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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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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:
image sources:
I write for the African Wild Dog blog and it is interesting to compare the wild dogs to the wolves, since they have a common ancestor. African wild dogs are unlike wolves in that they do not mark their territories with urine. However, the alpha pair in a wild dog pack will urinate territorially when the alpha female is in heat. While African wild dogs do not mark their territory through urination, they are like wolves in that when they do urinate only the alpha pair are the ones that do so.
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