This footage comes from Timothy Treadwell’s footage, which was part of the film called Grizzly Man. I don’t condone what he did with Alaskan brown bears. In fact, what he did was suicidal.
However, I was more impressed with his relationship with the red foxes. Alaskan red foxes have never been gunned over, trapped, or poisoned to the extent that wolves in all parts of the world have (even the High Arctic). These foxes, which are very common in Denali, are often seen begging food.
I think that the original wolves were very much like this. They had no real reason to fear people, and because wolves are far more social than foxes, they probably were much more willing to follow us around for food and companionship. As soon as we started gunning, trapping, and poisoning wolves, their whole nature changed. They have very low levels of serotonin, and they are quite aggressive with each other within their packs, much more so than domestic dogs are.
The Belyaev fox farm experiment showed that selection for tameness in silver foxes (a color variation of the red fox) resulted in animals with very high serotonin levels, high trainability, and neotenous physical features (including floppy ears, shorter muzzles, curled tails, and white spots). I think that with wolves, humans have also done some selection of a different sort.
Lewis and Clark report in their diaries how they killed a wolf with a knife, because it was “extreemly gentle.” They also report wolves, coyotes, and dogs sharing bison carcasses, something that would not happen with modern wolves. Further, their Newfoundland dog, “Seaman,” wandered freely, loosely attached to their expedition. If such a dog today were released in wolf country, he would be dead meat. This tells me that the original behavior of American wolves was much less aggressive (a sign of higher serotonin level) and less fearful than the modern representatives of that species.
What happened?
Just as we selected for tameness in the dog and Belyaev selected for tameness in the fox, we have, through our mass slaughter of the wolf, selected for animals that are very wary of each other. We have selected for high fear animals that also have low serotonin levels. I believe this is why modern wolves are so much more aggressive with each other (and domestic dogs) and so fearful of people. After all this slaughter, the only remaining wolves were those that were very fearful and wary, with very short critical periods for socialization and very low levels of serotonin.
In the fox farm experiment, all of these areas were reversed in those animals. They were not fearful. Their critical periods for socialization lengthened, and their serotonin levels were higher. These are the exact characteristics we have seen produced in domestic dogs.
We also know that the least gunned over wolves, those that live in the High Arctic, are far less aggressive with each other. They have few squabbles over kills. Further, Arctic wolf puppies can be socialized to humans without taking them from their mothers. They can be socialized while nursing from their mothers. However, this ability is not universal among Arctic wolves, largely because even these wolves have suffered some persecution. And they still experience it today in some parts of Canada.
Wolf domestication had to have been extremely easy. Our ancestors were probably like all hunter-gatherers. They were pet keepers. The hunter-gatherers of the Amazon keep pet bush dogs and crab-eating foxes, as well as pet tapirs, monkeys, giant otters, and jaguars. Most of these animals go wild as they mature. However, it possible that our hunter-gatherer ancestors would keep a wolf pup, and it would bone to the humans rather than want to wander off with its own species.
Adolph Murie kept a socialized wolf as pet during his studies of the wolves of Denali, which were chronicled in The Wolves of Mount McKinley. She became really bonded to people. She was a gentle animal that enjoyed playing with dogs and children. It is likely that dogs descend from wolves with her temperament, and wolves with her temperament were probably much more common before we started killing them in a large scale manner.
I think we love dogs, because somewhere in our ancient past, we once lived with curious and gentle wolves. These wolves now no longer exist in the wild. Once we began to raise sheep and other livestock, the wolf became an enemy of mankind. The result of our thousands of years of slaughter in the Old World and hundreds of years of slaughter in the New is that we have fundamentally changed the nature of the wolf. I don’t think it can return to that original nature, so we must manage what wolves we have left. (Note: managing wolves does not mean shooting them from airplanes!)
I know that what I have just posited here is largely speculative, but I think it is worth some inquiry by some official scientific research. I culled these ideas from the work of Raymond Coppinger and some historical sources I’ve read, including Mark Derr’s A Dog’s History of America, which does include Lewis and Clark’s journals about dogs and wolves.
I don’t understand the anti Palin helicopter shooting bit. If you’ve determined that wolves must be shot, then why is it wrong to shoot them from the air?
I assumed the criticism has to do with it not being sporting, as if any hunted animal knows that it’s “playing a game.”
Treadwell was a wackjob, but who wouldn’t want to do what he did… to the extent that he got to play with wild animals? If I had the money, I’d buy up several of those Russian bred foxes and start a domestic fox business here in the States.
I did some research on the current laws and many states have rules against foxes as pets, but from all appearances, these foxes would make better pets than most cats.
I’m against shooting them because it’s actually really touchy biology. She wants to reduce the wolf numbers to such a low level that the caribou and moose expand to much larger than the habitat can handle. Then you get the sport shooters lots of targets. In fact, she won’t increase Native Alaskan’s moose permits– they can only kill one. And yet she says the wolf shooting is for them. Yeah, right. It’s for people like Ted Nugent, the king of slob hunters, who’d really like for them to pen up the caribou for him before he shoots.
Shooting wolves from the air is illegal under federal law, and the only exception on this are very explicitly described by statute for conservation purposes. None of those species are endangered.
I also believe in what’s called “fair chase” in hunting, and shooting wolves from the air is more like warfare than anything like hunting. I’m not against wolf control, especially if they are killing livestock or pets. However, killing them just to increase revenues to a state that is largely propped up with our own tax dollars is a bit too much for me to handlen.
In my state, you cannot own a fox unless you have a fur farm permit. This does not apply to fennec foxes. You can own hundreds of those things, and the state won’t touch it. In fact, you could own a tiger or lion, too. The state law apply only to native wildlife. Well, is a red fox a native species to West Virginia? I would have to say no, but the state DNR says that they are and they won’t issue a permit, largely because of rabies concerns.
I’m not against shooting rogue wolves that kill dogs and cows. I’m against killing them as a subsidy to the trophy hunter slobs who give hunters a horrible name.
If you want to read about all the issues that have to do with wolf control, have a look at this book: http://www.amazon.com/Company-Wolves-Peter-Steinhart/dp/0679743871
He really lays out both sides of it, although the better science is generally against Palin and Alaska’s position.
Minnesota did have wolf controls set up when they were briefly taken off the endangered list (they’ve since been put back on), and these are more along the lines of what I’m thinking.
This is the first I have heard about wolves being supper aggressive with each other within a pack. Are we speaking of the ritualistic body language they use over food and the like? In the wild, true get you hurt aggression is a very expensive behavior. The consequenses of which would be the potential for death. (which is what makes it expensive) What is your source for this info?
Are we talking of a true in the wild wolf pack or behavior in a created and/or captive pack?
Captive packs. I agree that in the wild dominance displays are uncommon, because they are if they do it too much, they actually hurt pack cohesion. A really good compendium of wolf/dog behavior can be found in Merle’s Door, by Ted Kerasote, and it quotes all the peer-reviewed books.
In captive wolves, they are very aggressive with each other. Wolves also kill wolves that don’t belong to their packs. That’s what I’m talking about. Dogs can be turned out into dog parks without bloodshed, but you could never do that with most wolves. In Italy, there was a study of wolves and feral dogs. Both were scavengers, because there wasn’t much wild prey to hunt. The dogs were able to defend their positions on the dumps better because they were able to form much larger packs. (You can read that in Merle’s Door.) Merle’s door is also the source for the story about Wags the tame wolf and the sourcethe Yellowstone wolf bitch that made her pack more successful by not ruling with an iron fist.
But here’s some more info:
http://www.yellowstone-bearman.com/wolves.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=_mXHuSSbiGgC&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=mech+wolf+territoriality&source=web&ots=cNc33pqUf4&sig=MX10RXh6Jsdowx-mPCFgSWoACsk&hl=en&ei=Of-ISdHfBILqNPfotNQH&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result (that’s a Mech book)
I just wrote a piece on some misconceptions about dominance in wolf packs, but it’s more about dog training theory.
I am not going to post it in the comments, because I don’t really like to talk dog training on this blog.
A lot of the early wolf research comes from Rudolf Schenkel, who kept wolves that weren’t related to each other, and that is where we get a lot of misconceptions about how wolves behave in the wild. That said, they are more willing to show dominance displays with each other than most breeds of domestic dogs.
In my own breed, provided it is properly bred or socialize, almost never shows any of the typical dominance display behavior, even with its own puppies. And I’ve never seen a golden retriever fight or even snarl. Never. Of course, that may be changing as aggressive tendencies are becoming somewhat common in the breed.
[…] It is true that dogs haven’t made a major splash in the wolf’s genetic heritage. It’s very hard to get a wolf bitch to breed with a dog, even in captivity. However, it may have been more common in the past for reasons I’ve mentioned in earlier posts. […]