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tealdeertamer:

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srsfunny:

Wolves React To Gamekeeper Who Had Been Away On Maternity Leave

“WHERE’S YOUR PUPPY! WE WANNA SEE YOUR PUPPY! DID YOU JUST HAVE THE ONE? DO YOU HAVE THEM WITH YOU? ARE THERE PHOTOS?”

I’m not a hundred percent positive but I’m pretty sure this is the wild life center where I visited wolves.

And the safety briefing included the question “So if you’re pregnant, do you want to know or not?”

Turns out there had been a bit of an awkward situation once where the keepers had casually mentioned a woman’s pregnancy in a group, and she herself didn’t even know yet. Turns out the wolves are excellent at telling if you’re pregnant and the keepers can tell based on their body language.  They get all odd and careful around pregnancy. (Even wolves knows that you have to take care of pregnant people.)

So they definitely knew she was pregnant.

And if I remember my BBC documentaries right, a wolf will leave the pack to give birth and introduce the cubs to the pack once she feels ready for it. And maternity leave is flexible but often around 6 months so they’re going “YOU WERE GONE FOREVER! WE WERE SO WORRIED! WHERE ARE THE CUBS?? WE HAVE TO GREET THE CUBS!!“ 

Also the two on her back are fighting over who gets to greet her first. Giving and receiving attention is a commodity that goes by hierarchy and if you don’t accept that there will be scuffles.. The wolf lying down next to her isn’t chill about her coming back, it’s just submissive to the other wolves and waiting for it’s turn to show excitement.

Now I can see why we domesticated these adorable jerks.

Can I just go off on a tangent about wolf behavior here? 

Quick note: This is what we best know on wolf behavior. Since we are not wolves, we do not know for sure. There are also a lot of misconceptions because most of what we claim is common wolf behavior is based off the behavior that we see in captive packs, and the Yellowstone pack. Not a great control group if you ask me. (@tealdeertamer was spot on with what the behavioral actions were with this captive pack though!)

Wolves, at least not Canis lupus occidentalis, do not leave the pack to have pups. The breeding female/s (sometimes both the alpha and other females of the pack breed – this is sometimes okay, sometimes not with the alpha pair, depends on the pack) have the pups in a prepared den. Soon after birth, other wolves have been observed helping with the pups in the den, although it’s the mother that feeds them milk (obviously). The primary role for the pack at this point is bringing food to the mother and feeding themselves. This is made slightly easier because wolf pups are born at the same time as ungulate calving season begins. Convenient. 

Pups get weaned off of milk when they’re between 5-10 weeks old, and are often seen playing outside of the den by the time they’re 5 weeks old. An adult is always watching them, though not necessarily the mother. When they’re around 8 weeks old, they get moved to a different location, called a rendezvous site. The main reason for moving to this location is that after 8 weeks of the pack staying in one spot, most of the ungulates are not near that spot and hunting takes far longer. They’ll move rendezvous sites multiple times in the process of raising the pups each year. Rendezvous sites are also safe places for the pups to roam a bit more freely. The pack continuously brings meat for the pups, and if they bring too much, the adults or pups will cache food in the area. This is an important time for the pups to learn how to live as a wolf, they spend a lot of time playing and trying to catch smaller prey, like mice and squirrels. It’s tough to be a wolf pup, only 50% make it to the winter. If they make it to the winter, they have a far higher chance of survival. They may disperse from the pack as young as 9 months old, but many wait 1-2 years before doing so, if they do disperse. Anyways, I could keep going but that’s the basics of pup raising.

Oh, one last thing! Our idea of there being set Alphas, Betas, and Omegas is being challenged by quite a few biologists, and I tend to agree. There are definitely alphas. These wolves tend to be the smartest, the wisest, the best leaders. I’ve found that it often has nothing to do with size. There definitely is a level of respect within packs for older members, and we’re beginning to see more and more that different members are good at different things, and the alphas know it and tend to delegate that depending on the task. For example: Alphas don’t always lead hunts. There often is one wolf that’s slightly better than the others at finding the herds and picking out the sick/dying animals within it. If that wolf isn’t one of the alphas, then the alphas have them lead. What I’m saying is, individual wolves have different strengths and weaknesses, and it’s not so much that alphas are always the best at everything, or that there are betas that are the second in command and the next in line to be alpha. There ARE wolves that tend to be more submissive. But this set hierarchy is far more common in captive packs, perhaps because there’s more permanence and less control over who joins and disperses. 

And who knows really, we could be totally off on what their behavior is and why. We aren’t wolves. We’re humans trying to relate animal behavior to our own behavior. 

Note: I’m not a wildlife biologist, nor have I officially studied under wolf specialists. But I have spent over 60 days tracking wolves, and I recently spent an hour talking with Washington State’s Wolf Biologist specifically on behavior within packs and hierarchies when I was relaying some important information I found on one of the packs with my tracking crew. I also referenced Mark Elbroch’s Behavior of North American Mammals guide to double check what I was remembering.