Hi! Is it true that male wolf can't attack female wolf? I just found something like this on the internet: "In pack male wolf can't attack female wolf and she knows it, so she cover his throat with herself pretending that she's hiding"
Hi! :) I assume you’re referring to this 9gag picture that’s going around on the internet at the moment?
Sex doesn’t play a role for wolves whenit comes to attacking or not attacking another wolf. Wolves don’t have suchrules.
In wolf packs, the breeding pair who are leading thepack exclude non-pack members from their territory and will attack and try tokill trespassers. Other mature pack members (for example yearlings) are sometimesless hostile to outside wolves, because those alien wolves are potential mates.But wolves rarely attack or kill their pack mates.
The 9gag picture is taken by Jean Paul at the International Wolf Center inEly, Minnesota. Here, wolves live in artificially composed packs in bigenclosures. Members of the packs are often unrelated to each other, and the number of wolves in the pack may vary as wolves age and new wolves or wolf pups aresocialized and added.
If a pack of wolves is composed in such an artificial way, there is no natural pack order/structure, so you get a battle on the power, and in the end a dominancehierarchy that is maintained with difficulty. In situations like this, there’smore dominance/submission display among pack mates, and more fighting, butrarely with the intention to seriously harm, or kill each other.
Wolves can’ttalk with each other like we do, so their body is what they use for the majority of theircommunicating. For us humans, that way of communicating may sometimes look very serious/aggressive,when there’s actually nothing “serious” or seriously threatening going on. Besides,wolves have a basic aversion to fighting and will do much toavoid any aggressive encounters.
It’s difficult to tell from just apicture what was going on in the depicted situation, but I’m pretty sure thewhite wolf has no intention of attacking/harming/killing the other wolf/wolves.The two wolves on the right are showing active submission to the white wolf.I’m also pretty sure the white wolf is Shadow, who was the leader of the Exhibit Pack, so that wouldreinforce that. Part of showing active submission includes lowering the entirebody and pointing up the muzzle to the more dominant wolf, which would be abetter explanation of the wolf’s position of it’s head instead of it beinga strategically move to protect the other wolf’s throat.
In passive submission, a wolf rolls onits back and exposes its vulnerable throat and underside, whimpering, with pawsdrawn into the body. This is a very common way of showing submission thatwolves display without fearing to be attacked - both the dominant and the submissivewolf know the dominant wolf will not actually attack the submissive wolf. So once again I’m pretty sure the lowest wolf isn’t placing its head there for the reason 9gag is describing.
Also, if a wolf dóes have the intentionof killing or attacking another wolf, he’s not going to waste time playing thewhole dominance/submission game - he’d just do it.
And just to myth bust the 9gag comment;the lowest wolf isn’t a female. The picture was taken in 2009, and at that timethe only female in the Exhibit pack was Maya, who has yellow/orange eyes, very profound eyebrowmarkings, and a light brown top of the muzzle whereas the wolf in the 9gagpicture has grayish eyes, a dark grayer top of the muzzle, and differenteyebrow markings.
