Personality; not just for humans
We usually see âelephantsââor âwolvesâ or âkiller whalesâ or âchimpsâ or âravensâ and so onâas interchangeable representatives of their kind. But the instant we focus on individuals, we see an elephant named Echo with exceptional leadership qualities; we see wolf 755 struggling to survive the death of his mate and exile from his family; we see a lost and lonely killer whale named Luna who is humorous and stunningly gentle. We see individuality. Itâs a fact of life. And it runs deep. Very deep.
Individuality is the frontier of understanding non-human animals. But for decades, the idea was forbidden territory. Scientists who stepped out of bounds faced withering scorn from colleagues. Jane Goodall experienced just that. After her first studies of chimpanzees, she enrolled as a doctoral student at Cambridge. There, as she later recalled in National Geographic, âIt was a bit shocking to be told Iâd done everything wrong. Everything. I shouldnât have given them names. I couldnât talk about their personalities, their minds or their feelings.â The orthodoxy was: those qualities are unique to humans.
But these decades later we are realizing that Goodall was right; humans are not unique in having personalities, minds and feelings. And if sheâd given the chimpanzees numbers instead of names?âtheir individual personalities would still have shined.
âIf ever there was a perfect wolf,â says Yellowstone biologist Rick McIntyre, âIt was Twenty-one. He was like a fictional character. But real.â McIntyre has watched free-living wolves for more hours than anyone, ever.
Even from a distance Twenty-oneâs big-shouldered profile was recognizable. Utterly fearless in defense of his family, Twenty-one had the size, strength, and agility to win against overwhelming odds. âOn two occasions, I saw Twenty-one take on six attacking wolvesâand rout them all,â Rick says. âWatching him felt like seeing something that looked supernatural. Like watching a Bruce Lee movie. Iâd be thinking, âA wolf canât do what I am watching this wolf do.ââ Watching Twenty-one, Rick elaborates, âwas like watching Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordanâa one-of-a-kind talent outside of ânormal.ââ
Twenty-one was a superwolf. Uniquely, he never lost a fight and he never killed any defeated opponent. And yet Twenty-one was âremarkably gentleâ with the members of his pack. Immediately after making a kill he would often walk away and nap, allowing family members whoâd had nothing to do with the hunt eat their fill.
One of Twenty-oneâs favorite things was to wrestle little pups. âAnd what he really loved to do,â Rick adds, âwas pretend to lose. He just got a huge kick out of it.â Here was this great big male wolf. And heâd let some little wolf jump on him and bite his fur. âHeâd just fall on his back with his paws in the air,â Rick half-mimes. âAnd the triumphant-looking little one would be standing over him with his tail wagging.
âThe ability to pretend,â Rick adds, âshows that you understand how your actions are perceived by others. Iâm sure the pups knew what was going on, but it was a way for them to learn how it feels to conquer something much bigger than you. And that kind of confidence is what wolves need every day of their hunting lives.â
In Twenty-oneâs life, there was a particular male, a sort of roving Casanova, a continual annoyance. He was strikingly good-looking, had a big personality, and was always doing something interesting. âThe best single word is âcharisma,ââ says Rick. âFemale wolves were happy to mate with him. People absolutely loved him. Women would take one look at himâthey didnât want you to say anything bad about him. His irresponsibility and infidelity; it didnât matter.â
One day, Twenty-one discovered this Casanova among his daughters. Twenty-one ran in, caught him, biting and pinning him to the ground. Other pack members piled in, beating Casanova up. âCasanova was also big,â Rick says, âbut he was a bad fighter.â Now he was totally overwhelmed; the pack was finally killing him.
âSuddenly Twenty-one steps back. Everything stops. The pack members are looking at Twenty-one as if saying, âWhy has Dad stopped?ââ The Casanova wolf jumped up andâas alwaysâran away.
After Twenty-oneâs death, Casanova briefly became the Druid packâs alpha male. But, Rick recalled: âHe doesnât know what to do, just not a leader personality.â And although itâs very rare, his year-younger brother deposed him. âHis brother had a much more natural alpha personality.â Casanova didnât mind; it meant he was free to wander and meet other females. Eventually Casanova and several young Druid males met some females and they all formed the Blacktail pack. âWith them,â Rick remembers, âhe finally became the model of a responsible alpha male and a great father.â
The personality of a wolf âmatriarchâ also helps shape the whole pack. Wolf Seven was the dominant female in her pack. But you could watch Seven for days and say, âI think sheâs in charge,â because she led subtly, by example. Wolf Forty, totally different; she led with an iron fist. Exceptionally aggressive, Forty had done something unheard of: actually deposed her own mother.
For three years, Forty ruled the Druid pack tyrannically. A pack member who stared a moment too long would find herself slammed to the ground, Fortyâs bared canines poised above her neck. Yellowstone research director Doug Smith recalls, âThroughout her life she was fiercely committed to always having the upper hand, far more so than any other wolf weâve observed.â
Forty heaped her worst abuse on her same-age sister. Because this sister lived under Fortyâs brutal oppression, she earned the name Cinderella.
One year Cinderella split from the main pack and dug a den to give birth. Shortly after she finished the den, her sister arrived and delivered one of her infamous beatings. Cinderella just took it, as always. No one ever saw any pups at that den.
The next year, Cinderella, Forty, and a low-ranking sister all gave birth in dens dug several miles apart. New wolf mothers nurse and guard constantly; they rely on pack members for food. That year, few pack members visited the bad-tempered alpha. Cinderella, though, found herself well assisted at her den by several sisters.
Six weeks after giving birth, Cinderella and several attending pack members headed out, away from her denâand stumbled into the queen herself. Forty immediately attacked Cinderella with was, even for her, exceptional ferocity. She then turned her fury onto another of her sisters whoâd been accompanying Cinderella, giving her a beating too. Then as dusk settled in, Forty headed toward Cinderellaâs den. Only the wolves saw what happened next, but Doug Smith and Rick McIntyre pieced together what went down.
Unlike the previous year, this time Cinderella wasnât about to remain passive or let her sister reach her den and her six-week-old pups. Near the den a fight erupted. There were at least four wolves, and Forty had earned no allies among them.
At dawn, Forty was down by the road covered in blood, and her wounds included a neck bite so bad that her spine was visible. Her long-suffering sisters had, in effect, cut her throat. She died. It was the only time researchers have ever known a pack to kill its own alpha. Forty was an extraordinarily abusive individual. The sistersâ decision, outside the box of wolf norms, was: mutiny. Remarkable.
But Cinderella was just getting started. She adopted her dead sisterâs entire brood. And she also welcomed her low-ranking sister and her pups. And so that was the summer that the Druid Peak pack raised an unheard-of twenty-one wolf pups together in a single den.
Out from under Fortyâs brutal reign, Cinderella developed into the packâs finest hunter. She later went on to become the benevolent matriarch of the Geode Creek pack. Goes to show: a wolf, as many a human, may have talents and abilities that wither or flower depending on which way their luck breaks.
âCinderella was the finest kind of alpha female,â Rick McIntyre says. âCooperative, returning favors by sharing with the other adult females, inviting her sister to bring her pups together with her own while also raising her vanquished sisterâs pupsâ. She set a policy of acceptance and cohesion.â She was, Rick says, âperfect for helping everyone get along really well.â
(This piece is adapted from Carl Safinaâs most recent book, Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel, which will is newly out in paperback)
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