Natural History

You’d be amazed at the exotic information information one can find on breeders’ sites.  Lots of people think their chosen breeds are somehow different species, and they tend to weave such bizarre lore about them that one wonders if any of it is true. The two best cases I can think of are the story that chihuahuas are derived from fennec foxes— based upon nothing more than possessing a superficially similar phenotype– and the desire for New Guinea singing dog fanciers to have their dog declared an entirely different species– based upon their supposedly unique howls and the fact that bitches scream when the males penetrate them.

But nothing compares to the “wolf breeder” site that Pai sent to me last night. I use “wolf breeding” in quotations, because as you will see, these “wolves” are quite interesting. First red flag, is that some of them are black and tan or have German shepherd masks. Others are long-coated, like a collie or Shiloh shepherd. Red flag two.  (Warning: this site plays annoying religious music.)

Now, you think that would be enough to discredit the veracity of the claims that these animals are actually wolves, but the information provided on the site is more than a little bizarre.

This person isn’t just a “wolf breeder.”  This person is a wolfaboo. What is a wolfaboo? Basically, a wolfaboo is someone who thinks wolves are so awesome that if you say anything negative about them, you are evil and want wolves to become extinct. Wolves are naturally gentle animals that live on rats and mice, which they kill only when hungry. Any evidence one provides that wolves may have killed people is derided as folklore or is blamed upon rabies or predation by dogs or wolfdogs.  The wolf is kind of like the noble savage myth. It is pure and natural, unlike dogs, which are poor substitutes for wolves.

This breeder shows off her wolfaboo sensibilities with this statement:

Wolves are not natural born killers, they only kill to eat. Since our wolves eat puppy food they have no need to hunt and so show no signs of aggression towards other animals. When a wolf shows signs of aggression towards a person all they really want is the person to stop what they are doing and go away. Some wolves that show signs of aggression may have been traumatized or they may have dirty blood lines or have been inbred, which will never be the case with our wolves.

Although I have written that some wolves can be as docile as domestic dogs, I don’t mean to imply that they all can.  The average wolf, especially one from modern populations, is too emotionally reactive for the average family to keep. When I say reactive, I mean aggressive at times. Even wolves that show no aggression towards adults in the family might be stimulated into predatory behavior by children. This also happens with some domestic dogs.

I also think it’s simply silly to say that wolves have never killed people. Wolves have killed people, though some of the claims made about their depredations have been exaggerated.  If you’d like to see examples of wolves hunting people, check out The Wolves of Paris, The Wolf of Ansbach, this fatal wolf attack in Alaska, and the story of child snatching wolves in India. The last two involved modern wolves of both the northern and southern wolf subspecies, which were pure wolf, rather than wolf hybrids.

This “wolf breeder” thinks that any time a wolf attacks someone, it’s because they are “inbred” (becoming like dogs) or because they are crossed with dogs.  Wolf hybrids can be quite aggressive, but they can be quite docile, especially if the dog content is really high and the dogs used in the cross are particularly docile. Pure wolves can be quite easily tamed and kept with people, but these are the exception rather than rule– at least now.

This “wolf breeder” thinks wolves are so nice that anyone can own one.

WE HAVE SOLD WOLF CUBS TO:

· Day Care Centers

· The Elderly

· People with kids that have ADD (the cubs calm them down)

· To the blind

· People in wheelchairs, so they can help them get things.

· The deaf

I don’t know if any of this is true, but one might create a successful relationship through selling a very docile German shepherd or German shepherd cross, even one with trace wolf ancestry, to some of these people. My guess is that selling a high content wolfdog or a wolf hybrid to a daycare center is probably an accident waiting to happen.

This “wolf breeder” also recommends these animals for long-haul truck drivers. Great idea!  “The wolf is kept fed by its feet, ” says a Russian proverb, which points to the simple fact that wolves like to range long and hard,  often traveling many miles in a single day. If these animals were wolves, they would be positively barmy after two or three hours in the cab of a truck. However, some lines of German shepherd and the Shiloh shepherd are noted for their calm behavior.

One wonders if some of the facts stated on this breeder’s site are even remotely true, for as we shall see, it gets even more bizarre than the information I’ve stated so far.

On another page on the site, the breeder states that wolves have some amazing adaptations:

Wolves can also hear about 6 miles away, smell about 4 1/2 miles away, jump and climb. You could be blocks away and they can still get to you in time. Nothing can stop them from coming to your aid to help you not even a chain. You are safe with a wolf, it is part of your family. It is like having a safe gun, it only goes off when it is necessary.

So a wolf can break a chain to save you!

But I thought they were never aggressive and never hurt anybody.

Wolves can hear up to six miles away, but I’ve not been able to verify if wolves can smell something four miles away. It is believed that polar bears possess the greatest olfactory abilities of any Carnivoran. They can smell seal carcasses from several miles away, but it isn’t clear if wolves have anything like their scenting abilities. Wolves are thought to be better at smelling and hearing than dogs are, but no one has empirically tested if this is so. If true, this could explain why wolves might have larger brains in proportion to their body sizes than dog. They need the bigger brains to hold all the “hardware” that comes with these increased sensory abilities. (One reason why humans in Northern Europe and the arctic have larger brains than those living in the equator that people living in northern latitudes had to survive the northern winters, which are quite dark. To survive in the darkness, these humans evolved larger eyes and larger brains that can process visual material. It has nothing to do with actual intelligence.)

But even if wolves can smell and hear from that distance, I don’t think they would be of that much use to save you from a dangerous situation. Pure wolves are notoriously bad guard dogs.

Strangely, this breeder thinks that ranchers should be getting wolves to guard their stock, when we all know that ranchers are getting large guard dogs to guard against wolves. This breeder claims that ranchers are buying her “wolves” for protection:

We have been selling to more ranchers lately because snakes, coyotes and vermin will not come around where wolves urinate. Since our wolves are raised on dog food they don’t kill to eat. In the wild they only kill when hungry. A hand raised wolf will not kill the owners stock, they see the animals as part of the pack. A wolf will not go in to another wolfs territory, so if you have a hand raised wolf around your cattle, no wolf pack will come in where your wolf urinates, it’s now your wolves territory. Your animals will be safe, I have seen this with my own eye’s over and over.

Well, that’s nice, but my guess is that most pure wolves would not be of any use guarding livestock.  They might be able to, but it seems to me that the would be more likely to kill stock, even if they were raised with them, than most domestic dogs. Because these “wolves” are low content wolfdogs or German shepherd crosses, I don’t really see them as being a major threat to stock.

However, these “wolves” have an even more amazing ability. Guard dogs can only keep the varmints out of your stock, but these wolves can take out the flies and “tics”:

Wolves could even take care of a fly and tic problems. A wolf has the ability to soak up moister through their skin. When the fly or tic get on the wolf the moisture is sucked out of pests which kills them.

These “wolves” are so amazing that they can suck the ticks to death! Either that or they are born with flea and tick treatment on their skins.

Now, if all of this wasn’t enough, you get a choice in what kind of “wolf” you can buy.

Yes. This breeder offers several different varieties of “wolf.”

Here are the varieties:

Mexican Gray: 25″ at shoulder 250 lbs

Tundra: 22″ at shoulder 150 lbs

Canadian: 26″ at shoulder 200 lbs

Mckenzie Artic: 30″ at shoulder 300 lbs

Look at those sizes!

No wolf in history has weighed 300 pounds. None has weighed over 200. Only one wolf in history weighed over 150 pounds, and that was a wolf that was killed in Alaska that weighed 176 pounds. It is very rare for even a large wolf to exceed 130 pounds.

Miley is 23″ at the shoulder, and she weighs 73 pounds. She’s a relatively large dog. The “Tundra wolf” this breeder is offering is roughly the same height at the shoulder as Miley, but it almost twice as much.

The 250-pound Mexican wolf is also a fiction, for Mexican wolves are one of the smallest wolf subspecies, weighing only 60 to 80 pounds– golden retriever-sized. However, this breeder thinks she is contributing to Mexican wolf conservation by breeding these so-called “Mexican wolves.” 

 

 

The government has reported that 2008 there are only 52 Mexican Gray Wolves remaining in the wild and at government facilities. We are trying to change this.

Yeah. Never mind that a whole line of Mexican wolves was euthanized because they looked like they might have some dog characteristics.  These wolves were deemed hybrids solely by appearance, and they were euthanized for that reason. These ‘wolves” really have very strong dog characteristics and are definite hybrids or dogs that look like wolves. Exactly how are these animals ever going to contribute to Mexican wolf conservation?

Oh. And did you know wolves are hypoallergenic?

I’m telling you these animals are magic.

The breeder claims that one of these “wolves” now lives with the trainer of the wolf in Dances with Wolves:

The lady that owns the wolf two socks,from the movie “Dances With Wolves” just bought a wolf from us, a Tundra male. She said that while they made the movie Kevin Costner and her slept outside with the wolves. Still to this date Kevin Costner visits her every now and then.

According to Christopher Landauer, who saw a behind-the-scenes commentary on the film, Kevin Costner didn’t like the wolf at all. He didn’t like trainer either. Of course, considering all the other exotic information on this site, what else would we expect?

My guess is that these “wolves” aren’t all that healthy. In a wolfaboo litany on another page, the breeder makes this admission:

WOLF HISTORY

The wolf is the lion of the North. They are called that because they are descendants from the same lineage as lions.

Their eyes are that of a lion brown color and a thick mane runs around their neck and down their back. Females have shorter hair than males.

They also have a cat-like bone structure. They can collapse and dislocate their joints.

They can climb, jump up to 6ft.(or higher) from a standing position and can run up to 40 mph.

Because they are 98% wolves they are not aggressive, but protective when needed. They have to be threatened or feel you are being threatened before they react.

When you hear of a wolf being aggressive, it is more than likely mixed with a dog. When you mix a wolf with a dog you pass on the aggressive traits, brain imbalance and the health problems of a dog.

What she’s actually saying is these wolves have joint problems, like hip dysplasia!  But they are healthier than dogs are.

Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

Of course, this person also thinks that dogs were created by inbreeding wolves. Actually, as a population, dogs retain 95-96 percent of the genetic diversity of the wolf. Dogs were created through inbreeding tamed wolves. The inbreeding in domestic dogs is really quite recent, something that has happened within the past 150  years. The idea that dogs have brain imbalances is part of the appeal to nature and noble savage-esque nonsense that is so commonly held by wolfaboos.

As to the ancestry of these “wolves”:

 

Our wolves are 98% wolf, the game and fish her in Texas have told us to say they can only be 98% or 99%. This is because if you say 100% then they are led to believe you took them right out of the wild, we received ours from other breeders..

The game and fish here know what we have, I can tell you they are 98% and 99% and them as such. I have to put down 98%, but if you know any thing about percentages, 98% is very close to the real thing it is all in how you raise them. They are first generation and second .. now saying 98% and 99% is not a enough. They say we have to say high bred so people will not call them. I say the nuts out there will still call no matter what.

My guess is that Texas will let you put down any percentage you want, but if you look at these “wolves,” they don’t look anything like 98 percent pure wolf.

After all, this person has made some dubious claims about the size of the “wolves” they are offering, and puppies are available now, which should tell you a lot. Wolves don’t have puppies any time of the year. Oh, I forgot, she calls them “cubs.”

So you can order 300-pound, black-and-tan wolf that will protect you and your livestock and will kill flies and ticks that land on it.  Damn. That’s a hell of a deal for a really magical animal. The lion of the North. Or maybe that’s the “lyin’ of the North.”

Some of these wolves are particularly fertile. One had 20 “cubs” last year.

And, of course, everyone wants a “wolf cub” sired by a “Mexican wolf” named “Poncho Via.”

So this is what happens when a wolfaboo gets into the puppy milling business.

It ain’t pretty.