The wolf - wise, adaptable, condemns to death

When we positioned ourselves approximately 300 ' 000 years before our era on our hind legs, he was already 100 ' 000 years on the earth. We looked from him what we needed to survive: hunting methods, the judgement of the track of other animals, strategies for success. Today he is our deadly enemy, because he can devour six little goats, a grandmother and the girl with the red hat, too:

WOLF

Grey or black with a body weight of approximately 40 kg, he roves the tracts of forest of North America. "Timberwolf" one names him here. However, there is also the Mackenzie-forest wolf or the Great Plains wolf, the Alaska-tundra-wolf or the Nebraska wolf which lives only in eating buffalos. Each of them looks a little in a different way. The wolves of Canada, Alaska and GUS are the biggest ones. Up to 80 kg they can bring on the balance. The wolves of Canada, Alaska and the northern USA carry grey-brown or black fur.

White and about 45 kg, with a short snout and short-legged, he jumps in the arctic solitude of ice floe to ice floe, the arctic wolf.

Rather shy forest inhabitants are the last European wolves with grey-brown fur, an alsatian resembling, only with smaller ears and a slimer, streamlined body.

The wolves of the warm and hotter regions as in the Front Orient, are smaller and weigh only approximately 15 kg. They are brown or grey.

For the size differences between the northern and southern wolves there is an important reason. In the north rules colder climate. The storage of warmth and the protection against cooling is important to survive. A body with more volume and with a relative small surface can store the warmth for a longer time. Northern wolves fulfill these heat accumulator presuppositions with their bigger body more than south wolves.

The wolf knows the world, because he walks gladly and hits - today rather meagerly - again on congener, also on such which do not see to him so similarly. New families are created, new variants appear. Some of these variants or races are to be distinguished only from expert and also only if the set of teeth was just examined and the skull was measured. The nonprofessional can also recognize other races, how the arctic one or the eastern wolf.

Genetic examinations have proved that today there exist approximately 12 wolf subspecies or races which differ by living space, set of teeth, appearance, skull range, body size and weight, but not in their behavior patterns and the natural history. A long time the zoologists spoke even from two sorts of wolves: grey wolf (Canis lupus) and red wolf (Canis lupus Niger). The grey wolves are grouped by the different colour and body variants of wolves, also the arctic ones and the black wolves. Only in the southeast of the USA the red wolf is resident. But to this day it is not yet clarified whether or not it is the red wolf is a crossing between coyote and wolf, and so we go any further with only one sort with the wolf, Canis lupus.

Also designations like 'mane wolf', 'prairie wolf', 'howlwolf' or 'bush wolf' donate confusion. The mane wolf, for example, is found in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Uruguay, looks like a crossing between coyote and red fox and is only far related to the wolf. Also the coyote has this problem. He is called 'prairie wolf', 'bush wolf' or 'howlwolf'. Erroneously bush wolf and coyote are called even as two different animals.

The history of the wolves begins possibly before 15 million years, in the high Miozen. In this time Tomarctus developed itself. A comparatively small animal of prey from which by gradually adaptation wolves, foxes, jackals, Dingos and a number of other relatives, as well as the house dog originated in. Systematically all descendants of Tomarctus are summarized in the family of the dog-well-behaved, Canidae. This sort consists of 16 types with 36 sorts.

How to no other member of the dog's family the wolf has succeeded in settling the most different living spaces. Up to beginning of the modern times he lived in whole North America, from the arctic islands and north Greenland to far to Mexico. In Eurasia he inhabited the regions of the polar coast till the south of India, from the British islands and the Atlantic coast in the west, up to the Pacific and to Japan in the east. He was found in the treeless tundra in the north, in the taiga, the mixed forest belt up to steppe and desert.

The wolf endures sea climate like continent climate, manages with swampy valleys as well as with the high mountains. Because he is a flighter from culture, he preferes deserted regions. Once the wolf settled an area of approximately 70 million square kilometers, this corresponds almost to the half of the whole country surface of the earth. Adaptability, cleverness and caution are his brand names. His setting began with the wide clearing of the forests, the decline connected with it of preys and, finally, the matchless pursuit by the people in whose meadow animals the wolf made a mistake.

The current house dog is as can be proved a domesticated wolf. But the house dogs differ so strongly from the wolves that one arranges them scientifically under the sort of house dog (Canis lupus familiaris).

Wolf researcher Erik Zimen supposes that still before the lamb and the bovine animal the wolf was the first which the person did the pet. Approximately 15000 years ago, on the edge of the ice, he supposes, the people succeeded in stealing from a she-wolf a few boys and domesticated them.

Why the election of the man fell, however, in search of a pet and hunting companion just on the wolf and not in another dog's sort, how to the fox or the coyote? Under the dog's sorts the wolf is the biggest and belongs to the fastest, strongest and skillful hunters. He smells an elk on 2 kilometers and hears the blow of the hoofs on 10 to 15 kilometers. The wolf possesses the typical long-legged stature of a runner; he is a walker on toes, however, loads in fast run also other parts of the foot. Speeds of 60 to 70 kilometers per hour are possible with this anatomy. Not only on even ground, but also in rocky and covered terrain or with high snow the wolf has by the anatomy of his legs - inwards directed knee joints and outwardly placed paws - the possibility to set a narrow trace. With it he is also fast in impassable ground and sure.

However, the most interesting quality of the wolf will have consisted in the fact for the first wolf owner that he could communicate with him. Belongs to the fact that the wolf, how the person, is sociable. His strength lies in the family group. If one wants to live, however, with each other, one must also be able to communicate. The communication in the pack of wolves functions about an expressive mine game, body signals, smell information and sounds. However, a wolf can mediate only by movements of the forehead, mouth and ear musculature as well as the eyes certainly how he feels and what he wants, and his congeners can react correspondingly. The person has a similar mine game and a similar body language. With it the foundation-stone was put for a 'Understanding' between human being and wolf.

Not only the mine game and the body language cause with people's reactions, but also the sounds of the wolf. Completely intuitively we accommodate threatening growling or help-searching whining in two different feeling categories. The making of service of a wild animal pointed success with the wolf, thanks all these basic presuppositions, for the first time in the history of the people and only few common characteristics have remained to the house dog and his progenitor: the length the pregnancy, the hair losses in the spring and the education of a winter coat as well as the order with which the first teeth appear.

The connection with the people had not only positive effects for the wolf. So the house wolf under the care of the people lost 30% of his brain volume and became converted to an eager, agreeable, obsequious hunting dog. The person has done a silly dog out of the intelligent wolf.

Wolves are wiser than house dogs. They understand, for example, very quickly how one opens a door by the turning of a button. A wolf can learn on account of own experiences, but also - and this is the intelligentsia far excelling the dog - only by observing of people. Wolves have the ability to understand behavior, that is they can understand also complicated connections.

In addition of the intelligentsia there are still other differences between wolf and dog. Particularly remarkably the innumerable dog's races of the pinscher are up to St. Bernard. Even dog's races like the alsatian who look like their ancestor still similarly, in contrast to the wolfs have no glands of perfume in the tail root, the paws are smaller, while the limbs of the wolf appear a little bit too big. The dog has smaller teeth, a shorter snout and a wider forehead. An essential difference between wolf and dog lies in the choice of his companions: the dog prefers the people, the wolf wants to be under wolves. But the thinking in hierarchies to be found in a pack of wolves is still owned by the dog. The chief of the house dog is his owner. The chief in the herd is the strongest wolf dog with the best qualities, the alpha-wolf. Another distinguisher is tha wolves only once and dogs two times per year throw puppies.

The alpha-male, the alpha-dog, pairs off with the alpha-female in the herd, a preferred lady whose common puppies become brought up then in the herd. The other members of the herd do not pair off as a rule and also receive no offspring. Already in the first year wolves reach their final body size. In autumn of the first year many are as heavy as a grown animal. The fast growth and rapid learning connected with the whole behavioural repertoire has its sense. The approaching winter requires force and perseverance of the descendants. First of all the wolves of the north must escape from the snow and ice and take long migrations on themselves. If the puppies are still too small, they would hardly keep up the long migrations in temperate regions. In some areas of north Canada and Alaska the wolves must follow the walking herd of Karibu which are their main source of food. 450 kilometers and more are put back by the herds. Wolves walk only at night and then can put back in search of food 20 to 50 kilometers in loose trot.

Person and wolf had originally a similar social group. " Both roamed throuhg the country in the family group as a predatory horde ", says David Mech, the big American wolf researcher. Certainly the person also looked from the wolf how one can interprete the concentric flight of the common raven. Where he pulled its circles, there lies with high probability an animal corpse or wolves have hunt it only a short time ago and the person could participate in the meal in using the fist wedge. From the wolf the person learned that deer have sharp hoofs and that the push of powerful antlers can be deadly. He saw the dangers from far away, just as a lot of unsuccessful hunting attempts and pulled his apprenticeships from it. The person did the wolf a subject to himself, changed and improved his hunting methods, whereas the wolf didn't. The success rate of the wolf lies with 4.6%. The person excelled him rapidly in the hunting method, however, also in sense and the purpose of the hunt. Since generations we must not hunt any more to survive. Today the trophy hunt, the senseless satisfaction of an old desire, is the hunting aim in most cultures.

The competition with the former "instructor" began, when the person did not mark its district any more with scents like the wolf, but to hold animals behind fences and bring up more and more children and to cultivate grass. Because, however, the wolf always did only what he had always done, namely hunt, also the difficultly drawn up sheep, person began to hate him and to pursue.

In spite of the close connection of the people to the dog his wild ancestor puts the people in fear, at the same moment, however, also lasting fascination. For many primitive people the wolf remained the paragon of the good, a part of the nature, a brother, their great father. For the farmers of the Middle Ages he became the creature of bad demons or the devil, to the bloodthirsty killer and, finally, the center of a lot of legends and myths which are alive to this day.

Psychologists speak of the fact that the person hunted the wolf not only as food competitors, but also as a symbol for their own, negative wishes and feelings. The person has always searched of a scapegoat for their own mistakes and weakness, for their own acts. What concerns the points bloodthirsty and insidiousness, here the wolf was chosen for the projection object. Millenniums insisted to lose these projections, paired with the rage, constantly meadow cattle to him, since the wolf was exterminated in most regions of the earth. The reward had done its effect.

Today one wants to give to the wolf again a chance, but the ancient and deeply rooted projections in us which are not even conscious to us people often, prevent an objective judgement of the living being wolf, his groove and his survival problems. The inexplicable hate feelings and frightened feelings of the people opposite to this animal can be changed only difficultly and be reversed in a new feeling direction.

© Alaskan-Malamute.ch