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.

No Leash Laws for Wolves?

WDIO Duluth reports:

Linda Ziegler says she let her 5-year-old dachshund, Jenny, outside just before noon last Thursday. Ziegler was standing on her front steps when two timber wolves appeared.

“The minute they spotted her, well that was the end,” said Linda. “They went right after her and they killed her. And they were carrying her around the yard and there was no one around anywhere. So I was under the impression that these two were wild.”

Wolves depredation on dogs in Minnesota has become more common in recent years as wolf populations increase and animals come into more frequent contact with hunters and human habitations.  In Wisconsin, wolf depredation on bear hunting dogs is now a serious enough problem that the DNR has published a guide and maps of ‘caution areas’ to help hunters reduce conflicts.

More wolves means more wolf / dog confrontations. Still, Minnesotans don’t expect to have their dogs killed by wolves during a short pee break in the front yard. Especially when the wolves in question are “tame” animals out on a photo shoot…

The wolves belong to the Minnesota Wildlife Connection. Founder Lee Greenly says the business provided the animals for a photo shoot near the Ziegler’s property when the wolves wandered a little too far.

“I deeply regret that this incident happened and we’ll take precautions,” said Greenly. “99% of the time it’s never a problem. It’s just that 1% that happens, and this happened to be a problem.”

Yeah Lee.  I’m guessing this is much like that 1% of stuff that happens when an untrained, unsupervised dog is allowed to run loose. The times when he kills chickens, craps in the neighbor’s yard, is hit by a car or gets shot for running deer.  It’s also the 1% of stuff that responsible animal owners do their best to avoid. But hey, it’s OK  ’cause, you know – these weren’t dogs. They were wolves.

Greenly says he has several licenses to breed and raise the wolves, which have been trained by Greenly and his family. He says the regulations for letting wildlife run free in rural areas are minimal.

Brilliant Lee!  The fact that the state doesn’t specifically require that wolves be kept on leash obviously gives you the right to let tame wolves who, unlike their wild brethren, have lost their fear of people – run at large in the neighborhood. Leash laws are obviously only meant for domestic dogs and the wimps that own them. Real men own wolves.  And hunt bear.

Lee enjoys the manly sport of bear hunting. So does his pal, country western singer Troy Lee Gentry.  Back in 2006 Minneapolis TV station WCCO reported that:

Investigators said Troy Lee Gentry, half of the Montgomery Gentry duo, killed a tame black bear in an enclosed pen in Sandstone, Minn. in October 2004 and videotaped it.

Investigators said Gentry then edited the video to make it appear as though the animal was shot in the wild.

Shooting bears in a barrel! I’ll bet that’s more fun than hunting wiener dogs with wolves! Unfortunately, while we won’t penalize you for letting your wolf run at large, shooting tame bears is a misdemeanor here in Minnesota. In 2007 CBSNews reported:

Gentry pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in November. Under a plea deal, he agreed to forfeit the bear and the bow he used during the hunt near Sandstone. The 600-pound bear has been part of a taxidermy display at Gentry’s home in Tennessee. He was sentenced Friday.

The bear was killed in October 2004 at the 80-acre Minnesota Wildlife Connection. Owner Lee Marvin Greenly sold the bear for $4,650 and orchestrated the hunt, which Gentry videotaped and edited to make it appear the bear had been killed in a fair chase hunt, according to authorities.

In his plea bargain agreement, Gentry admitted he shot a bear named Cubby from a hunting stand that stood in a 3-acre pen surrounded by an electric fence.  And the wildlife-loving Mr. Greenly set the whole thing up for him (for a fee, of course.)  And unfortunately for Mr. Greenly, the penalties for setting up fake bear hunts are somewhat more serious than those for hunting wieners out of season. According to the Chicago Tribune:

Lee Marvin Greenly, 46, Gentry’s local hunting guide, pleaded guilty at the same hearing to two felony charges of helping other hunters shoot bears at illegal baiting stations he maintained inside a national wildlife refuge near Sandstone in east-central Minnesota.

Our hearts go out to the Zieglers. This was a terrible way to lose a beloved friend. Our sympathies are also extended to Cubby the bear, killed back in 2006. We’d like to suggest that the USDA, Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture and Minnesota DNR consider reviewing the Wildlife Connections‘ permits.  It appears that there may be something rotten in the City of Sandstone…

What Really Controls MN Wolf Populations?

Parvovirus and the year 1978 will forever be bound together in my mind. That was the year I lost a kitten and my wonderful 5-year old pet Chinchilla to the disease. As soon as the kitten got sick I contacted my vet. He assured me that Chin wouldn’t catch the disease from Mandy… But a couple of days later my sweet boy sickened and then quickly died.

I never went back to that vet again. But – was it his fault my pet died or was Chin the victim of a newly mutated disease that had not affected chinchillas – or canids – before?

From today’s StarTribune:

About half of the wolf pups born in Minnesota each year are killed off by a highly contagious disease called canine parvovirus, according to new research published by a team of Minnesota researchers in a national journal.

The disease has stunted the growth of the state’s gray wolf population at a time when wolves are increasing rapidly in number and expanding their range in Wisconsin, Michigan and western states.

“That’s not happening in Minnesota, because there aren’t quite enough of these wolves to do more than just maintain the population,” said David Mech, senior research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey and lead author of the study.

According to most sources, parvovirus first began to affect canine populations in 1978. Since it first appeared, canine parvovirus has spread to every continent in the world (except Antarctica – where dog teams are no longer used to protect seal populations from the disease). The virulent spread of the disease is partly related to its incredible hardiness. The bacterium is resistant to extreme hot and cold temperatures and it’s not harmed by detergents, alcohols or common disinfectants. Add to this the fact that it can be transmitted directly when an infected dog, its stool, or a flea that bit that infected dog comes in contact with a healthy dog and that virus particles also spread easily on shoes, hoofs, paws, clothing and other inanimate objects that come in contact with infected animals or their feces — and you have a pretty good recipe to create an epidemic.

Add to that the difficulty impossibility of keeping wild canid populations separated from domestic ones and of keeping them immunized against the disease – and frankly it’s a wonder they haven’t been wiped out already. And… not everyone agrees with Mech that parvo is the primary factor controlling Minnesota wolf populations. From the same StarTrib article:

It’s true that Minnesota’s wolf population grew steadily until the late 1990s and has stabilized over most of the past decade, said Stark, but disease may not play the largest role in keeping the population in check. Wolf pups also die of starvation and attacks by black bears and raptors, he said. An increase in roads and human interference also probably limit wolves from expanding into agricultural areas to the west and south, Stark said.

Before the agricultural and industrial revolutions, the natural dynamics in predator and prey relationships keep both types of species in balance. But that balance was dynamic – not static. One did not go to a specific area of – say the paleolithic midwestern prairie and find the same proportion of wolves to mule deer year in and year out. Some years wolf populations thrived and others deer populations thrived. And in some years – neither fared well.

That’s the thing with natural systems – they’re dynamic, not static. And it’s those changes in balance that create the interesting stuff – the mutations, the extinctions, the catastrophies and the discontinuities. For some reason modern humans seem to be obsessed not with that interesting dynamic stuff  that is the true basis for all the good and wonderful new things that arise in the universe – but with a bastardized form of static sameness that we think will insulate us from all risk.

So when things change, we freak out. Whether we need to or not.

And one of the things that’s changing in a big way right now are the dynamics controlling wolf populations in Minnesota. To get a handle on this first you need to understand that a wide range of factors interact to control wild animal populations and, like it or not, you also have to accept that today those factors are all affected by humans. For wolves, being hunted, exposed to the effects of habitat fragmentation, having a greater risk of disease, dealing with changes in prey animal populations and population densities, competing with other predators (including domestic dogs) for resources, dying as road kill and being trapped, poisoned or hunted as pests are all consequences of living in an ecosystem dominated by men.

So — is it really parvo that’s controlling wolf populations here in Minnesota - or is it an ecosystem that has been changed in nearly all aspects by man?

Wild Wolves Return to Germany

Until recently, the European gray wolf was thought to be extinct in most central European countries, but Deutsche Welle World reports that:

The mournful howling of wolves is echoing these days through the forested woodlands of eastern Germany for the first time in centuries.

According to experts, one reason for the return of the cunning canine is that all its natural enemies have disappeared.

Odd.  I was under the impression that the primary natural enemy of the wolf was humans – and last I heard there were about 82 million people in Germany…

Regardless, I’m pleased to hear that, in recent weeks, wolves have been sighted in forests between Berlin and Hamburg – Germany’s two most populous cities. And it sounds like conditions in this part of Europe may support further increases in populations.  Again from Deutsche Welle World:

“It is only a matter of time before wolves spread all across northern Germany in their move ever-westward,” said Josef Reichholf, a biology professor at the University of Munich.

“Northern Germany is the perfect habitat for the wolf,” Reichholf said. “Aside from two large cities, Berlin and Hamburg, the region is sparsely settled. There are vast areas of woodlands, lakes and dark forests.”

Northern Germany will be a turning point for the wolf population, he said.

“This is the region where we shall see whether the wolf spreads further westward and, if so, in what numbers,” he added.

The populations of other wild creatures including foxes, weasels, otters, raccoons and moose-elk are also on the rise in Germany.  According to Reicholf:

Many of the smaller mammals, such as raccoons and foxes are encroaching on urban areas, and are bringing wolves in their wake. Reichholf said it is not the food that humans eat which interests foxes so much as the animal companions of humans — rats, mice, pigeons — and also the plentiful and often overflowing garbage that humans generate. Raccoons thrive on human garbage.

This does not mean that wolves will be moving into cities, however. He pointed out that wolves are shy creatures who avoid humans whenever possible.

Based on what I read in this article, the Germans seem to have a pragmatic approach to increasing wildlife populations.  The head of the state hunting association was quoted as saying:

“Wolves are certainly welcome here as they enrich the local wildlife assortment,” he said. “Of course, if they become a pest, hunters will have to go after them to keep their population number in check as we do with red foxes.”

It’s refreshing to hear a story where human hunters are considered to be part of the natural ecosystem, and viewed as a healthy way to control animal populations (now let’s just hope they do it correctly by culling inferior animals instead of hunting for trophies…)  According to the story, many Germans also appreciate the benefits of wild predators:

They decimate not only mice but also other small mammals and snakes and other egg thieves,” said Torsten Reinwald of the German Hunting Association.

“We actually get appeals from residents to kill more foxes, because they are eliminating too many predators in some nature wildlife preserves,” Reinwald said.

Health experts say the large canines are helpful in eliminating road kill and other cadavers which can pollute rivers and ponds.

Many of the wolves live in areas humans avoid.  These include a region called the Spreewald (a former Russian military training area littered with corroded bombs and landmines) and an active military training area in Saxony.  Ironically, these seem to be the safest places for them.

As populations increase, the goverment provides advice to those who raise livestock (primarily sheep) on how to limit losses to predation.  Farmers who lose stock are compensated by the government.

European Grey Wolves
click on image to donate
to the WWF wolf fund

Wolf Predation on Hunting Dogs

According to the Wisconsin DNR:

Wolves guard their territories from other wolves, coyotes, and domestic dogs. Wolves are probably most aggressive toward strange wolves and dogs when wolf pups are small at den and rendezvous sites, during the breeding season in January and February, and when they are protecting a fresh kill. Packs use rendezvous sites from mid June to late September, after the pups are big enough to leave their den. Adult wolves are very defensive of pups at rendezvous sites and will attack other predators, including dogs, that get too close to the rendezvous site or the pups. Hound dogs used for hunting bear, coyotes, bobcat, and raccoons, are perhaps at greatest risk of being attacked by wolves. Dogs used for bird hunting are less likely to be attacked. Wolves normally avoid people and are less likely to approach dogs that are in visual or auditory range of humans.

Back in April, the Bismarck Tribune reported:

Gray wolves, otherwise known as timber wolves, have returned to Wisconsin in healthy numbers after being nearly eliminated from the state by the late 1950s by hunters who feared the animals were threatening the deer herd.

Last year’s surveys showed between 540 and 577 wolves in Wisconsin, Wydeven said.

As the wolf population has increased, so have depredation by some wolves on livestock, pets and hunting dogs has increased, Brust said. A wolf hunting season would be a way to keep the population in check, it also would help retain support for the recovery program, especially in Northern Wisconsin.

The Hudson, WI Star-Observer reports:

The hunters who lose the dogs are compensated but many bear hunters want the DNR to reduce the wolf population.

On the other hand, wolf supporters say the dogs have no right to run loose on public property where the training is supposed to take place.

From the Water and Woods Network:

“Since 1986, when the first claim was filed, we’ve had 82 dogs killed by wolves and 27 injured that we know of,” said Adrian Wydeven, Department of Natural Resources wolf expert.

“We paid for most of those claims, but there were a few cases when people did not request payment.

And:

Wydeven said 80 of the state’s 108 wolf packs are located where bear hunting with dogs is practiced, and three packs have been responsible for most of the recent attacks. “It seems some packs are more prone to attacking dogs,” he said.

Minnesota saw its wolf population increase from an estimated 2,450 in 1998 to 3,020 wolves in 2004 while wolf range remain unchanged. That means wolves are occupying smaller territories.

“I think we’re starting to see some of that here, too,” Wydeven said. “In the last few years, wolf territories have been averaging about 40 square miles. It used to be 50 to 60 square miles. Still, some territories are as small as 20 square miles, and others are as large as 80 to 100 square miles.”

A large deer herd can sustain more wolves on less land, he said. Where deer are in shorter supply, a wolf pack needs a larger territory to sustain it.

As wolf packs evolve into tighter territories, the odds of hunters and their dogs encountering wolves increases.

“We’re starting to see wolves moving into more developed areas,” Wydeven said.

Wolves have also been reported to kill dogs in Minnesota, Idaho, Alaska and the Dakotas.  Predation on bear hunting dogs has become enough of a problem in Wisconsin that the DNR has published a guide to help hunters reduce conflicts between wolves and their dogs and maps of ‘caution areas’where conflicts between dogs and wolves are more likely to occur are available on the WDNR website.  Ten dogs have been killed by wolves in Wisconsin so far this year.  Fifteen were killed in 2007; 23 in 2006; 13 in 2005 and eight in 2004 - so 2008 doesn’t appear to be a remarkable year for wolf depredation on dogs.

MSN for Wolves?

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

The newest residents at Forest Lake’s Wildlife Science Center will play a key role in wolf study. 

Four, 10-day old Canadian wolf pups arrived at the center back in May.

Canadian pups being greeted by the Minnesota pack.

They traveled all the way from British Columbia on a very special mission: to participate in a potentially groundbreaking study that researchers hope will reveal better ways to manage Canada’s wolf population.

The study, the result of an unusual alliance between two countries, began when a Canadian veterinarian called the Wildlife Science Center and asked whether it would be willing to take the wolf pups.

According to the Vancouver Sun:

The idea is that keeping wolf packs small allows the sterilized alpha pair to defend its territories, while letting more elk live.

But author and zoologist Paul Paquet, an expert on wolf research, called the experiment “destructive and morally reprehensible.”

Paquet said it’s difficult to label this as legitimate research, particularly because these are already disturbed wolf packs subject to hunting and trapping.

Eww Canada….

Parks Canada has voiced its opposition to any wolf control to increase elk densities, saying predator control in the 1960s created unnaturally high prey densities and problems that are still prevalent.

In particular, they have concerns about two wolf packs whose territories take in both provincial and federal lands, including a pack between Banff and Jasper.

Jim Pissot, executive director of Canmore-based Defenders of Wildlife Canada, said this appears to be another “bone-headed wolf cull poorly disguised as research.”

He said wolves typically take down weaker animals, while humans take out the strongest and best-adapted animals in the elk herd: bulls.

Apparently some time between March (when the Sun article was published) and May (when the Star-Tribune article came out) there was a change of heart somewhere.  The original plan was to killeuthanize all the wolf pups and sterilize the alpha pairs.  According to the Star Trib:

But now Canadian officials are exploring another option: sterilizing the wolves.

The Wildlife Science Center, a nationally known research and education facility that specializes in wolves and other predators, has teamed up with the Ministry of Environment of British Columbia and a top reproductive physiologist at the St. Louis Zoo to develop a way to sterilize the wolves from afar.

Sterilization is better than death – but why can’t we find better ways to balance the needs of two- and four-legged hunters?  Are trophy elk worth more than wolves?

Chuffs and Bluffs

From the USGS Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project:

“A wolf feeds on a road-killed elk carcass in the morning. A grizzly bear with two cubs feeds on the carcass in the evening. A grizzly bear will chuff and pop its jaw when it feels threatened. Sometimes it will also charge at the threat, usually veering off or stopping short – a bluff charge. Early the next morning a grizzly bear with cubs chuffs and bluff charges a wolf. The wolf appears to be alone and, at times, postures as if it is playing. Video camera was triggered by a motion sensor.”

Want to see more?  Video archives for the project are available here.

Are Dogs Smarter than Wolves?

Vilmos Csányi and his colleagues at Loránd Eötvös University’s department of ethology, study animal behavior. Specifically they study the behavior of domestic dogs. 

Over the last ten years Csányi’s group has collected data that suggest dogs have far greater mental capabilities than scientists have previously given them credit for. “Our experiments indicate a high level of social understanding in dogs,” he says.

In their relationship with humans, dogs have developed remarkable interspecies-communications skills, said Csányi. “They easily accept a membership in the family, they can predict social events, they provide and request information, obey rules of conduct, and are able to cooperate and imitate human actions,” he says. His research even suggests that dogs can speculate on what we are thinking.

Until recently, dogs were believed to be intellectually inferior to wolves. For example, a 1985 study conducted at the University of Michigan at Flint demonstrated that wolves were typically able unlock a complicated gate mechanism after watching a human do it a just a single time, yet domestic dogs were unable to complete the task even after watching it being opened several times. These results led to the conclusion that dogs’ were less intelligent than wolves.

Csányi suspected that, rather than being less intelligent than wolves, domestic dogs were simply more inhibited and might seek permission from their masters before doing something as daring as opening a gate. Eight years ago, he and his colleagues conducted a problem-solving experiment of their own. In their study 28 dogs of various ages, breeds, and levels of training had to figure out how to pull on handles of plastic dishes to obtain meat on the other side of a wire fence.  The studies were conducted in the presence of the dogs’ owners.  In all cases, the dogs with the strongest relationship with their owner scored worst, as they were continually looking to them for permission or assistance in the task. The best results were from outdoor dogs, who obtained the food, on average, in one-third the time as the indoor dogs.

Then trials were conducted where the owners were allowed to give their dogs permission to do the task, the gap between indoor and outdoor dogs disappeared.

The results of these trials led to further studies about how well dogs can solve problems when taking cues from people. Chimpanzees, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, have the ability to follow a human’s attentional gaze, but do poorly in classic experiments that require them to infer clues by watching a person. In these tests, researchers hide food in one of several containers out of sight of the animal then allow the chimp to choose one container as the experimenter indicates the correct choice by gazing, nodding, pointing, or tapping. Chimps score poorly on these tests even with extensive coaching.

When they were subjected to these test, domestic dogs, exhibited great skills at following human directional and informational cues.  Even stray dogs nearly always solved the problem immediately. The dogs consistently outperformed wolves.

The results of these studies are controversial.

Michael J. Owren, assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University, says Mr. Csányi’s team may be underestimating the flexibility of associative learning, “Dogs are supremely sensitive to cues being produced by humans and are able to interact with humans very effectively,” Mr. Owren says. “The question then becomes to what extent are they showing sophisticated cognitive processing and to what extent is their behavior being molded by this extreme attentiveness to people?”

Well — that would be the hundred dollar question.  Unfortunately the study of animal behavioral sciences in the United States seems to still be held firmly under the sway of B.F. Skinner who didn’t even believe that human beings were capable of sophisticated cognitive processing.  Until researchers in the U.S. break away from the limitations of strict Skinnerian operant conditioning, they don’t stand a snowflake’s chance in Hell of answering these kinds of important questions.

Dr. Raymond Coppinger, from Hampshire College noted, “The Hungarians are using pet-class dogs who have been socialized in a very unique way, but there is no accounting for that.  To be talking about dogs in general when you are only referring to this small population of dogs from the Western world that have been bred for all sorts of specific tasks is going to lead us astray about what dogs can do or how they evolved.”

Mr. Coppinger stated that he is concerned that Csyani’s team failed to consider the “Clever Hans effect.” Scientists ultimately concluded that the horse was picking up inadvertent cues from the person who posed the question; Hans was clever enough to figure out that he would get a treat if he stopped tapping when the human in front of him subtly reacted to the arrival of the “correct answer”; the horse didn’t actually know arithmetic.

With all due respect to Dr.Coppinger, the vast majority of dogs in the world today are “pet-class dogs” who are socialized to living with humans.  Our environment is their environment.  Conducting studies on dogs raised in sterile laboratory environments or on the small remaining populations of feral dogs makes about as much sense as basing studies on human psychology on populations living in prisons or on abandoned islands.