Information About Wolves – Wolf Habitat & Wolf Behavior

Wolf Facts on Arctic Wolves, Gray Wolves and definition of a Timber Wolf

Learn information about wolves, view pictures of wolves, read a fictional wolf tale, and browse wolf gifts.

Powerful, beautiful, fierce, are just a few of the words that come to mind when we think about wolves.

People have feared and revered the wolf throughout history.  Wolves were hunted to near extinction from people’s prejudices.  In modern times when people began to study the wolf, they were surprised at the closeness and friendliness of the pack to one another.  Our perception of the wolf has since changed.  Instead of fear, we now look upon the wolf with awe.  He is a powerful but beautiful creature and needs to be protected.

For our love of wolves, we have put together lots of information about wolves including wolf behavior, wolf habitat, and other interesting wolf facts.  We also have pictures of wolves including arctic wolves, gray wolves, and the Iberian wolves.  As noted in the sidebar, the timber wolf is not a subspecies of wolf.  Timber wolf is a term applied to all wolves that live in forested areas.

Pictures of wolves can be found at the bottom of this page.

Description Information About Wolves
* Wolves have erect ears, grizzled fur, a long slender muzzle, deep chest, long slim legs, and a busy tail usually carried horizontally.
* Some wolves are black.  These are not a separate species.  However, it is possible that some black wolves have a domestic dog in their ancestry.
* Arctic wolves can be white or cream as well as grizzled like gray wolves.
* The approximate height to the shoulder of wolves range from anywhere between 20 and 40 inches depending on the subspecies and region.
* The approximate weight of wolves range from anywhere between 40 and 170 pounds depending on the subspecies and region.
* The approximate length of wolves is 40-64 inches.
* The approximate length of a wolf’s tail is 12-22 inches.
* Wolves differ from dogs in that dogs have smaller teeth, shorter muzzles, broader foreheads, are generally less intelligent, and dogs have no scent-marking glands.  Dogs are also able to breed 2 times per year whereas wolves can only breed once per year.

Wolf Habitat
* Wolves were once the most widely distributed predator on Earth.
* Wolves live in a variety of habitats in the northern hemisphere.  Habitats include rugged uplands, forest wilderness, icy tundra, hot dry plains just to name a few.  Any subspecies of wolves which live in a forested area are generically termed as a timber wolf.
* There are wolf habitats in North America, Northern Asia, and Eastern Europe.
* The territory size of a wolf pack varies greatly.  Where food is plentiful, a territory may be as small as 20 square miles.  Adversely, where food is scarce, a territory may be as large as 1,000 square miles.
* In western Europe, the wolf is almost extinct.  Small populations of the wolf still live in Scandinavia, Spain, and Italy.  Most of the remaining 10,000 in Europe live in eastern Poland.
* Gray wolves and arctic wolves are still prevalent in Canada and Alaska.
* Gray wolves in the continental United States live in the Great Lakes region of northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and upper Michigan, and the Rocky Mountain states, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana.  Mexican gray wolves live in Arizona and New Mexico.

Population Information About Wolves
* There are currently about 130,000 wolves in the world.
* Canada easily has over 50,000 wolves living in the wild while the continental United States has less than 10,000.  Alaska may have over 10,000 wolves in the wild.
* In 2009, Yellowstone National Park reported just under 100 wolves living in the wild – http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/wolves.htm.
* Mexican gray wolves live in New Mexico and Arizona.  There are less than 100 still in existence.

 

“The wolf is neither man’s competitor nor his enemy. He is a fellow creature with whom the earth must be shared.” – L. David Mech

 

Breeding Information About Wolves
* Wolves may tend to breed with the same mate year after year, but they do not mate for life.
* A female wolf can mate only once per year and only for a duration of 5-7 days.
* The mating season of wolves can be anywhere from December to March.
* Prior to coming into heat, the alpha female wolf drives other female rivals away.  She is not always successful.
* The female wolf initiates courtship.
* The gestation period for a wolf is about 62 days.
* Wolves begin working on the den approximately 6 weeks after the female wolf conceives and about 3 weeks before giving birth.
* Shortly before giving birth, the female wolf retires to her den to birth her pups.
* Wolf pups are born in the spring.  Arctic wolves give birth about one month later than they gray wolf.
* It takes about 3 hours for a wolf to welp her pups.
* The number of wolf pups in a litter is generally between 4 and 7.
* In the first few weeks after the wolf pups are born, the mother nurses them 4 or 5 times a day while the pack brings her food.
* Wolf pups are born with blue eyes which turn gold at about 16 weeks.
* It takes a couple of weeks for newborn pups to be able to see.  By 3 weeks, the pups can see, hear, walk, chew, and growl.
* Wolf pups are weaned by 8 weeks and moved away from the den to a more open but safe area where they can play.
* Wolf pups are fed regurgitated food when they are weened.
* Wolf pups begin to join the hunt in fall.
* After the first year, wolf pups either take their place in the pack or leave to claim territories of their own.

Wolf Behavior
* Wolves are highly social animals.  They generally live and hunt in co-operative packs.
* A wolf pack consists of a breeding pair (alpha male and female), siblings or adopted members (subordinates), and pups which generally belong to the alpha breeding pair.
* The social status of the alpha pair and subordinates changes often.  Although the alpha pair tend to breed every year making it seem that wolves mate for life, this is not always the case.
* The alpha male wolf is not necessarily the most aggressive.  His rank is based on a number of factors which can include his ability to provide for and get along with his pack mates.
* The subordinates of the wolf pack help to rear the pups of the alpha pair.
* A wolf pack can be as small as 3 or 4 wolves or as large as 30 wolves.  Lone wolves are common too.
* Wolves howl at any time but they do so most often in groups, during winter, and at dawn or dusk.
* When wolves howl, they do so in a pack.  It is believed that they howl in order to proclaim their territory or communicate between packs.
* Lone wolves do not howl.
* Wolves are mostly active at dusk and night.
* Wolves eat in order of their hierarchy amongst the pack.

“If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf.”
(Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev – Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary from 1953 to 1964)

 

Food & Hunting Information About Wolves
* The wolf is a successful hunter due to his versatile hunting methods.  For example, one wolf may act as a decoy while others come from behind, they may tackle all at once, or they may split up.  Do they organize their hunts through communication or does each wolf act on his own while at the same time taking his other pack mates’ actions into consideration?
* Wolves can cover an area of 30 miles in a night’s hunt.
* Wolves evaluate their prey before attacking.  They are looking for an easy kill.
* Wolves are able to hunt prey as large as a moose or as small as a mouse.
* Wolves will tackle large prey by the nose or rump.
* The wolf’s prey dies from shock, blood loss, or disembowelment.
* A wolf may eat about 10 pounds of meat per day.  He needs at least 4 pounds of meat per day to survive.
* A wolf will scavenge as needed.
* Wolves also eat bugs, plants, berries, and carrion.
* Due to the scarcity of food, arctic wolves will eat every part of their prey including skin, bone, and hair.
* Wolves eat in order of their hierarchy amongst the pack.
* Wolf pups first learn to hunt by watching the adults.

General Wolf Facts
* Wolves are capable of withstanding extremes of temperature.
* Arctic wolves live on the arctic land mass, not on the ice.  Pictures of arctic wolves can be found at the bottom of this page.
* Arctic wolves lives in sub-zero temperatures for months at a time.  In the arctic, nighttime can last several months.
* A wolf can sprint briefly at over 36 miles per hour but uses stamina to wear down its prey.
* Wolves can travel 18 or more miles per day at a 4-6 mph trot.
* The life expectancy of a wolf can be up to 10-12 years in the wild, 20 years in captivity.  The arctic wolf lives an average of 7 years.
* Wolves have a sense of smell 100 times keener than people.
* Wolves have a sense of hearing 20 times sharper than people.
* The jaws of a wolf can exert a pressure of over 500 pounds per square inch.
* Wolves, dogs, and coyotes can interbreed.
* Wolves rarely attack people.

Information About Wolves in History
* Genetic studies have shown that wolves are dog’s ancestors.
* Wolves have been man’s enemy ever since man began to keep livestock.
* It is said that the founders of ancient Rome, Romulus and Remus, were suckled by a she-wolf.
* Theodore Roosevelt called the wolf “The beast of waste and desolation” and hunted wolves with Greyhound crossbreeds.
* Wolves were protected in 1973.
* Wolves were moved from endangered to protected in 2003.
* The wolf was put back on the endangered species list in 2008.
* Bush took wolves off the endangered species list again in 2009, in all states except Wyoming.
** This information about wolves in history is in progress. If you have more information on wolves in history, please Contact Us.

Information About Wolves in Mythology and Literature
* It is said that the founders of ancient Rome, Romulus and Remus, were suckled by a she-wolf.
* Fenrir in Norse mythology is the son of the Norse god Loki’
* Apollo, who is the Greek god son of Zeus and Leto and who is sometimes called the Wolf God, considered a number animals as sacred, including the wolf.  Wolves protected the treasures of Apollo.
* Native American mythology.
* Warewolves.
* Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, Peter and the Wolf, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, other fairy tales.
** This information about wolves in mythology and literature is in progress.  If you have more information on wolves in mythology and literature, please Contact Us.

Sources for the wolf facts that we found for this site include:
Wildlife Fact File
The Illustrated Animal Library
Wildlife Explorer
Wikipedia
“Wolves” by Candace Savage
“Wild Dogs” by Erwin A. Bauer
“Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation” by L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani
“Face to Face with Wolves” by Jim Brandenburg
These books and others are available at our Wolf Gifts Shop.

More Pictures of Wolves:

Arctic Wolves

                  Image: Evgeni Dinev / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Red Wolves

Iberian Wolf & Gray Wolf

More Pictures of Wolves

 

Portrait Pictures of Wolves

Art Pictures of Wolves

_______“Song of the North” by Dawn Ross                   “Wolf Eyes” by Dawn Ross

Graphic Art Pictures of Wolves

Graphic art pictures of wolves were clip art images from Corel Draw (exept the top right black silhouette wolf howling at the moon).

For more information, visit our Hub Articles at http://naturebydawn.hubpages.com/hub/Gray-Wolf-Habitat-and-Behavior.