About wolves

How long have wolves been around ?

Wolves in their present form have been around for a little over a million years and first appeared in Asia near the beginning of the last great ice age. Since then, they have spread around the world and divided into a number of sub-species which include (with human intervention in the form of selective breeding) the domestic dog.

How many are left in the wild ?

Worldwide, there are about 150,000 wolves left. The largest populations are in Canada and the far north of the former USSR. There are smaller, stable populations in the Northern states of the USA and some eastern European countries including Poland and Rumania. China has around 6000 wolves and there are several hundred in the gulf states.

How big is a pack ?

Wolves normally live in packs of anything up to ten individuals with most members of the pack being related to each other. Larger packs only tend to occur when severe winters draw more animals together. Even in the worst conditions though, packs would seldom include more than twenty to thirty individuals. Within a pack there are two hierarchies; one for the males and one for the females. At the head of each is an 'alpha' ('top dog') animal. It is the alpha male's job to defend the pack's territory against other wolves whilst the alpha female is the one most likely to breed and lead a hunt.

How big is a wolf ?

Sizes vary between sub species. The largest are the arctic wolves which can weigh up to 80 kg or more. Other sub-species tend to average anywhere from 23 to 45 kg with females usually weighing in at around three quarters the weight of a male of the same sub-species. Heights also vary slightly; the tallest are again, the arctics standing about 75 cm high. Other sub-species tend to be anything up to 15 cm shorter.

Do they really eat people ?

No. Wild wolves today are shy and cautious creatures and will almost never approach humans closely. On the rare occasions that they do, they are usually much too cautious to attack a human being deliberately although there have been a few recent recorded cases of wolves which have become habituated to tourists, wandering into campsites and attempting to steal sleeping bags or food. There are also a few recorded cases of wild wolves in extreme and unusual curcumstances attacking lone human beings. In general though, many of the accounts of wild wolf attacks upon humans are nothing more than myth and the majority may be attributed to wolves suffering from rabies or having been deliberately habituated to humans (dumped pets). For centuries, wolves have been deliberately used as scape-goats and blamed for all kinds of injury, death and mayhem amongst both livestock and people. In many primitive communities, baby-dumping, loss of livestock through carelessness, theft or dog-attacks and even outright murder have all traditionally been covered up by blaming wolves. Although exact figures are not obtainable, it is certain that throughout history, many more people have been eaten by cannibals - humans - than by wolves. Even if you hike alone through the farthest reaches of wolf-country, you are much more likely to be struck by a meteorite or get home and find that you have won the national lottery than you are to be attacked by a wolf.

Why are people so afraid of them ?

Humans and wolves coexisted for hundreds of thousands of years in Europe and Asia but almost nothing is known about what kind of relationship there may have been between our two species. By analogy with the native American culture, it is reasonable to guess that our hunter-gatherer ancestors probably respected and admired wolves for their hunting skills and co-operative abilities. The fact that all dogs probably share a common wolf-bitch ancestor at a time around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago - at the start of the last ice-age - indicates that mankind probably had some kind of intentional relationship with wolves.

The change came with the melting of the ice at the end of the last ice-age about 12,000 - 15,000 years ago. Humans gave up their hunter-gatherer way of life and began growing crops and keeping livestock. From that time up until around 250 years ago, western civilisation survived by farming and mankind toiled hard to wrest a living from the soil in the face of uncertain weather, war, predation and the twin tyrants, starvation and disease. Up until the industrial revolution in western Europe, almost everyone lived directly off the land and most of the few who didn't were only one step away. In a sense, everyone was a farmer - and wolves are a major agricultural pest species. In the west, it's difficult for us to imagine living day by day only one step away from death by starvation and disease but in a society that close to the edge, anything that represents as much of a threat to peoples' livelihoods as wolves do is going to get a bad reputation. It must not be forgotten that for many people living in those distant ages, the onset of winter would spell death for themselves and their families if a fox killed their chickens or a wolf killed their cow.

To add fuel to an already substantial fear, there would have been occasional, horrifying attacks on human beings by rabid wolves - rabies being one of the few things that can cause a wild wolf to attack a human being. Such attacks, unpleasant enough in actuality, would have been exaggerated and the associated fear woven into the cultural baseline in myth and phobic, cautionary tales.

To keep the argument in perspective, it has to be said that conditions in post Roman and mediaeval Europe were heavily conducive to wolf predation, both of livestock and occasionally, human beings as well. The sparse human population, poor, ignorant, never free of debilitating disease and poorly armed against the wolf, frequently made matters worse by turning upon itself in bloody battles. Fields strewn with dead and dying soldiers would have made rich pickings for wolves in times of hardship. It is quite possible that having scavenged human corpses the wolves may have grown bold enough to finish off a few of the wounded as well and from there, the occasional wolf may have graduated to trying its luck with the odd stray child or diseased or crippled adult.

To many people, already brought up in cultural traditions of fear and loathing of the wolf, their reputation for 'turning' at the age of sexual maturity when kept as pets would have been the final confirmation of their infernal reputation. Many a kind-hearted soul throughout history has rescued wolf pups in one way or another and attempted to bring them up as house-pets, mistakenly thinking that they would behave like dogs - only to find themselves exposed to the full gamut of the wolf's territorial and hierarchical behaviour as the animal reaches sexual maturity. Such relationships normally finish up with the 'owner' being disappointed and frustrated and finally (usually around 2 years of age) turning the animal out or having it destroyed.

By the time Christianity began to spread throughout the Mediterranean and Europe the reputation of the wolf was irretrievably tarnished. It would have been natural for the early Church, eager to ingratiate itself with and control the peasant populations, to make friends by espousing the hatred of a common enemy and to identify it conveniently with their own perceived enemy, Satan. Once that step had been taken, wolf-hatred had crossed from folklore to religion and we read of the torture and execution over many centuries of tens of thousands of people in Europe as suspected werewolves.

When Mediterraneans and Europeans colonised America, they took with them their whole pre-industrial revolution cultural and religious baggage including the whole wolf-phobia psychology and folklore. That is why traditionally, ambient American attitudes to the wolf have been mostly negative.

Throughout much of the developed world, wolves are now an endangered and in many places, extinct, species. Persecution continues, fuelled by little more than tradition, myth and superstition and excused under the broad aegis of agricultural self-defence. It is important not to confuse persecution with hunting. Hunting does not necessarily imply hatred of the quarry species or the desire to eradicate the species by any and all methods. Persecution implies - and is motivated by - both. The methods employed against wolves in many places where they are in conflict with man are often so extreme, cruel and merciless that most civilised people would not want to hear them described. In most such places, wolves are not even accorded the status and protection of game animals; indeed, they are not even treated as living creatures at all; they are treated as inanimate trash to be destroyed in bulk - adults and cubs alike - at any time and by any method which a) kills them and b) amuses the person doing the killing. It is a sad fact that in many places, people who inflict near indescribable cruelty upon wolves are treated as local heroes in a war against the wolf. Elsewhere, such activity would earn the perpetrators nothing but committal to psychiatric care.

Where agriculture is concerned, the wolf is, today, mostly the victim of lazy farming practises and tradition. In most places, livestock shepherding techniques which once held the wolf at bay quite adequately have long since been discarded and replaced by the 'cheap' option of eradication and many western farmers believe that zero loss of livestock by predation is a) achievable and b) some kind of natural state or even a birthright. Until those and other false expectations change, wolves will continue to be driven to extinction wherever human beings can reach them.

How many sub-species are there ?

At least twenty but nobody is quite sure. This is because wolves adapt easily to all kinds of environments and (in evolutionary terms) quickly form stable, locally distinct populations. Until recently, all such local variants were assigned to separate sub-species with North America alone claiming 24 sub-species. Recent reclassification has reduced the total global number to around twenty but debate continues about the validity of some of them. (Only five sub-species are officially recognised now in North America)

What do they eat ?

Mostly meat. Their ability to co-operate as a pack gives them the ability to hunt animals far larger than themselves such as elk, bison, musk ox and deer; their choice of prey is the outcome of a rather complex process of compromise. Their choice is influenced by two factors: 1) They prefer to take the prey they are most used to taking 2) They prefer to take prey that they like eating unless something else is very much easier to catch and they are very hungry. The interplay of these considerations explains the sporadic nature of attacks upon cattle in areas where wolves come into contact with livestock. It is not true that wolves will automatically attack sheep or any other livestock which they encounter because they are 'easy prey' although it is true that given enough exposure, they may eventually get around to it and having succeeded once will probably try again. In summer and autumn, wolves will often eat fruit and berries. Vegetation is of no use to them however as their digestive system cannot make cellulase - the enzyme needed to break down plant cell walls and release the nutrients inside.

How long do they live ?

Cub mortality is very high with predation by bears and birds of prey accounting for many young animals. The average life span of a wolf is therefor around six months. If a wolf survives into adulthood then it may expect to survive until it is around seven or eight years old although some will survive into their early teens. In captivity, most wolves survive into their teens and there are a few records of some living as long as twenty years. For adult wolves the main causes of mortality are territorial disputes with neighbouring packs and injuries sustained during hunting large prey.

When are the cubs born ?

In the wild, usually, only the alpha female will give birth to cubs. Contrary to conventional wisdom, these will usually be fathered by either the alpha male or the beta male - and once in a while, by any other male which the female happened to fancy at the time. It is only in captivity that the alpha male is the only one to mate. Frequently, another female may give birth to cubs at the same time but the alpha female will often attempt to kill the cubs of any other female. There are however plenty of instances of the alpha female adopting, pooling or swapping cubs with other females and of other females adding the cubs of the alpha female to their own litter. Wolves are flexible and adaptable in their behaviour. A young female will usually give birth to only one or two cubs but a mature, older animal may have as many as half a dozen. The mating season is mainly February but may be up to a couple of weeks later in colder climates and a couple of weeks earlier in warmer ones. The cubs are born 63 days later, blind and deaf and weighing about half a kilogram.

How many wolves are there in Britain ?

There are no wild wolves in the British Isles. The last one was shot in Scotland in the mid seventeen hundreds at the height of a pan-European frenzy of wolf-hatred and superstition. Wolves were extinct in southern England as early as the fourteenth century.

Are there any plans to reintroduce them in Britain ?

The environmental group 'Trees For Life' has recently called for the re-introduction of wolves to Scotland to control the burgeoning red deer population and it is generally considered that the highlands could probably support a small population of up to about 200 wolves. EU Habitat and Species Directive, article 22 requires governments to study the possibilities of reintroducing species which were once native but are now extinct and Recommendation 17 of the Bern convention also calls for the re-introduction of wolves. Any re-introduction to Scotland would have to be the subject of an investigation by Scottish National Heritage but that organisation has shown no intention of mounting any such investigation. If wolves were to be re-introduced to Scotland then the process would have to be accompanied by a coherent and long-term government policy of public education, management of the wolf population and compensation to farmers for any livestock losses.

Where did dogs come from ?

Until recently, it was widely assumed that dogs evolved as a result of numerous crosses with various canid species, including cape hunting dogs, jackals and even hyenas. These theories were disproved by a global genetic study of dogs and wolves conducted in the 1990's by the Smithsonian Institute. The study showed that dogs are directly descended from wolves and the domestic dog was reclassified from 'Canis Familiaris' (Friendly canine) to 'Canis Lupus Familiaris' (Friendly wolf). The common ancestor seems to have occurred somewhere between 25,000 and 100,000 years ago. Wild theories still prevail about exactly how wolves became domesticated but few of them stand up to logical examination in the light of what is now known about wolf behaviour. One thing is certain; humans did not simply steal wolf cubs and raise them themselves. Apart from the difficulty of feeding and caring for the cubs with their special nutritional needs, the outcome of this would have been an adult animal which was at best a nuisance and at worst a dangerous menace. Wolves came to us - or allowed us to co-habit with them - voluntarily. We know that this process is possible because it was common until recent times for members of various Native American tribes to approach, play with and even occasionally live with wolf packs. Wolves, left to their own devices, are fascinated by human beings and seem to enjoy our company. In an age before we had systematically terrorised them, they would hardly have needed much encouragement to accept us as friends. However, given the practical difficulties of co-existing with wolves, friendly or otherwise, it seems likely that there may have been some natural behavioural alteration which arose in some sub-species of wolf - possibly the Dingo or some close relative - which then went on to team up with us and become dogs. The first archaeological evidence of close habitation with humans and deliberate breed selection dates from around ten to fifteen thousand years ago - roughly the end of the ice age. Nothing is known about what breeds of dog may have been around before that but several modern breeds seem to have been deliberately created at around that time, although their form will have changed somewhat since that time.