42 Facts About Gray wolves

Single Gray wolves or mated pairs typically have higher success rates in hunting than do large packs.

Wolf attacks on humans are rare because Gray wolves are relatively few, live away from people, and have developed a fear of humans because of their experiences with hunters, ranchers, and shepherds.

Gray wolves classified the domestic dog as Canis familiaris, and the wolf as Canis lupus.

Studies using paleogenomic techniques reveal that the modern wolf and the dog are sister taxa, as modern Gray wolves are not closely related to the population of Gray wolves that was first domesticated.

In more recent times, some male Italian Gray wolves originated from dog ancestry, which indicates female Gray wolves will breed with male dogs in the wild.

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Female Gray wolves tend to have smoother furred limbs than males and generally develop the smoothest overall coats as they age.

Older Gray wolves generally have more white hairs on the tip of the tail, along the nose, and on the forehead.

Apart from those Gray wolves which are pure white or black, these tones vary little across geographical areas, although the patterns of these colours vary between individuals.

In North America, the coat colours of wolves follow Gloger's rule, wolves in the Canadian arctic being white and those in southern Canada, the U S, and Mexico being predominantly gray.

Habitat use by Gray wolves depends on the abundance of prey, snow conditions, livestock densities, road densities, human presence and topography.

The variation in diet between Gray wolves living on different continents is based on the variety of hoofed mammals and of available smaller and domesticated prey.

Prey in North America continue to occupy suitable habitats with low human density, the Gray wolves eating livestock and garbage only in dire circumstances.

In North America, incidents of Gray wolves killing coyotes are common, particularly in winter, when coyotes feed on wolf kills.

Cortisol levels in Gray wolves rise significantly when a pack member dies, indicating the presence of stress.

Except out of desperation, Gray wolves tend to avoid hunting on the fringes of their range to avoid fatal confrontations with neighbouring packs.

Aggressive or self-assertive Gray wolves are characterized by their slow and deliberate movements, high body posture and raised hackles, while submissive ones carry their bodies low, flatten their fur, and lower their ears and tail.

The age of first breeding in Gray wolves depends largely on environmental factors: when food is plentiful, or when wolf populations are heavily managed, Gray wolves can rear pups at younger ages to better exploit abundant resources.

Mother Gray wolves do not leave the den for the first few weeks, relying on the fathers to provide food for them and their young.

Single Gray wolves or mated pairs typically have higher success rates in hunting than do large packs; single Gray wolves have occasionally been observed to kill large prey such as moose, bison and muskoxen unaided.

Once prey is brought down, Gray wolves begin to feed excitedly, ripping and tugging at the carcass in all directions, and bolting down large chunks of it.

Viral diseases carried by Gray wolves include: rabies, canine distemper, canine parvovirus, infectious canine hepatitis, papillomatosis, and canine coronavirus.

Infected Gray wolves do not show any fear of humans, most documented wolf attacks on people being attributed to rabid animals.

Bacterial diseases carried by Gray wolves include: brucellosis, Lyme disease, leptospirosis, tularemia, bovine tuberculosis, listeriosis and anthrax.

Some Gray wolves carry Neospora caninum, which can be spread to cattle and is correlated with bovine miscarriages.

Metorchis conjunctus, which enters Gray wolves through eating fish, infects the wolf's liver or gall bladder, causing liver disease, inflammation of the pancreas, and emaciation.

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Infections by the tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus in ungulate populations tend to increase in areas with high wolf densities, as Gray wolves can shed Echinoccocus eggs in their feces onto grazing areas.

In Mexico and parts of the southwestern United States, the Mexican and U S governments collaborated from 1977 to 1980 in capturing all Mexican wolves remaining in the wild to prevent their extinction and established captive breeding programs for reintroduction.

Since 1980, European Gray wolves have rebounded and expanded into parts of their former range.

In Tantric Buddhism, Gray wolves are depicted as inhabitants of graveyards and destroyers of corpses.

Farley Mowat's largely fictional 1963 memoir Never Cry Wolf is widely considered to be the most popular book on Gray wolves, having been adapted into a Hollywood film and taught in several schools decades after its publication.

Human presence appears to stress Gray wolves, as seen by increased cortisol levels in instances such as snowmobiling near their territory.

In Croatia, Gray wolves kill more dogs than sheep, and Gray wolves in Russia appear to limit stray dog populations.

Fear of Gray wolves has been pervasive in many societies, though humans are not part of the wolf's natural prey.

Indian Gray wolves have a history of preying on children, a phenomenon called "child-lifting".

Cases of rabid Gray wolves are low when compared to other species, as Gray wolves do not serve as primary reservoirs of the disease, but can be infected by animals such as dogs, jackals and foxes.

Incidents of rabies in Gray wolves are very rare in North America, though numerous in the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Bites from rabid Gray wolves are 15 times more dangerous than those of rabid dogs.

Rabid Gray wolves usually act alone, travelling large distances and often biting large numbers of people and domestic animals.

Unlike with predatory attacks, the victims of rabid Gray wolves are not eaten, and the attacks generally occur only on a single day.

Theodore Roosevelt said Gray wolves are difficult to hunt because of their elusiveness, sharp senses, high endurance, and ability to quickly incapacitate and kill a dog.

Gray wolves'storic methods included killing of spring-born litters in their dens, coursing with dogs, poisoning with strychnine, and trapping.

In Kazakhstan and Mongolia, Gray wolves are traditionally hunted with eagles and falcons, though this practice is declining, as experienced falconers are becoming few in number.