evolution, and is well adapted to its environment. Nearly all canids are descended from is the tomarctus, which is an animal that lived somewhere between 16-20 million years ago. The canis edwardii, which evolved in the early Pleistocene period about 1.5 million years ago, is the first canid clearly identifiable as a wolf. Some of the most recent evolutionary ancestors are the Dire Wolf (canis dirus) and a large wolf that lived throughout North America (canis ambrusteri). Some of the closest relatives of the wolf are domestic dogs, coyotes, and foxes. In the mid Pleistocene period (around eight hundred thousand years ago) the Dire wolf came about.

Within the canis genus, unfortunately the dire wolf did not survive the mass extinctions of the most recent ice age (nearly 10,000 years ago), which the gray wolf and coyote did survive. Each of these three lineages, although very close, comes from a very different evolutionary background. None of the three is the direct ancestor of the others, although they all come from the same area. The grey wolf was well was established in North America by the time the first Native American and Inuit Peoples came across the Beringia, about eighteen thousand years ago. There is some genetic evidence that the domestic dog is a descendant of the wolf, although the issue is much debated. It has even been recommended that the domestic dog be reclassified as a new subspecies of wolf, Canis lupus familiars.

Come Back Soon for More Awesome Info on Wolves!

Sources:

http://wolfevolution.webs.com/wolevo.html

http://www.wolfcountry.net/information/WolfOrigins.html 

http://www.freewebs.com/stormtrooper444/

Wolves Hunting Caribou

After all that information about wolves hunting habits, 

check out this awesome caribou hunt caught on tape by BBC! 

The nature section of the BBC website has some great information on all kinds of wildlife!

Come back soon for some more awesome info on wolves!

Sources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0E6geAq1k8

Wolf Eating Habits

Wolves are infamous for their eating habits. They live and hunt in their packs, always working together. The pups depend on their parents, who regurgitate the meat into the pup’s mouths. The alphas lead the hunts, eat first, and exclude whom ever they want from the meal. The pack hunts within the borders of its territory, which is large enough to contain all the food the pack needs (and if the pack grows, they increase their territory). Sometimes the wolves spend as much as eight hours a day (moving at five miles per hour) in search of food, and the majority of their prey escapes them. Regardless of the fact that wolves spend most of their time walking and sleeping instead of savaging large prey animals, they still have gained the reputation of vicious killers.

Wolves hunt as a group and are very good judges of what they can handle – which is a lot! They capture and kill, with nothing more than their teeth, animals that are 10 times their size! Wolves purposefully attack the vulnerable nose and rump of their prey, trying to hang on and injure them so that they slow down and can be brought to the ground (usually, once down, the animals die from shock or blood loss) and feeding can begin. They are carnivores, eating mostly meat, but they will eat other foods too. They eat varying types of game, from elf and moose to earthworms and grasshoppers; they will also eat different types of berries, fish, birds, and mice.

Wolves have amazing stomachs, able to digest almost anything. They eat quickly (so as to avoid their food being stolen or being attacked by other predators) and can consume everything, about 80%-100% of each kill, but the large bones and some hair (the bones they cannot digest are wrapped up in hair in their stomachs and so they do not injure their insides). The wolves are not wasteful at all, and will come back to finish off a meal after hiding it. After they eat they sprawl out on the ground and sleep, regaining the massive amounts of energy lost on the hunt and kill. They can eat every 5-6 hours if the food is available, but are able to go 2 weeks without food if need be.

The most common misconception about wolves is that they are a danger to humans (by hunting people and eating their livestock). This is not true at all though. Wolves do not eat humans and are not a threat to us, they are actually very shy around people and, like any wild animal, will only attack if threatened. They are helpful to the environment because they try to save energy by attacking the weakest member of a group, which allows natural selection to strengthen that species. They also have been observed practicing some kind of herd maintenance, in which they hunt from one herd and then travel to others before returning so as not to decimate a population. In reality, wolves are very helpful and important to the ecology of our environment.

Come back soon for some more awesome info on wolves!

Sources:

http://isleroyalewolf.org/overview/overview/wolves.html

http://www.wolfweb.com/diet.html

 http://www.whitewolfpack.com/2011/08/whole-truth-about-wolfs-eating-habits.html

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/516962.html