What is a fully socialised wolf

Wild wolves are naturally shy and cautious creatures. In Europe they have been persecuted by man for millenia and in the USA they have received the same treatment since the European settlers arrived there. The result in both cases has been selection for traits of extreme shyness and fear of humans.

Those traits are so deeply rooted that even wolves held in captivity for many years and through many generations still exhibit them. The Anglian Wolf Society considers that it is inhumane to keep wolves in captivity without habituating them to human company and relieving the animals of the stress which such company causes.

To habituate wolves to human company we use a socialisation process which involves sleeping with and bottle-feeding the cubs. This is the only process which successfully removes their debilitating fear of us and leaves them capable of not only tolerating but actually enjoying human company. It is a precise, scientific process and there is no margin for error or guesswork. It was pioneered by Erich Klinhammer at Wolf Park in Indiana in the 1970's and is now widely known (although frequently inexactly applied, with less than satisfactory results).

Some say that this process alters the nature of the animal but that is not so. When we socialise a wolf to human beings all we take away is their fear of us; everything else remains unaltered. Thankfully, a wolf is a wolf is a wolf and nothing we can do can change that.

When we strip away wolves' fear of us by socialising them, we reveal their nature as it was before man took it upon himself to inflict wholesale terror and slaughter on the species. In discovering their underlying nature we find that wolves are, contrary to myth, not arbitrarily aggressive or bloodthirsty. They are instead sociable and intelligent creatures with an elaborate and effective system of social rules designed to enable them to live as peacfully as possible with each other. Even more interestingly, we find that they have a natural affinity with human beings; we fascinate them and they willingly seek our company. This behaviour is not a result of coercion or behavioural manipulation but a natural trait born of the animals' intelligence and the similarity of the social psychology of our two species. Socialised wolves both seek and enjoy social contact with humans as much as with their own species. Fully socialised wolves know that we are not wolves but having lost their fear of us, they regard us as friends and treat us as wolves. It is only in being treated as a wolf by a wolf that we see the true nature of the animal.