General Wolf Information

[Gina]

The North American Gray Wolf


The gray wolf (Canis lupus) also called the timber wolf, is the largest of about 41 wild species within the dog family, Canidae, of the order Carnivora. They range in size from 26" to 38" shoulder height, 39" to 80" in length (tip of nose to end of tail), and vary in weight from 57 to 130 pounds. Their coats may vary in color from grey to brown, from white to jet black.
They usually hunt at night and feed primarily on large hoofed mammals such as deer, caribou, elk, and moose, but sometimes eat berries, birds, beaver, fish, and insects. Animals that they kill are usually young, old, or otherwise weaker
members of their populations because they are easiest to capture. Most pursuits of prey range in length from 110 yds to 3.1 miles. Healthy wolves rarely, if ever, attack humans. Their range once covered most of North America. However, today only a few upper states and Canada have a wolf population large enough to maintain itself.


The gray wolf mates for life and lives in packs which can vary in size from 2 to over 15, but are usually from 4 to 7 wolves. The leader of the pack is normally the strongest male, who often determines when and where the pack will hunt, as well as other activities of the pack. Wolfpacks are formed primarily of family members and relatives. They may travel more often, and greater distances than any other terrestrial animal. Their territories may cover from 100 to 260 sq. mi, depending on the abundance of food and water. Territories may also overlap, although wolfpacks very seldom confront one another. Some wolves leave their packs to become lone wolves. Loners may start their own packs if a mate and a vacant area can be found.
Breeding season can vary from January in low latitudes to April in high latitudes. A wolfpack will alternate between a stationary phase from spring through summer and a nomadic phase in autumn and winter. The stationary phase involves caring for pups at a den or homesite. During summer, most movements are toward or away from the pups, and adults often travel and hunt alone. By autumn, pups are capable of traveling extensively with the adults, so until the next whelping season the pack usually roams as a unit throughout its territory in search of prey. Though often only the highest ranking male and female in a pack will breed, all members of the pack are involved in raising the young. Mortality factors affecting wolves include persecution by humans, killing by other wolves, diseases, parasites, starvation, and injuries by prey. Most wolves probably live less than 10 years in the wild.


**NOTE**This information was taken from www.cosmosmith.com/gray_wolves.html

[kenji]

Gray Wolf Subspecieses [/u]


<sup>Eastern Gray Wolf
(canis lupus lycaon)

A.K.A.: Eastern timber wolf

The Eastern gray wolf was the first subspecies in North America to be recongnized as distinct, in 1775, and it originally had the largest range of all the wolf subspecies in the New World. these wolves are physically distinct from other North American gray wolves, with grizzled brownish coats and lighter tan fur around their ears, though some individuals may be black or white. While they previously ranged throughout the northeasern United States as well as southeastern Canada, they are now confined mainly to densely forested or legally protected areas of their former range.

Arctic Wolf
(Canis lupus arctos)

Arctic wolves live chiefly above sixty-seven degrees north latitude, in a region covered for much of the the year by snow and ice, and they are supremely adapted for tehir surroundings. Their thick white fur both camouflages them in their snow-covered environs and keeps them warm in temeratures that can dip to seventy degrees below zero (-21 C ) They also have shorter muzzles and legs, and smaller ears than other gray wolves. Because the ground in the Arctic is frozen for most of the year, Arctic wolves often make their dens in caves, along out-croppings, or in shallow depressions rather than digging a den in the earth. Arcitc wolves prey mainly on musk oxen, Arctic hares, caribou, ptamigans, seals, and birds.

Great Plains Wolf
(canis lupus nubilus)
A.K.A.: buffalo wolf

This gray wolf subspecies is the one now most commonly found in the United States, and has a coat of grizzled gray, black, or buff. The Great Plains wolf preys mainly on white-tailed deer, moose, beaver, snowshoe hares, and samll mammals and birdsl; in the past, buffalo were among the prey animals of the Great Plains wolf. It formerly ranged throughout the United States and southern Canada, but with the decimation of the buffalo and the systematic eradication of wolves in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centureies, the Great plains wolf was eliminated in much of its range. It survived in small pipulations in the western Great Lakes region, and today the population has recovered in some states to the point that this wolf is listed as threatened rather than endangered, and is a candidate for compleate removal from the endagered species list in some areas.

Mexican Wolf
(canis lupus baileyi)
AKA: lobo

The Mexican wolf, the smallest North American wolf, is the most genetically distinct subspecies. Its coat is grizzled buff and salt-and-pepper gray, mixed with some red. This wolf originally ranged throughout Mexico and into the American Southwest, where it traditionally preyed upon white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, javelina, rabbits, and other small animals. The Mexican wolf is currently endangered; it as been reintroduced to the wild, in small numbers, in Arizona.

Rocky Mountan Wolf
(Canis lupus occidentails)
AKA: Mackenzie Valley wolf; Alaskan wolf

The Rocky Mountain wolf is the largest wolf subspecies native to North America, and has the coat of gray, black, white, or tan. It typically preys on bison, elk, moose, caribou, Dall sheep, Sitka black-tailed deer, mountan goats, beaver, salmon, vole, ground squirrels, and snow-shoe hares. This subspecies is perhaps best known as the wolf reintroduced to Yellowstone Natinonal Park and to areas in Idaho. Its historic range encompassed Alaska and wstern Canada, including the Aleutain Islands. The subspecies is no longer considered endangered.


Sorry for spelling mistakes. ^_^; I typed this from a book I own, aka: Wolves, Life in the Pack. I can get more on different subjects too from teh book. (:</sup>

[Gina]

Red Wolf Information



True to the animal’s common name, the red wolf’s coat is indeed reddish, though the fur shows considerable variation within that color range, from deep copper to a shade that can be described as strawberry blonde. The underbelly is often lighter, sometimes creamy, and the animal’s face and back may be marked with darker gray-brown or black highlights.
Some scientists regard the red wolf (Canis rufus) as either a subspecies of the gray wolf or perhaps a hybrid created by the interbreeding of gray wolves and coyotes. But efforts to delist Canis rufus as a species have failed, and it is currently classified as distinct from the gray wolf. In simpler words, it is listed as a completely different species, as distinct as the fox and the fish.
Smaller than the gray wolf but larger than the coyote, the red wolf typically stands twenty-eight inches (71.1cm) tall at the shoulder and weights between forty and eighty pounds (18.1-36.3kg). It measures, on average, fifty-five inches (139.7cm) from nose tip to tail tip, and its body is somewhat rangier than that of the gray wolf. The red wolf is described as more agile than its cousin, and has even been known to jump onto low tree branches.
The red wolf once roamed much of the Southeast, from Florida and Georgia west to Texas and along the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico into Missouri and Illinois, though it is now limited to sites in North Carolina and Tennessee, where populations have recently been reintroduced into the wild.
Not much is known about wild red wolf behavior and habits in the years before recovery efforts, as scientists took little notice of this species until the 1960s, when it was already on the verge of extinction in the wild. Red wolf behavior observed today may be influenced by environmental pressures and by the species’ undoubted history of interbreeding with coyotes.
Like gray wolf, red wolves live in packs, though the packs observed tend to be somewhat smaller than many gray wolf packs. It is not clear whether the red wolf’s limited population is a determining factor in smaller pack size, or whether red wolf packs simply tend to be more compact.
Nutrias, deer, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, and birds are the chief prey of red wolves, who have also been known to prey on domestic pets and livestock, though not in significant numbers. Their home range of the Southeast lacks the large ungulates of the north and the Great Plains, such as moose, elk, and buffalo, and this dependence on smaller prey may explain in part the smaller size of both the animals themselves and their packs.


From Wolves: Life in the Pack by Chris Whitt ©

-----------------------------------------

Wolf Family Life


Mating Relations

Wolves tend to be monogamous. They mate for life and if one partner dies the surviving wolf will likely look for another mate. However, at the same time as raising one family, some male wolves will mate with a second female and help raise her family too. Whether a wolf raises a second family depends on taking advantage of mating opportunities and a plentiful supply of food to sustain another female and her cubs. When mates and food are sparse, males and females are more restrained. In addition, as in human relations, wolf pairs sometimes split up. Like human relationships, wolf mating arrangements are flexible within certain limits.

Sexual Maturity

Wolves in the wild tend to breed at some point after their second year. Many females probably do not begin to raise their first family until they are four or five, possibly a reflection of the difficulty of gaining a mate and a territory to settle on.

Breeding Monopoly & Multiple Litters

Usually only the alpha wolves of a wolf pack breed (see Command & Control). The alpha wolves monopolise the breeding by discouraging and obstructing the other adults: the alpha male restricts adult males and the alpha female restrains adult females.

But a second female in the pack may also produce cubs in periods with plentiful food. She might be a daughter of the pack's alpha wolves and be mated by an unrelated male from outside the pack. Or she might be an unrelated incomer and pair with one of the alpha wolves' adult offspring. Either way her offspring are the alpha wolves' grandcubs. More rarely even three litters might be born to a pack in the same season.

However, the alpha wolves claim first choice of food for themselves and their cubs of the year when prey are hard to find. A female with an extra litter will then be unlikely to see her cubs survive.

Incest

Most adult offspring in a pack disperse (see Dispersal below), but others may remain with their pack well into sexual maturity. So this raises the question of incest and its deleterious consequences.

There seem to be opportunities for incest in a wolf pack. If a parent dies, might the vacant position be taken by one of the parent's offspring? Instead of dispersing, might a young adult challenge a parent and forcibly take the parent's place? The possibility also arises that two dispersing siblings might start a new pack together. Any of these options might be easier for a young wolf than to strike out alone in the hope of coming across a partner and finding a territory in the face of a hostile world.

Wolves are know to mate incestuously when they cannot meet new wolves. Incestuous matings occur when wolves are held in captivity. Wolves also mate incestuously where outbreeding is close to impossible on semi-isolated islands. The wolves on Minong (Isle Royale), in Lake Superior, have been closely observed for the last 50 years. Minong is only infrequently linked to the mainland by ice in some winters so its population of a few dozen wolves are isolated. Wolves on some Aleutian islands have also been observed in a similar position.

However, field studies find that alpha pairs are ordinarily unrelated and that their offspring rarely take their place. Given that the opportunities for incestuous relationships exist, yet are not usually taken up, it seems that wolves actively avoid incestuous relationships. The main behaviour by which wolves avoid incest appears to be dispersal (see below).

The Breeding Season

The mating season starts in the winter from about January and continues for roughly a month. Females come into oestrus at this time for five to ten days. Fertilised females produce cubs in the spring.

The time of breeding corresponds to the part of the year when hunting is easiest. Parents are therefore relatively well fed and in peak condition for the task of bringing up a family. Foetuses will be well nourished in the womb and cubs in the den may have ample food.

Onset of breeding activity relates to latitude. Wolves living geographically further north start breeding later than in southerly climes. Arctic wolves give birth as late as May to June. They also have fewer cubs on average than their more southerly neighbours.

Bonking & Birth

After the male ejaculates he turns around 180 degrees and faces away from his mate. But he cannot extract himself and the two remain joined in a copulatory lock for up to thirty minutes. The speculation is that this is nature's way for ensuring his sperm get a head start on their way along the fallopian tubes to fertilise the ova in the teeth of competition from other males who might sneak in a quick ejaculation. Copulatory locks are common in the canids.

Gestation lasts about 60 days. Five or six cubs are born on average, in early spring (April-May), but litter size can range up to eleven or so cubs. Their mother lactates eight to ten weeks. The cubs rely on her milk for their first month then are gradually weaned on regurgitated meat.

Pseudopregancy

A female in pseudopregnancy undergoes the same changes as in normal pregnancy, including preparation for milk production, but no foetuses develop because she has not been impregnated. Non-alpha adult females in captive wolf packs can be pseudopregnant each year. Therefore it is possible that wild-living female wolves also go through pseudopregnancies.

What is the point of pseudopregnancy? One or more pseudopregnant females in a pack might be advantageous for their mother, their pregnant alpha female. If she cannot suckle her cubs because she is sick, injured or dead, one of her adult daughters could take over suckling and the cubs would not starve. So pseudopregnancy might prepare adult daughters for surrogate motherhood. One venerable mother wolf was especially celebrated in the ancient world for her suckling propensities, being the stand-in mother of Romulus and Remus, the traditional founders of Rome.

Dens

Wolves give birth in the open when there is absolutely no cover. But being exposed to the elements their cubs are likely to die. So for the first six weeks after birth the cubs are usually reared in a den.

A den must be selected and prepared each breeding season to shelter the cubs and is commonly a hole in the ground, a cave or a crevice in rocks. But wolves make use of whatever they find in their environment, be it a hollow log, the roots of an up-turned tree or even an abandoned beaver lodge high and dry. Wolves dig their own den or take over a den from another species, expelling any resident foxes, coyotes, or other animal, and enlarge the den as necessary.

A wolf pack may occupy the same den each year, sometimes for several years in a row. Some wolf dens are known to be at least generations old and substantial rock dens may be occupied by wolves for centuries. Wolf dens can also be very transient. Wolves in the Arctic, if they are not lucky enough to find a more protected den, cannot dig in the ground because it is so frozen and have to make do by clawing out a shallow hollow.

More than one den may be used in the course of a breeding season. In that case the mother carries her cubs one at a time to the new den. If the cubs are older, she leads them with the whole pack travelling together in single file to their new site.

Cub Care

Cubs cannot maintain their body heat for their first three weeks of life, so their mother must stay with them in the den the whole time to keep them warm with her own body heat. This is why giving birth in a den tucked away from the elements is so important.

Having a mate is also essential for a nursing mother wolf. She cannot leave the den to hunt or her cubs may chill and die of hypothermia. So she is dependent for food on her mate and any other adult wolves in the pack. She stands little chance of raising her cubs alone should her mate die and there are no other pack helpers.

Wolves take great care of their cubs. Both parents share in the task of raising them. And their adult offspring who are still with the pack, the cubs' brothers and sisters, are devoted to the cubs, taking as much care of them as their parents do. All the wolves bring the cubs food from the hunt, play with them, guard them from danger and generally tend to them. When the cubs grow up they may also help care for the next generation their parents bear.

Cub Growth

Wolf cubs reach full size within 12 months of birth or at most after 24 months. This is accomplished by increasing their birth weight, roughly half a kilogram (a pound), about 60 times over. But at birth they can only squeak and are born blind and deaf. After two weeks their eyes open and after three to four weeks they begin to hear and their milk teeth break through their gums. They are physically strong for their size and can crawl about and struggle with each other for the best teats to suckle. Their large eyes and short muzzle on a soft round furry body arouse in humans feelings of cuteness and of kindness towards them, and probably does in wolves too.

In the cubs' fourth week their mother begins to venture out of the den to get food for herself. At about this time the cubs emerge from the den and begin weaning on regurgitated food brought back by the pack's adults from their hunts. When the returning adults approach the den, the cubs rush at them excitedly expecting food. Cubs can get a second helping from food-bearing wolves if they eagerly pester them by licking the adults' mouths, as this stimulates regurgitation.

By five weeks of age, when the adults set off on a hunt, the cubs scurry along behind them a little way before eventually giving up and returning home. At eight to nine weeks of age the cubs are fully weaned and weigh about 7-10 kg (15-20 lbs) - the weight of a large portly domestic cat. Their ears, snouts and bodies stretch out as the cubs begin to lose their rounded looks and resemble the adults more. The cubs are now old enough to accompany the grown-ups, although they are not yet ready to take part in hunts. Finally the whole pack abandons the den for a rendezvous site.

Rendezvous Sites

The juvenile cubs leave their den and follow the adults to the area where they are presently hunting and a temporary den is set up for the cubs there. This den is the wolves' so called rendezvous site. It is where the hunting wolves return from their trips to bring food for the waiting youngsters. It has the advantage of being closer to wherever the adults are hunting, which can be over 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the original den, so that returning to the cubs is easier. Sometimes the wolves on a hunt call the cubs to their kill if it is substantial, like a moose, rather than dismember and carry the pieces miles to the cubs. This place might then turn into a new rendezvous site.

The wolves typically make a rendezvous site where there is some cover, like a thicket, boulders or an opening in the ground, so long as it is big enough to accommodate all the cubs. One of the adults watches over the cubs at the site while the other adults are away hunting. The cubs explore their surrounds and the site gradually fills with their scats, chewed bones and worn down trails leading all around. At other times the cubs sleep or doze on top of each other to keep warm while waiting for the returning hunters.

When the adults set off on a hunt, the juveniles tag along as far as they can before giving up and going home. Eventually they manage to keep up with the adults all the way. This is when they start taking part on the hunt and abandon the rendezvous site. A late developing or sick cub, however, may be left behind. An adult will bring the cub food from time to time, but visits drop off as the pack hunts increasingly further away and the cub will die unless he can make good.

Dispersal

A pack cannot increase in size forever. And young adults need to find mates. So young wolves must disperse. It is through dispersing individuals finding mates that a wolf pack avoids inbreeding, how a wolf population maintains its genetic diversity by reshuffling its genes, and how wolves colonise new distant places.

Most offspring leave home before they are two years of age. A few might leave as young as nine months. Almost all are gone before they are three years old. The exception is if a parent dies or is displaced and an offspring takes over that position.

Dispersing wolves depart in all directions but leave their pack as solo adventurers. Several wolves in North America have been recorded moving anything from just a few kilometres (going just 'next door') up to 160 kilometres (100 miles) from their natal packs. But one wolf in Alaska logged 700 kilometres (435 miles) and another wolf in North America, who perhaps takes the record, covered 880 kilometres (550 miles). All these are straight-line distances. The wolves doubtless travelled at least twice as far taking into account twists, turns, ups and downs and backtracking.

Whether To Disperse

Whether a young wolf decides to stay or leave the pack depends on the interplay of several factors. An important determinant is wolf density and, related to it, the availability of vacant space for a territory. In a region saturated with wolves there will be no free space. Young wolves may make forays into the surrounds or make more sustained efforts but fail to get a foothold somewhere and return home. If accepted back they may postpone leaving home again until the situation changes.

Prey availability is another important element. When food is limited the parents insure their cubs of the year feed before their older offspring get their fill. Their grown offspring then have a strong stimulus to leave the pack and fend for themselves if they are to get enough food. This feeding order was well made by David Mech in his book The Wolves of Denali. He inspected the remains of four wolves trappers had caught. As they were trapped in the same part of his study area they were presumably from the same pack: an adult male, two cubs and a yearling. The former were well covered with fat but the yearling was scrawny.

Lone Wolves

What happens to dispersing wolves who cannot find a mate and territory? What happens to them if they do not return home? What happens to them if they return home but are rejected by their former pack? They become 'lone' wolves, not living in a pack but surviving on the edge of established wolf pack territories, waiting until conditions improve for them.

Lone wolves keep out of the way of resident packs, they risk being killed by them if they do not, while at the same time try to find enough food to live on. Many dispersing wolves are unsuccessful and simply die - like seeds scattered in the wind falling on stony ground. Lone wolves have low survival rates. In any wolf population some five to twenty percent of wolves are lone wolves.