Getting lost in the wilderness can be a scary experience, after all, it can be very easy to end up in life threatening situations, such as being stalked by wild animals, such as wolves. This is the gist behind the movie, The Grey, released in 2012. The movie stars Liam Neeson, who protects Alaskan oil workers from wolves. As the workers head home for a two-week vacation, their plane dives into a vicious show storm which causes it to crash somewhere in Alaska’s wilderness. Here, the eight surviving oil workers need to survive the wild and find a way back to civilization. They encounter many obstacles, such as finding food and shelter, and fighting off a pack of gray wolves.
Although gray wolves are commonly portrayed as man-eaters in movies, these wild animals are actually shy of people, preferring to escape instead of engaging men. These dogs are commonly found in the forest of Eurasia, North America and North Africa. They are the largest amongst all species of wolves and once faced near extinction because of over poaching. They are prized for their fur, which is used to make clothing in cold areas. The gray wolf now occupies a small portion of their former dwelling grounds because of man encroachment and widespread destruction of their natural habitat.
Many of our domestic dog breeds originated from the gray wolf. These big canines communicate using body posture, barks, growls and their famous howls, which can be heard from many miles away. Like all types of wolves, the gray wolf has a keen sense of smell and hearing, helping them track down their prey’s scent even if it has departed for many days. Many people are afraid of these wild animals, but with proper education, wolves and humans can live together in peace.
Wolves, distant cousins of dogs, played a pivotal role in the 1990 film Dances With Wolves.
Delving into the story of a lieutenant who was posted in a remote Civil War outpost, the movie starring and directed by Kevin Costner told the tale of how a lone soldier made friends with the local Native Americans settling within the area, along with how he managed to befriend another group of locals – the wolves.
The movie stands to be one of Costner’s more praised titles, and it generally garnered the appreciation and acceptance of audiences, which is generally opposite to how audiences accepted Costner’s later movies and features.
But Dances With Wolves was popular. In fact, its popularity led many to ask: Is it possible to keep wolves as pets?
Short answer - yes, but not really like how dogs are kept as pets.
Wolves may be related to dogs, but they do not bear the same tractability as dogs. They may look like dogs, but their natural temperament and disposition calls for differences in how they can be ideally kept as pets.
For one, they require a lot of space. By a lot, an area that’s around 10 to 15 square miles would be good for wolves.
Also, as pups or cubs, wolves require more social interaction compared to dog pups. This is because after a certain time, wolf pups are liable not to interact or socialize with human beings well, which could cause problems for wolf pet owners. Care in terms of their interaction with adult wolves will require some monitoring, maximizing human interaction with wolf cubs within the first four months of its life.
Doing away with adult wolf interaction would be difficult, since wolf pups require milk coming from a mother wolf. With wolf milk rich in arginine, milk substitutes won’t suffice for wolf cubs, and the lack of wolf milk is known to lead to the progress of problems such as cataracts.
In terms of their temperament and trainability, both wolf traits are not on equal grounds with domestic dogs, with wolves being more hot headed and more fickle to train. As pack animals, wolf instincts are bound by a feudalistic-like structure of alphas and betas too, and pet owners need to stay on top, or at least on equal grounds with a pack’s alpha.
Given all that, Dances With Wolves may have been popular, but is the movie’s popularity motivation enough to drive you to go out and get your own pet wolf?
True Wild Life | Wolf | The wolf is thought to be an ice age survivor, dating wolves around 300,000 years ago. The wolf is accepted to be the ancestor of the domestic dog as the wolf is thought to have selectively bred in order to breed appealing traits typical of puppies and to eliminate the not so appealing traits of adult wolves. The grey wolf is a highly adaptive animal found in all kinds of terrain. Wolves inhabit forests, deserts, mountains, tundras, grasslands and even urban areas with the wolf being a particularly dominant and ruthless predator within it's environment. They vary in color from pure white to pure black and every shade of brown and gray inbetween. At one time the wolf had the widest distribution of any mammal. The biggest wolves on earth live in Alaska and average 125-135 lb. One specimen was taken that weighed 200 lb. The smallest wolves live in Iran and average about 60 lb.
The wolf lives to be approximately 10 years old in the wild. Wolves live in packs that generally consist of the alpha male wolf, his mate the alpha female, and their offspring of various ages. Other wolves may also join, but it is the parents that are the leaders. The wolf has no real natural predators; their biggest threat is other wolf packs on adjacent territories. The wolf has been known to live up to 20 years old in captivity. Wolves are carnivorousanimals and generally hunt large animals but wolves will also hunt smaller animals if they are need of their daily meal. Wolves hunt together in their packs and work together as a team in order to catch and kill a large animal such as moose and deer. Wolves are opportunists and will not waste their energy chasing a healthy deer 10 miles when an injured or sick one is available. The native Alaskan peoples call the wolf the "wild shepherd of the caribou".
Wolves have a layer of thick fur which is particularly needed for those wolves that inhabit areas of the Arctic circle where it can be extremely cold. It is during the winter months in these areas that calories are most critical . Larger animals such as elk and deer suffer greatly from the cold and lack of food to eat and it is during this time that the prey of the wolf is at its slowest and therefore is easier to catch. Wolves are considered to be an endangered species today as wolves have been widely exterminated from their former ranges by hunting, poisoning, and trapping to procure their fur and to protect livestock. Wolves have also been severely affected by habitat loss and have been pushed into smaller and smaller territories where the food source may not be plentiful enough to sustain a hungry wolf pack and where heavy inbreeding occurs.
Wolves tend to mate in late winter to early spring and the wolf cubs are born are born a couple of months later when the weather is warmer and prey is abundant. The wolf cubs then have the rest of the year to grow stronger in order to be able to survive their first cold winter. Wolf cubs stay with their mother in the wolf pack with the male wolf cubs often leaving to form a pack of their own. Wolves can interbreed freely with dogs, redwolves, coyotes, and jackals to produce fertile offspring. This is a case of incomplete speciation. There are physical, behavioral, and ecological differences between these species, but they are fully genetically compatible. None of the animals in this group can breed with foxes, which are too far separated genetically.
Wolf howl is already a habit for him, howling wolf usually before and after the hunt, it is done to convey the alarm or to find each other during the storm or unfamiliar territory and to communicate at long distances. Howling consists of the fundamental frequency which may be located between 150 and 780 Hz, and consist of up to 12 tones harmonically related. pitch usually remain constant or vary smoothly, and can change direction as many as four or five times. Wolf from different geographic locations may howl in different modes; with European wolf howling far more protracted and melodious than the North American wolf, the howling that hard and has a strong emphasis on first syllable. They both understood each other, however, as North American wolf have been recorded in response to European-style howl made ​​by biologists.
Wolf howling is generally distinguished from a large dog. Male wolf voted through the octave, through a bass in with the emphasis on "O", while women produce nasal baritone modulated by pressure on the "U". Dogs almost never howled, while wolf howl over a year old resulted in a series of complaints such as dogs. Roaring used to calling friends pack to kill a long, smooth sound similar to the early cry of horned owl. When pursuing prey, they emit higher-pitched howl, vibrates on two notes. When approaching prey, they emit a combination of short bark and a howl. When the howling together, the wolf choir harmonize rather than in the same note, thus creating the illusion of there into a wolf more than there are actual. Lone wolf howling usually avoided in areas where other packages are present. Wolf howl in the weather did not respond to rain and when full.
True Wild Life | Arctic Wolf | The Arctic wolf is found in the most northern parts of the wolf's range, in the Arctic Circle. Arctic wolves mainly inhabit Northern Canada and Alaska, parts of Greenland and Iceland and Northern Europe. Arctic wolves are incredibly versatile and adaptive animals, able to withstand year round sub-zero temperatures. Living in the Arctic Circle, the Arctic wolf spends five out of twelve months in total darkness.
The Arctic wolf hunts lemmings, assorted rodents, and Arctic hare but will take larger prey like caribou when available. When the Arctic wolf wants to hunt musk ox, the pack will gather and work as a team attempt to isolate it from the herd and take it. An adult musk ox is simply too big for one Arctic wolf to try and take on alone. Although the Arctic wolf is generally smaller in size than the grey wolf, Arctic wolves tend to be bulkier than grey wolves with the male Arctic wolves also growing larger than the female Arctic wolves.
Normally, only the alpha male Arctic wolf and female Arctic wolves breed, but if a pack gets too large it may break up into new smaller packs giving others the opportunity to mate. Due to the Arctic Circle's uncompromising permafrost soil and the difficulty it poses for digging dens, Arctic wolves often use rock outcroppings, caves or even shallow depressions as dens instead.
Arctic wolf pups are born in litters of two or three in the months of May and June, meaning that the Arctic wolf pups are born about a month later than the grey wolf pups. Arctic wolves tend to be white with brown irises, unlike most other subspecies of wolves with yellow to amber eyes. White fur gives them camouflage in a snowy environment, and the darker irises give added protection to the eyes in a high glare environment.
True Wild Life | Red Wolf | The red wolf was roamed across the south-eastern United States from Texas to Florida to New York. The red wolf's historical habitat included areas of forest, swampland and coastal prairies where it would of been one of the top predators. Today however, the world's red wolf population is confined to a protected area in North Carolina. The red wolf is a medium sized species of wolf, found in the coastal marshlands of southern parts of eastern North America. By the 1970s the pure red wolf was thought to be extinct in the wild, but a population has since been reintroduced in North Carolina that is said to now be up to 100 red wolf individuals.
The red wolf is generally smaller in size than the grey wolf, found in more northern parts of North America. Red wolves are named for their cinnamon coloured fur, which is brownish-red with dark patches on their backs. Red wolves also have broad noses and large looking ears for the size of their head. In a similar way to other canines, and indeed other wolf species, the red wolf is a very sociable animal, living in pack with a number of other red wolf individuals. Red wolf packs usually contain a dominant male and female and their offspring and contain between 2 and 10 members. The red wolf is also a highly territorial animal, with the red wolf pack guarding it's range from intrusion by other red wolf packs in the area.
Although red wolves are known to hunt together as a group in order to catch a larger animal such as a deer, red wolves primarily eat smaller ground dwelling animals such as rabbits and rodents. Red wolves also eat birds, raccoons and other small animals. When trying to hunt a larger animal, the red wolf pack works together to confuse and corner their prey. In their historical range, red wolves were considered to be one of the most dominant predators within their environment, only coming under threat from larger canines such as grey wolves or the occasional coyote. Human hunters wiped out the red wolf population in large parts of their natural range, and the population was finally thought to become extinct primarily due to habitat loss.
Red wolves are usually able to reproduce by the time they are 2 years old and begin mating in the warmer spring months of February and March. The female red wolf gives birth to a litter of up to 10 cubs after a gestation period that lasts for around 60 days. Cubs are born blind and are nursed by the rest of the pack until they are able to hunt for themselves and either remain with their parents or leave to start a pack of their own. Today, the red wolf is no longer extinct in the wild since their reintroduction to North Carolina in 1987, and the population their is now thought to be just over 100 red wolf individuals. Nevertheless, the red wolf is still considered to be a critically endangered animal and is regarded as the 10th most endangered animal species in the world.
