Rudyard Kipling
Mr. Kipling's quote describes the most important feature of wolf biology - the Pack. The social organization structure of wolves is the pack. This is where pups are born, reared, educated in wolf behavior such as hunting, defending their territory and learning to live in a cooperative environment.
Size & Composition
Wolf packs have ranged from 2(pair) to 42 members in one pack in Alaska. The usual size of a pack is 5-14 members which flucuates as wolves disperse from the pack. The pack consists of a breeding pair (alpha male&female) and the offspring of the breeding pair. Sometimes packs will adopt stray wolves but mostly it consists of offsring up to 4 years.
Wolves are considered eusocial species because they live in groups in which at least two generations live together, reproduction is restricted to a few individuals, and nonbreeders cooperate to care for the offspring of breeders.
Pack as Nursery
We know that wolves are cared for by their parents as well as the other members of the pack. Wolves get very excited about new arrivals, are very tolerant towards playful pup behavior but teach the young offspring the behavior and skills they need to survive in the wild. This transference of both social and genetic information occurs between generations to keep the pack strong and intact. Wolves have sophisticated learning abilities to teach the young pups how to cooperatively hunt and forage for food. They also teach them how to establish and defend their territories. To instruct them well, the pack is the perfect social organization system to keep the wolf strong and therefore the pack strong. This prolonged learning process requires the young pups to be dependent on the pack for 25-30% of their normal lifespan.
One wolf biologist desribes a pack as, "high intelligence, expressiveness, and unusual emotional depth enable wolves to maintain sophisticated social bonds, to work together as highly skilled cooperative hunters."
Disruption to Pack
Throughout BC, wolves are harvested by hunters and trappers extensively. One out of every 8 wolves is killed annually in BC (over 1,000 wolves in 2007). This high harvest rate creates much instability and fragmentation to wolf packs.
Gordon C. Haber, in his article "Biological, Conservation, and Ethical Implications of Exploiting and Controlling Wolves" ( Conservation Biology, Volume 10, No. 4, 1996) found that from his 40 years of studying wolves in Alaska, Yukon, and Northern BC where they are extensively harvested, the following disrutions occur to their pack structure:
a) more population fragmentation with less selectivity in some important aspects of behavior
b) mating is less selective with more litters per population and higher pup ratios
c) more pairs were created as they disperse from these fragmented packs. Pairs can kill as much as packs of 6-7 wolves. Therefore there can be up to 3 times more prey killed by pairs then a stable pack of 6-7 wolves.
Haber describes how this disruption to the packs results in increased hunting by wolves with higher kill rates with increased selection of potentially vulnerable prey. There is more scavenging by ravens and other scavengers on prey killed by pairs, so there is the need to hunt more.
In Denali National Park, Haber has studied wolf packs for 30 years. There is no hunting or trapping in the Park, so he was able to observe stable, long standing packs. He found that there was impressive social stability and continuity in these packs.
The Toklat/East Fork pack during one period had the same female in the breeding pair for 13-14 years. She died naturally at age 18. For this uninterrupted period, it allowed this transference of social and genetic information to create social stability and this pack would be able to defend its territory, raise its offspring well and not overhunt which can occur due to fragmented packs.
Wolf packs are highly complex, sophisticated social organization systems which need long periods of social stability to transfer important social and genetic information to its offspring. Through human harvesting, it disrupts this transference of information which weakens the pack and therefore the wolf. Wildlife managers that promote culling the wolf to strengthen their prey numbers are doing more damage by disrupting the pack. These managers would be well advised to remember Rudyard Kipling's quote.
Tundra & Meshach
So far, five school districts on Vancouver Island have approved Tundra's School Program for their schools. I am already receiving requests from these schools to bring Tundra & Meshach. I will report on how these visits in October went in next months blog. If you are interested in Tundra visiting your child's classroom, please let the school know about the program. All information is found on my website.
Good book to read
For further info on wolf packs, I can recommend two books. The first one is, The Wolf by L. David Mech. This textbook was written by Dr. Mech in 1970 but is still relevant today. The second book is Wolves, Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation. It is edited by L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani and was published in 2003. Both of these books contain detailed info on wolf pack behavior.
Website
I would refer you back to the International Wolf Centre's website (www.wolf.org) for really good info on the behavior of wolves in their packs.
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