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The alpha male and alpha female continually assert themselves over their subordinates, and they guide the activities of the group. The female predominates in roles such as care and defense of pups, whereas the male predominates in foraging and food provisioning and in travels associated with those activities.
Both sexes are very active in attacking and killing prey, but during the summer hunts are often conducted alone. Wolves communicate with one another by visual signaling facial expression, body position, tail position , vocalizations , and scent marking. Howling helps the pack stay in contact and also seems to strengthen social bonds among pack members. Along with howling, marking of territory with urine and feces lets neighbouring packs know they should not intrude. Intruders are often killed by resident packs, yet in some circumstances they are accepted.
Breeding occurs between February and April, and a litter of usually five or six pups is born in the spring after a gestation period of about two months. The young are usually born in a den consisting of a natural hole or a burrow, often in a hillside.
In times of scarcity, wolves readily eat carrion , visiting cattle burial grounds and slaughter houses. Problems playing this file? Metorchis conjunctus , which enters wolves through eating fish, infects the wolf's liver or gall bladder, causing liver disease , inflammation of the pancreas, and emaciation. In addition, the Mexican wolf Canis lupus baileyi was reintroduced to Arizona and New Mexico in I follow the WCC on Twitter nywolforg — and it always makes my day. The northern regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan are important strongholds for the wolf. Leptospirosis can be contracted through contact with infected prey or urine, and can cause fever , anorexia , vomiting, anemia , hematuria , icterus , and death.
A rock crevice, hollow log, overturned stump, or abandoned beaver lodge may be used as a den, and even a depression beneath the lower branches of a conifer will sometimes suffice. All members of the pack care solicitously for the young. The pups grow rapidly and are moved farther and more often as summer comes to an end.
In autumn the pack starts to travel again within its territory, and the pups must keep up. Most pups are almost adult size by October or November. After two or more years in the pack, many leave to search for a mate, establish a new territory, and possibly even start their own pack. Those who stay with the pack may eventually replace a parent to become a breeding animal alpha. Wolves that leave their packs are known to have traveled as far as km miles.
Gray wolves move and hunt mostly at night, especially in areas populated by humans and during warm weather. The main prey are large herbivores such as deer , elk , moose , bison , bighorn sheep , caribou , and musk oxen , which they chase, seize, and pull to the ground. Beavers and hares are eaten when available, and wolves in western Canada even fish for Pacific salmon. A large percentage of the animals that wolves kill are young, old, or in poor condition. After making a kill, the pack gorges consuming some 3 to 9 kg [7 to 20 pounds] per animal and then lingers, often reducing the carcass to hair and a few bones before moving on to look for another meal.
Biologists still disagree on the effect wolves have on the size of prey populations.
Wolves may kill livestock and dogs when they have the opportunity, yet many wolves that live near livestock rarely, if ever, kill them. The number of stock killed in North America is small but increasing as wolves expand their range. During the s average annual losses to wolves in Minnesota were 72 cattle , 33 sheep, and turkeys, plus a few individuals of other types of livestock.
Stock losses are higher in Eurasia. In some areas wolves survive only by killing livestock and eating livestock carrion and human garbage. Nonetheless, wolves usually avoid contact with humans. There have been few substantiated wolf attacks on humans in North America. Such attacks are unusual but have occurred in Eurasia and India and sometimes have resulted in death.
Wolves have few natural enemies other than man. They can live up to 13 years in the wild, but most die long before that age. Diseases and parasites that can affect wolves include canine parvovirus , distemper , rabies , blastomycosis , Lyme disease , lice , mange , and heartworm. In most areas of the world, humans are the leading cause of death for wolves. In areas of high wolf density and declining prey populations, the major causes of death are killing by other wolves and starvation. Pervasive in human mythology, folklore, and language, the gray wolf has had an impact on the human imagination and been the victim of levels of misunderstanding that few animals have shared.
Early human societies that hunted for survival admired the wolf and tried to imitate its habits, but in recent centuries the wolf has been widely viewed as an evil creature, a danger to humans especially in Eurasia , a competitor for big game animals, and a threat to livestock. Depredation of livestock was the primary justification for eradicating the wolf from virtually all of the United States, Mexico, and most of Europe. Wolves in the United States were killed by every method imaginable in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and by they remained only in the northeastern corner of Minnesota.
In the late 20th century, greater tolerance, legal protection, and other factors allowed their range to expand in portions of North America and Europe. Wolves are probably more popular now than at any other time in recorded history. In wolves from Canada were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho , and captive-reared Mexican wolves a subspecies were released to their former range in eastern Arizona beginning in At the beginning of the 21st century, an estimated 65,—78, wolves inhabited North America.
Some of the western states as well as Michigan and Wisconsin have smaller but recovering wolf populations.
Canadian wolves are protected only within provincial parks, whereas all wolves in the contiguous United States receive some level of legal protection by federal and state governments. Populations in southern Europe and Scandinavia are relatively small but are increasing. The Eurasian population probably exceeds , and is stable or increasing in most countries, and most afford the wolf some degree of legal protection. Worldwide, wolves still occupy about two-thirds of their former range. Although often thought of as wilderness animals, wolves can and do thrive close to people when they are not excessively persecuted and food is available.
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