Behaviour Of Wolves Dogs And Related Canids by Michael W. Fox

Author:Michael W. Fox [Fox, Michael W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Dogwise Publishing
Published: 2011-05-19T07:00:00+00:00

Fig. 4(a) Ambivalent aggressive display of male wolf to rival male; his female is in heat, and she (b) solicits the strange male outside the pen

According to our observations of captive wolves, and those of Murie and others of wolves in the wild, the wolf is a gregarious animal that lives in socially organized packs of ten or twenty adults, juveniles, and cubs. These packs are substantially exclusive and endogamous; the animals breed, whelp and rear offspring within the pack. In spite of the fact that there may be several adults of both sexes in a pack, mating is often limited to one pair per season. This is a regulation of population numbers which comes about as a result of the social structure. Furthermore, many of the adults co-operate in raising the offspring of a single mother. By a process of socialization these offspring become integrated into the adult social organization as they mature.

We observed a remarkable constancy of social relationships among adult members of our captive pack, in which interactions between the various members of the group and the behaviour of the majority of the group with respect to individual members indicated a relatively stable social organization. The stability of the system was maintained in spite of the natural changes created by the maturation of young and their emergence into the adult society. Observations made in the wild in Mt. McKinley National Park and on Isle Royale had indicated that wolf packs maintain their integrity by the forceful exclusion of individual wolves which are not part of the pack. However, small groups of wolves from the same pack may occasionally separate themselves for periods of over a year and can then come back to re-form the old group. Thus we approached the experimental investigation of the social behavior of individual wolves with the supposition that the wolf must have a remarkable capacity to form social bonds which probably require considerable time and experience, but that, once formed, they are relatively resistant to change (p. 83).

He also (1968) reports that:

We have found that young wolves do not become fully integrated into the adult social organization until their third season. Prior to this time, their interactions with the other members of the pack are generally inconsistent with respect to threats and submission, allegiances to members of their own sex, and preferences for members of the opposite sex. This is less true during the second season than the first; i.e. the integration is progressive. During their first season and to a lesser extent during the second, they are extremely fearful of events outside the display area and, as a result, spend a considerable amount of time within the confines of the subterranean den. They participate only occasionally in the activities of the adult members of the group such as greeting ceremonies, attacks on lower ranking members, and mating activities. When they do participate in these activities it is not in the typical adult manner.

Two-year-old animals are capable of producing offspring; however, when older adults are present two-year-olds have only rarely been observed to mate.

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