Do Wolves Experience Mid-Life Crisis?

No, that kind of pointless angst is reserved for intellectually over-indulgent species like humans.  But, contrary to common myth, wild wolves don’t necessarily live hard and die young either. Doug Smith, Yellowstone Wolf Project leader at the Yellowstone Center for Resources was recently quoted in Minnesota Daily;  “Through mythology and fables, we want wolves to be a certain way and that is supremely good at killing,” he said. “It turns out they’re subject to the same problems we’re subject to. You get old quick.”

 Science Daily reports:

Although most wolves in Yellowstone National Park live to be nearly six years old, their ability to kill prey peaks when they are two to three, according to a study led by Dan MacNulty and recently published online by Ecology Letters.

As is the case with human beings, physiology appears to be an important factor.  Wolves need to have speed, strength and endurance to hunt successfully – and these qualities diminish with age.  This leads to some interesting economic parallels between our world and the world of the wolf:

When older wolves can no longer hunt successfully, younger wolves share their kill with them, in what MacNulty describes as a lupine version of Social Security. While a high ratio of old-to-young wolves may benefit elk, it could strain the wolf population because there aren’t enough workers to support retirees.

Montana legalized hunting wolves after they were removed from the endangered species list in 2007. Although hunting is prohibited in the park, packs wander beyond it boundaries and radio-marked wolves have been killed. MacNulty says hunting won’t put the species at risk, but it actually skews the population towards younger wolves, which could mean more deaths, not fewer, for the elk.

As quoted in BBC News MacNulty notes that aging in wild animals has (surprisingly) been a controversial subject:

“Although the effects of aging on physical performance in humans are well-known, the effects of aging in wild animal populations have been controversial,” says Dr Daniel MacNulty of the Michigan Technological University in Houghton, US.

“Many eminent biologists have argued that ageing rarely occurs in nature, because animals do not live long enough to exhibit its effects.”

“My study refutes this notion as well as demonstrates that aging may have important ecological consequences in terms of how a wild population uses its environment,” he says.

Wolves are brilliant cooperative hunters. Younger pack members supply speed and endurance to the chase - and older ones the wisdom they’ve acquired over years of experience.  I look forward to seeing more on how hunting affects the balance of old versus young members of wolf packs and how that, in turn, affects populations of their prey species.  If young wolves help feed older ones, and if wolves only kill what they need to eat, I’m not clear on exactly how a higher percentage of young pack members acts to decrease elk populations.  Intuitively it would just seem to mean that the young wolves don’t have to work as hard to feed themselves, and if hunting pressure continues to keep wolf numbers stable it isn’t obvious (at least to me) that elk numbers would be greatly affected. 

I’d also like to know more  about what kinds of wolves hunters look for. Tropy elk are pretty easy to identify from a distance, but it can’t be easy to get close enough to a wolf to tell its gender or, in many cases, its age.  Do hunters typically look for the biggest wolf, the one with the nicest pelt - or the easiest one to take down?   And how do ranchers who want to limit predation fit into the equation? 

It seems that today I’ve got more questions than answers.

Tricky

Hat tip to Southern Rockies Nature Blog for a link to the story of a very lucky unlucky gawd, I don’t know what to call it coyote who rode across California in the grill of a car.  According to KRCA:

Daniel East and his sister, Tevyn, were travelling at about 75 mph along Interstate 80 when they saw some coyotes running nearby. One of the coyotes ran in front of the car.

 ”Right off the bat, we knew it was bad,” Daniel East said.

 They said they kept driving because they thought they had killed the animal, so there was no point in stopping.

Well yeah, ’cause of course the best thing to do after you hit a defenseless animal on the road is just keep on truckin’.  After all, who’d want to stop and have to deal with all that suffering and blood and stuff.

And of course it makes perfect sense to wait eight or ten hours until you reach your destination to even check for damage to your car.  I wonder, did they have a full tank when they hit the coyote or did they just studiously avoid looking at the grill of their car on pit stops?

Imagine the surprise chagrin clueless confusion when they arrived at the art colony they were headed for and found a live coyote trapped in the engine compartment of the car.  To their credit, East and his sister called Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release after they found the coyote. 

The coyote was taken to the rehabilitation facility. It remained there until Thursday, when it managed to push up the steel at the bottom of a kennel to free itself, Crowell said.

 It hasn’t been seen since.

 ”We named it Tricky for a reason,” Daniel East said.

Somebody’s tricky here, I’m just not convinced it’s the coyote.  I’ll bet he was convinced that those tricky humans had just wedged him into a slightly larger trap

East told reporters that the coyote only had a few scrapes on its paws.  I hope that information came to him from the folks at the wildlife center because SRSLY -  How can a man who can’t tell there’s a live coyote wedged in the engine compartment of his Honda possibly diagnose a lack of broken bones and internal injuries in a panicked wild animal just by looking at it?

Check out the slide show at this link

Around the Web

First a thought-provoking article in the New Yorker comparing football and dog fighting by Malcolm Gladwell.  Here’s an excerpt, go here to read the rest:

In a fighting dog, the quality that is prized above all others is the willingness to persevere, even in the face of injury and pain. A dog that will not do that is labelled a “cur,” and abandoned. A dog that keeps charging at its opponent is said to possess “gameness,” and game dogs are revered.
In one way or another, plenty of organizations select for gameness. The Marine Corps does so, and so does medicine, when it puts young doctors through the exhausting rigors of residency. But those who select for gameness have a responsibility not to abuse that trust: if you have men in your charge who would jump off a cliff for you, you cannot march them to the edge of the cliff—and dogfighting fails this test. Gameness, Carl Semencic argues, in “The World of Fighting Dogs” (1984), is no more than a dog’s “desire to please an owner at any expense to itself.” The owners, Semencic goes on,

understand this desire to please on the part of the dog and capitalize on it. At any organized pit fight in which two dogs are really going at each other wholeheartedly, one can observe the owner of each dog changing his position at pit-side in order to be in sight of his dog at all times. The owner knows that seeing his master rooting him on will make a dog work all the harder to please its master.

This is why Michael Vick’s dogs weren’t euthanized. The betrayal of loyalty requires an act of social reparation.
Professional football players, too, are selected for gameness. When Kyle Turley was knocked unconscious, in that game against the Packers, he returned to practice four days later because, he said, “I didn’t want to miss a game.” Once, in the years when he was still playing, he woke up and fell into a wall as he got out of bed. “I start puking all over,” he recalled. “So I said to my wife, ‘Take me to practice.’ I didn’t want to miss practice.” The same season that he was knocked unconscious, he began to have pain in his hips. He received three cortisone shots, and kept playing. At the end of the season, he discovered that he had a herniated disk. He underwent surgery, and four months later was back at training camp. “They put me in full-contact practice from day one,” he said. “After the first day, I knew I wasn’t right. They told me, ‘You’ve had the surgery. You’re fine. You should just fight through it.’ It’s like you’re programmed. You’ve got to go without question—I’m a warrior. I can block that out of my mind.

KFOX New Mexico reports that marijuana was found in several bags of dog food.  And no, this isn’t another product recall:

A drug-sniffing dog alerted U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to the trunk of 2009 Peugeot. CBP officers opened the trunk and found large bags of dog food, but when they opened them up, marijuana was found inside.

 CBP officers removed 30 marijuana-filled bundles from the dog food. The drugs weighed 31 pounds. A drug-sniffing dog alerted U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to the trunk of 2009 Peugeot. CBP officers opened the trunk and found large bags of dog food, but when they opened them up, marijuana was found inside.

A disturbing case of animal neglect reported on LocalNews 8 an eleven-pound stray dog in St. Anthony, Idaho had nine and a half pounds of matted hair removed from its body by a local vet.

However, police in St. Anthony say the owners of the matted dog Tuesday will NOT be charged with animal cruelty.

St. Anthony Police Chief Jim Smith says the owners are not mentally capable of understanding any charges facing them.

“You pass by the house where we found the dog and it’s surprising that people even live there it’s so run-down,” said Smith.

The dog, now appropriately renamed “Matt” is reported doing well after the mat-ectomy.  St. Anthony police are looking for ways to help his owners because according to the chief of police, “the dog’s situation mirrored that of the owners.”

Dog Tagging

We heard about a disturbing new trend in gang violence from a story published on BakersfieldNow earlier this month:

OILDALE, Calif. — A puppy was recently found tagged with red spray paint in an alley off Chester Avenue.

The puppy was found across from Sam Lynn Ballpark with the letters “O-A-E” sprayed on her side and a red strip sprayed down her back.

Michelle Lyon met the puppy Tuesday night when her neighbor brought her home.

“It’s appalling,” Lyon said. “We have so many animals dumped all the time, and we have so many graffiti problems in this area, and now we have them both in the same thing.”

Some people who live in the area where the puppy was found said this is the new trend in gang tagging. They said they see dogs and cats walking around with spray paint on them all the time.

Those residents spoke on condition of anonymity, because they said they fear the gang members responsible for the graffiti. They said the gang members tag animals to mark their territory.

Officials with the Bakersfield Police Department and the Kern County sheriff’s and animal control departments said they’re unaware of the problem. They said, however, that they wouldn’t expect to hear about it because of the fear of gangs.

Graffiti is as old as the written word and it’s a common sight in cities all over the world.  And dealing with problems like graffiti is a part of life for people that live in neighborhoods plagued by gang activity.  But until recently -  living creatures weren’t targets for these assaults defacement.

According to Alex Alonso (Gang Graffiti on the City Landscape), gang graffiti functions as a way to communicate sentiments, express group identity, and to dictate rules of their socially constructed places.  Alonso states:

Those who understand these spatial conquests of the landscape are able to identify the social and spatial order of a community. This even applies to non-gang youths of an area, who take it upon their own initiative to understand and respect these socially claimed places in an effort to safeguard themselves and to stay clear of gang conflict.

Imagine having gang members tag your pet with the signs they use to mark their territory.  Claiming a living member of your family as part of their turf.   The unfortunate people – and animals – who live in areas afflicted by gang activity live in a constant state of fear.  Threats and violence are a regular part of their daily existence.  It’s like living in a war zone.  And the problem is just getting worse…

The US Department of Justice reports:

Twenty years ago, fewer than half our cities reported gang activity. A generation later, 95 percent of our largest cities and 88 percent of smaller cities suffer gang-related crime. Eighty-nine percent of all cities recently reported that their gang problem was the same or getting worse. In one recent year, gangs committed more than 580,000 serious crimes.

These crimes exact a toll of tremendous physical and emotional pain from individuals, families, and entire communities. We are learning more about gangs and their activities, but know little about the individuals whose lives they so quickly and tragically change–the victims and survivors of gang violence. These victims face additional, special problems not confronted by most other crime victims.

There is one bit of good news in this story.  The tagged puppy, who was a stray, has found a new home.  But, like many other cities, Bakersfield’s gang problems continue to escalate.

Kern County – NO Exceptions in Dog Licensing

KGET News reports a story of dog spies animal control officers run amok.

A Bakersfield woman says she has been hounded by county animal control officers to license her dog. Funny thing is, the pooch officials were so concerned about is a stuffed animal.

Dottie Elkin lives by herself in a quaint home in south Bakersfield. For the past few months the 83-year old says she’s hated getting the mail, due to letters she’s receiving from the Kern County Animal Control Department.

“I told them I do not have a dog, it’s a stuffed dog,” Elkin said.

That’s right, Elkin has a stuff [sic] “guard dog” named Wolf, keeping watch at her front door. For the last six months she’s been getting letters from animal control asking her to license the dog or face a $200 fine.

Apparently animal control officers were cruising local neighborhoods trolling for revenue searching for unlicensed dogs when they spied Wolf sitting in Elkin’s doorway.  In classic bureaucratic style, they immediately started sending letters threatening to fine her if she didn’t license the dog immediately.  And they continued to send these letter for six months – even after she informed them that they had made what they now refer to as a “legitimate mistake”.

Video of the story is posted on MSNBC.  How in doG’s name did these morons get close enough to the “dog” to see that it wasn’t wearing tags without noticing it was a freaking stuffed dog!!!   Apparently Kern County officials have a very different understanding of the word “legitimate” than I do…

Heavy Metals Detected in Dog Toys

Several news sources today reported on recent testing conducted by Washington Toxics Coalition that found elevated concentrations of potentially toxic metals like lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury in a quarter of the pet products they tested.

The government has not set any standards for hazardous chemicals in pet products.  Some researchers use recommended levels for children as a substitute because pets and small children crawl around on the floor and put products into their mouth potentially exposing them to higher levels of surface contaminants.  Standards for these metals set by ASTM F963-07: Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety are 90 ppm for lead, 75 ppm for cadmium and 60 ppm for mercury in children’s products.   

The Washington Toxics Coalition’s press release states:

• 25% of the 400 pet products tested had detectable levels of lead.
• 7% of all pet products tested had lead levels greater than 300 ppm – the current Consumer Product Safety Commission standard for lead in children’s products.
• Nearly half of pet collars had detectable levels of lead; with more than one quarter exceeding 300 ppm.
• Nearly half of tennis balls tested had detectable levels of lead. Tennis balls intended for pets were more likely to contain lead, while the sports tennis balls tested did not contain lead.

The results can be found on the user-friendly website: http://www.healthystuff.org/departments/pets/. You can look up products by manufacturer, brand, or product type.

Or, you could have chartered a private flight

Image from padraicyclops' flicker page

Or (Hebrew for light) is a truly pampered pooch.  The eight-year-old boxer’s owner recently booked the entire business section on a Paris to Tel Aviv flight so that he could ride in the cabin with her.  USAToday reports:

The woman said her dog experienced extreme anxiety after being placed in the cargo hold on their last flight together, which was in 2006. For this trip, she is quoted by UPI as saying she thought it would be a better idea just to buy out the entire business class section so that she and the dog could enjoy the four-hour flight together. As for El Al, the airline allows pets in the passenger cabin, though it’s unlikely that a full-grown boxer would fit within the size requirements for that in a typical situation.

Flying dogs on airlines really stresses me out. It stresses me out enough that husband and I, who rarely travel without dogs, drive even on long cross-the-country trips. That said, even if I had 30-odd thousand dollars to spare, I don’t think I’d use it to charter an entire section on a passenger flight for the beasties to share with us.

I am surprised that the airline allowed her to do this.  Though given that that the airline was El Al, I’m sure there were plenty of security-related hoops for Or to jump through.  I wonder if a private charter flight would have been a cheaper option…

They Came for the Bassets

These days the media seems to be filled with stories of dogs seized from puppy mills, dog fighting operations, animal hoarders and abusive homes.  Millions of average pet owners across America read these stories with a mixture of outrage against the animal abusers and pity for the abused animals. Relieved that the unfortunate animals were saved from a terrible fate, they move on to the next story, never considering that there might be more to the story than meets the eye…

I doubt that any of us thinks that we’re an animal abuser.  While ideas on owning and raising dogs are at least as wide-ranging (and deeply emotionally driven) as those on rearing children, most of us feel that our ideas fall well within the mainstream and that we have little to fear from animal rights legislation. But if we remain content to sit back - silent and uninformed - will we find that our dogs are next in line to be seized?

The idea is not as far-fetched as you may think.  Today, Never Yet Melted (go and read it all!) reports that:

The sort of people who go in for basseting are typically well-educated, upper middle-class animal lovers of a preparatory school sort of background. In other words, absolutely the last sort of people imaginable as dog abusers or law breakers.

But neither gentility nor middle-aged respectability was sufficient to protect the Murder Hollow’s master Wendy Willard from a full scale raid by Philadelphia police, nor did it prevent 13 hounds from being taken from their kennels and turned over to a private animal rights organization hostile to hunting.

At night, and without warning the SPCA of Pennsylvania showed up at raided Wendy Willard’s kennel and seized the dogs under the aegis of a newly passed law that allows no more than twelve animals to be kept on any property in Philadelphia County (note if they had just given her a chance it appears that Willard may have been able to get a waiverthat would allow her to keep her dogs).  Not only were the animals turned over to (i.e. given away to) a private entity – some of the hounds seized were reportedly the property of another person and were only being kept at Murder Hollow temporarily.  Apparently the jack-booted AR fanatics of the PSPCA didn’t give Willard a chance to explain that.

The dog seized have now been spread out among several local shelters and rescue groups (in other kinds of cases – do the police make a habit of giving seized property away?). Neither the dogs’ owners or other area basset pack owners have been able to get any information on the dogs’ location or welfare.

It may be a natural reaction to feel smugly self-rightous when we hear stories about dogs seized from those kinds of  people (i.e. the ones whose practices we don’t happen to agree with) but it’s time to wake up and smell the dog poop.  If a yuppie suburban basset fancier with no criminal record whatsoever isn’t safe from having her beloved dogs seized without notice - none of us is. 

The goal of many of these raids – especially those featured prominently in the media – have nothing to do with animal welfare.  I’m willing to bet dollars to dog toys that the hounds of Murder Hollow were healthier and happier than most over-fed, under-exercised suburban pets.  The goal is the kind of publicity that fills the coffers of ‘humane’ groups who lobby for anti-pet legislation and don’t operate shelters.  And the long term the goal is animal rights - and the end of all pet breeding and ownership.

It’s time. Time to take lobbying power away from the animal rights extremists who want to chip away at pet ownership until it’s gone.  Time to tell our legislators and representative that animal seizures must be conducted in ways that preserve our rights – not as publicity events.  That protecting the animals seized includes considering the possibility that they might be returned to the home they were taken from – and that, as with other seized property, this consideration needs to be given precedence.  (I don’t understand why these kinds of seizures aren’t prohibited under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment – perhaps someone out there can educate me?)

UPDATE: Here’s Walt Hutchens post re this from Pet-Law. (Walt says all his posts can be cross-posted.)

Ms. Willard was raided by the PSPCA and police due to a first time noise complaint, and told that unless she released 11 of her 23 hounds to them they would seize them all, under a new 12-dog-limit city ordinance.

As my friend Shirly posted over at YesBiscuit:

I have no way of knowing the full facts of the case or whether the post making the rounds is accurate. But to my mind, even if we totally discount it as fiction, the scenario is at least plausible which is what concerns me most.

Exactly. I’m a huge fan of respecting the law.  But even if Ms. Willard was not in compliance with zoning regs, didn’t have a kennel license – or even if she had a filty, nasty, disgusting kennel – she did not deserve to have her dogs, in effect, stolen from her.  The right thing to do, if this was indeed a first time complaint – was to cite her and give her a reasonable time period to come into compliance with the law.
 
This is happening more and more and it scares the crap out of me.  There but for the grace of God…

UPDATE AUGUST 10, 2009:

See new blog posts at Terrierman’s Daily Dose; Stephen Bodio’s Querencia; Never Yet Melted, Philly.com and YesBiscuit and the news story published by The Philadelphia Daily News - and make up your own mind.

BSL Now!

Hordes Herds of vicious animals around the world are attacking and killing people with increasing frequency.  It was reported in today’s New York Times – the threat is real.  These savage creatures often attack from behind and frequently single out disabled people as their victims.

In 16 cases, “the animal was deemed to have purposefully struck the victim,” the report states. In 5 other cases, people were crushed against walls or by gates shoved by the cattle. Ten of the attacks were by bulls, 6 by cows and 5 by “multiple cattle.” A third of the deaths were caused by animals that had been aggressive in the past.

All but one of the victims died from head or chest injuries; the last died after a cow knocked him down and a syringe in his pocket injected him with an antibiotic meant for the cow. In at least one case the animal attacked from behind, when the person wasn’t looking. Older men with arthritis and hearing aids have the highest risk of being injured by livestock, the report says, probably because they don’t hear the animals charging and can’t move fast enough to get out of the way.

It’s time to end the madness. People, we need Bovine Specific Legislation – and we need it now!

Did you know:

• Bovines are cowardly beasts who will attack you from behind.
• They preferentially attack older people with arthritis and hearing aids.
• Some bovines have locking horns - once you’ve been gored you can not remove them!
• Bovines are inherently aggressive animals. They have been selectively bred to fight.
• When enraged – they will even attack motor vehicles.
• Bovines are notoriously difficult to train.
• They often attack when frightened.
• Millions of bovines are allowed to roam off leash and unattended on National Forest, State Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands where they terrorize hikers, hunters and fishermen.

Along with the dozens of bovine-related fatalities that occur worldwide each year, many people are also severely injured – even permanently handicapped – by bovine attacks.  The threat posed by these vicious animals is unacceptable. To deal with the threat we propose the following:

• Bovine creatures must be kept muzzled and leashed hobbled or safely confined in sturdy box stalls labeled with appropriate warning signs.
• All bovines must be spayed / neutered and those with a history of aggression should be immediately slaughtered euthanized.
• Bovines found roaming at large should be seized and slaughtered. (nom!)
• Bovines will heretofore be banned from all county fairs, 4H events, rodeos and pit barbecue promotions.
• Persons being caught with illegal bovines (intact animals, unlicensed animals and those without properly color-coded RFID ear tags) will be subject to fines and imprisonment.

Once we’ve successfully eliminated the terrible threat bovines present to society we must move on to outlaw properly legislate swimming pools, automobiles, bathtubs, roller skates, stiletto heels, hot dogs – and the gutless, gormless politicians who waste their time and our money as they focus on promulgating this kind of pointless, time and money wasting crap legislation rather than dealing with important – but potentially controversial - issues that might come back to bite them in the ass.

Brilliant use of Indirect Pressure

This week Newsweek reported on activist Bill Smith’s campaign to end the suffering of dogs kept in squalid conditions by high volume breeders in Pennsylvania.  Smith noticed that some of the farms that produce large numbers of dogs also produce organic dairy products.  And he recognized that affluent consumers would be horrified to discover that their organic milk and yogurt were produced at the same places that kept dogs in terrible conditions.

Smith found that one mill—B&R Puppies, which had been cited by authorities as recently as a year ago for housing dogs in squalid cages and failing to vaccinate them—was also supplying milk to Horizon Organics. Horizon is a major presence in markets like Whole Foods, where animal welfare is paramount.

This is where Newsweek reporter Suzanne Smalley got involved.  Smalley contacted Horizon and Whole Foods and told them that she would be publishing a piece revealing that their organic milk came from a farmer who had been cited for mistreating dogs.

Smith demanded that Whole Foods send several hundred vendors a letter warning of repercussions for inhumane dog breeding. In mid-May, the grocery chain issued a stern request that ven-dors “not supply any products to our stores that have been sourced from farmers…who breed or raise dogs inhumanely.” Smith says the Whole Foods letter was a “huge step” forward because “consumers have always had the power to close these facilities.”

Horizon sent an inspector to B&R the next day and found dogs living in filth. The company suspended the farmer, John Stoltzfus, who has since dismantled his dog-breeding operation, according to Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture records. That allowed him to resume supplying Horizon, which he began doing earlier this month.

I applaud the efforts of Smith, Smalley and the folks at Whole Foods.  This sounds like a win-win-win-win-win situation but… I’d like to know what happened to Stolzfus’ dogs.  Were they shot or drowned like barn rats euthanized?  Sold to another high volume breeder rehomed?  Or just dumped by the roadside set free?  The New Jersey Companion Animal Protection Society’s website notes that late last week farm owner John Stoltzfus told NEWSWEEK he’d already found new homes for the dogs, but no details are provided.

Stoltzfus’ dogs deserve a chance at a better life and I really hope they find their way to loving homes.