#wolf behavior

[little-ghost6]

I love this fic❤️ Theo doesn't understand emotions and it's beautiful how he asks 🥹

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[therianterritory]

Wolf behavior nuanced by human behavior

Hello hello, I go through the jungle of the Therian Community pretty much daily. I didn't need more than a year to know that therians love to express and talk about the urges, behaviors, and instincts of their theriotype. Logical, of course, it's what the community is about, to talk to people who experience the same thing. But something I often notice is that therians tend to link almost anything to their therianthropy. Of course, therianthropy can influence a person's life greatly. But something important we tend to forget is the fact that humans are also still animals. Even though we have evolved far enough to let our intelligence dominate our instincts, we still unconsciously display instinctive behavior 24/7. If I'd be a fly on your wall and observe you for a little bit, I could point out several behaviorisms that you didn't even think about doing.

Upon questioning a theriotype and examining your therianthropic behavior, it's always important to divide the instinctive human behavior from the non-human animal. I'm not saying some behavior can't be both, in fact, I believe a lot of therianthropy can be influenced by human behavior and the other way around. I often notice myself doing some wolf-like things, and then think to myself if that is normal for a human being to do as well. I am also in no way trying to debunk therianthropy, of course, why would I?

I wanted to dedicate this post to nuancing some often talked about wolf behaviors by comparing them to similar human behaviors. Of course with every human instinct and behavior, it is important to rather compare it to the times when we were still living in tribes, because that's the time where instincts were still crucial to our survival. Because that's what most behaviors and instincts are about: survival.

1. Packs We'll start off easy. A lot of therians express their desire for finding a therian pack. I sometimes hear wolf therians saying it's because their "inner wolf" desperately tries to find some soulmates to be family with. But in reality, as most of you may know, humans are also seriously drawn to forming groups (even with a hierarchy system). This is because it is essential to someone's survival to stick with a group. It's that sense of "belonging" that people are actually after, and that's okay.

2. Being a "lone" wolf Opposite to the human urge to form groups, a lot of therians claim they don't want to be in a pack and that they're generally anti-social. They believe that the lone wolf stays alone and completely fine with this. First of all, a lone wolf is never alone by choice, because every lone wolf either seeks a mate to start a pack with or has walked away/was driven away from their pack to find rest and die. A wolf being alone and staying alone voluntarily goes entirely against their nature, as wolves are pack animals. Now to look at human behaviors, social capabilities really variate per person. Every human eventually has to distance themselves from groups to recharge that social battery. Some people have a very long-running one, and some have a very short-running one. Even tho it may seem to go against that group-forming instinct, it's still a very normal human thing to do.

3. Curling up I often hear wolf therians whine about the fact that their human body is incapable of curling up the way a wolf does when they sleep. I speak from experience that this can indeed be a struggle, as it seems incredibly comfortable. But even though a wolf naturally curls up when they sleep, humans actually also have a rooted urge to curl up or at least make themselves small when they sleep. This posture stems from the fetal posture we had when we were still in our mother's womb. It was scientifically proven that reenacting this position gives a sense of protection. 40% of people actually sleep in this position. [source]

4. The Weather & the seasons I've heard quite some therians mention that the weather and the changes of the season have a great effect on the amount and severity of their shifts. I have the same, and I am not denying that shifts get influenced by these factors. But it is important to note that humans, in fact, also get greatly influenced by weather and seasons. The greatest proof of this is Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) which is the occurrence of a person dealing with great mood swings and states of depression based on the time of the year. A lot of people feel more depressed during winter, for example. This also has to do with the amount of sunlight in comparison to summer. But factors like storms and snow also affect people's moods. It can make them excited and/or tensed.

5. Therian Territory ;) A lot of (wolf) therians such as myself have a big tendency to claim territory in a variety of ways. Wolves mark their territory by urinating everywhere. Although not every therian feels comfortable sharing their potential urges to urinate on trees like so, territorial urges are still expressed within the community. But have you ever wondered why people look for houses to live in? And why there is such a distinct border between what is your private property and the plain unclaimed sidewalk? Territory is linked to social status, for this reason, people often buy bigger houses when they earn more money than average, simply to claim space. In this article, there is some good evidence that human territoriality is, in fact, different from other animals.

6. Alphas This is actually the only point that I'd really like to debunk: what was once known as the wolf hierarchy. When wolves were being studied thoroughly, about their pack system, their behaviors, and body language, they were studied by putting a bunch of unrelated wild wolves in an enclosure. In order to survive, the alpha-beta-omega system formed, and this false theory was spread throughout the entire world. In reality, wolf packs are nothing more than families. The supposed "alphas" are simply the elders or parents of the pack. The betas are often the big sisters, and the omegas would be the pups.The funny part about this theory is that it was later discovered that apes, in fact, do have this hierarchy system... including humans. When humans form a group (not talking about families here), they will actually subconsciously create such a hierarchy system. There's often a leader (alpha), the people who follow that leader (beta), and the people who walk on the sideline, aren't taken as seriously or are even being a little neglected by the rest (omega). 7. Drawn to nature While most therians are particularly drawn to nature-like sceneries, more so than more people, humans in fact still generally feel more connected to nature than the city life. Living in cities is, in my opinion, more of a result of people staying together for better survival and being able to take a shorter distance to work. But naturally, humans have a deep connection with nature. In the world of biology, this is apparently called Biophilia (philia is a New Latin noun-combining form to describe a fondness or love for a specific subject). More about Biophilia can be found in this article.

In all honesty, a lot of therianthropic urges and behaviorism can have some type of nuance from our human nature. It does not make our Therianthropy any less valid (yes, I said the v-word :laugh: ). With this knowledge, I just hope that people are now able to make a better distinction between wolf and human behavior. So I hoped this helped a little, in case you're questioning an animal or researching some therianthropy roots.

Feel free to critique this piece as it was partially from my own memory from a couple of years of research, I'm not trying to play the all-knowing wolf here. I'd also love to know if you guys know more of these wolf behaviors that could be nuanced by human behavior! How many of these did you know about?

[ginnyzero]

Wolves aren’t Dogs

Wolves aren’t dogs. There’s no other way to put it. And let’s face it, in most books that have anything to do with werewolves, they aren’t wolves either. In fact, fictional werewolves have as much to do with real wolves and wolves have to do with dogs. Fictional werewolves are mostly based on legends such as the loup-garou or are seemingly more out of control men that happen to go big and furry and form into strict hierarchical groups that for some reason hate women and homosexuals.

I wrote my book, the Lone Prospect, and formed my werewolves because I was tired of seeing these same tired, angsty, cursed werewolves that had nothing to do with actual wolves. After researching the different and very diverse origins of werewolves and their types, I started digging into wolves themselves and based my werewolves on actual anecdotal and scientific wolf behavior.

Wolves DO NOT like humans.

Of all the apex predators in the animal kingdom, wolves are the ones that have adapted to our presence the least. Coyotes accept us happily. Bears tolerate us and root in our garbage. Wolves hide out in their forest and are okay with our roads and that’s about it. (In fact, some wolves in Russia like to run up and down the highways for fun scaring all rational human beings as they howl.) As much as humans are afraid of wolves, wolves are equally afraid of humans. Wolves are shy. Like humans, they have a fight or flight instinct and unlike ours, theirs is geared to flight first, fight second. Unless a wolf is sick, they are highly unlikely to attack a human. A sick wolf is like any animal, out of control and looking to defend itself.

Because of this, wolves don’t domesticate. They aren’t pets. And they would prefer to stay as far away from us strange smelling two legged animals as possible. (There are a few exceptions.) If a human wants to interact with a wolf, they have to learn the wolf’s language and be accepted by the wolf. Because the wolf isn’t going to do it the other way around. Even if bred with a domesticated dog, a wolfdog prefers the companionship of their human and their human only and needs several square miles of land to roam about in as their instincts to hunt kick in.

About that.

Wolves are HUNTERS. PERIOD.

In domesticated dogs, we have all types, guard dogs, bird dogs, scent hounds, dogs who like running, deer hounds and big fluffy things that make big pillows. These dogs love us and we love them. Not so with wolves. Wolves do one thing very well. That’s hunt. Wolves are designed to track down and hunt prey in groups. In fact, the prey that they prefer, animals like deer, elk and moose, are much larger than they are and it is very difficult for a singular wolf to take them down alone.

Hunting for wolves is mostly an act of opportunity. They know how the animals in their territory move. They can find where their prey was and track it from there through scent. Then they work together using group tactics to kill the animal. Wolves don’t go and rip out the jugular of their prey. That’s the purview of action and horror movies. Real wolves bleed their prey out by attacking the front and hind end and scratching it until the animal tires and then they go for the belly, not the throat because the belly is where the good meat is. Contrary to popular belief, the largest animal doesn’t eat first either, the hungriest animal does.

Because they are wearing the prey animal down and trying to dodge horns and hooves, the wolves “tag team” their prey. Two or three will attack the animal while the others rest and watch. When one group of wolves is tired and the others are rested they’ll switch out. In fact, it is believed wolves are smart enough to form group attack tactics and remember them. Wolves know that it’s easier to see things from high up than lower down for instance and if there are ridges in their territory will look for their prey from there instead of in the gullies.

Like I said, wolves are smart. They are smart enough to know that once they get old and blind and maybe disabled that the humans also keep the easy meat penned up. Sheep and cattle are easy meat. And owners can ride horses, have fences and keep big dogs that are mean to scare the wolves away and the wolves will still be able to kill the sheep or cattle. Then the humans get angry and take to helicopters and kill the wolves. (Grimace.)

They also tend not to kill unnecessarily. Sure, you hear hunters complain about coming across a mostly uneaten wolf kill in the woods and how horrible it was that the wolf didn’t finish their food. This isn’t true! (In my opinion, the human hunter is jealous!) Wolves, like humans, are a species that actually save their food for later. Except, unlike humans, they don’t have big metal cold boxes to put it in. If the wolves kill something that’s too big to eat and it’s cold out, they’ll let the meat freeze and come back to it later. This is called cold caching.

Cold caching also helps other animals in the food chain from crows, to vultures,  to the wandering coyote or even the bear that wakes up in the middle of winter and may need to eat to go back to sleep. This isn’t waste, but nature’s way of taking care of the entire ecosystem.

If I was going to put another shapeshifting species into the Heathens series, it’d be crows. In the wild, crows help wolves find prey and in return, wolves tear apart the bigger animal so that the crows can get smaller bits of meat. Animals can help each other, especially smart ones (like wolves and crows.)

Because their prey animals tend to be much bigger than they are, wolves live in groups that we call packs.

But the funny thing about packs is that wolf packs are actually FAMILIES.

Wolf packs are not in the wild groups of stranger wolves banding together to take down prey. No. Wolf packs are family units, a mother, a father and a bunch of siblings. Unlike dogs, wolves in the wild do not pack up with complete strangers. Dogs will group and form pack bonds with just about everybody, humans, different breeds, dogs they meet in the street. Not wolves. The only places that stranger wolves that aren’t related to each other live together is captivity. And as with most captivity situations, this changes things and is not good for the wolves. Only in captivity do wolves form groups with a strict hierarchy. Only in captivity will wolves kill their own pups. And only in captivity do males enter the den. None of this happens in the wild.

In the wild, wolf packs are wolf families that are all taking care of and learning from each other. There is no alpha, beta or omega. Mom makes the den for the puppies (and once she has them only she’s allowed inside.) Mom and dad teach the youngsters to hunt. And like all good parents, they allow their older children to lead the hunt in order for the older children to learn how. Then, when the older children leave they become “lone wolves” and may travel up to 800 miles in order to find a mate and create a new family group of their own. (And they may have to lure their mate away from their mate's family pack and just like in humans, mom and dad don't like this! They need the youngster to hunt, not leave! They'll make the lone wolf work to get their mate.)

Mom and dad and all the siblings do an equal part of emotional labor in taking care of the family group. Everybody hunts. Everybody takes care of the puppies and everybody plays together. Mom is just as likely to be in charge as dad. In fact, if mom is mean then one of her daughters might kill her and take care of her youngest siblings herself.

While neighboring wolf packs may be in competition with each other, they are also like your friendly neighbors. Mom and dad wolves mark the territory by peeing on it together. The nearer packs do the same, and if food is scarce they may fight each other over it. If food is plentiful, they are friendly neighbors who like to shout at each other long distance by howling or may get together and exchange greetings, shout and have a big old party. “Hey, hey, haven’t seen you in a while, how are you doing? Any interesting smells?” But they don’t ‘hang’ out on a regular basis and they wouldn’t get along in a dog park!

Wolves and dogs may look similar and seemingly act similar. They are two different species that are wired to do extremely different things. By understanding the differences and knowing about them, humans can set aside their fear and figure out how to coexist peacefully. And you know, maybe hide the easy meat or not encroach on their territory by putting their cattle in national parks and keeping a few rams in the sheep flock.

[wilderun]

“Adolph Murie bottle-reared a wolf pup as part of his field studies that would be developed into his most famous work, The Wolves of Mt. McKinley (1944).

Murie took a very young bitch pup from a pack’s den. Her eyes weren’t even open when he took her from the den, so when she matured she knew only the world of man and his dogs. She matured into a very friendly creature, who loved to play with both children and dogs.

Photo 1: Wags playing with a malamute puppy.

Photo 2: Wags playing with a little girl.

Wags was such a friendly, playful animal that Murie would describe her as “the most friendly ‘dog’ I have ever known.”

https://retrieverman.net/2011/07/27/a-tame-wolf-named-wags/

[wolfparkinterns]

Some classic examples of ritualised aggression interactions in the main pack, mostly between Kanti and Bicho. In these high arousal moments you will hear a lot of growling and snarling from Kanti paired with posturing and muzzle grabs (sometimes hard, if Kanti is over threshold) as well as pinning, mounting and agonistic puckers. Bicho will display exaggerated pawing, licking and whining. A lot of the times Bicho is the one who initiates this and often will elicit these responses from Kanti.

Why he does this is unclear. There has been many times where Bicho has pawed Kanti in the face and caught his nail on his mouth, which makes Kanti retaliate. 

Behaviorally, these two are very interesting to watch.

[thepoodlepack]

kjvoth said: Also, dogs by nature will go after the weaker one in the pack. So you would be trying to train against their nature. Where a service dog’s task are trained in allignment with their nature. Just a thought

kjvoth said: I don’t agree, based on my own observations. But to each their own

@kjvoth. False. To each, science.

You see, this is not something that’s up for debate because science has told us what is what, not some arbitrary observations from an unqualified person. Pack theory has forever been something based on wolves, not dogs, and even then it is false.

Wolf packs in the wild are families made up of an adult male, and adult female, and any pups they may have. When those pups grow up, they leave the pack, most likely to go make their own (in principle). As the parents would like their pups to grow up strong,they do not go after the weaker one of their children.

The idea that wolf packs are made up of wolves constantly fighting for dominance and picking off weaker members of the pack comes from a 1947 study based on unrelated captive wolves, which happens to now be completely debunked.

It was also erroneously applied to domesticated dogs, which is quite frankly ridiculous, seeing dogs have been separating from their shared ancestor with wolves for around 30,000 years.

Furthermore, there has been evidence put forward that feral dogs don’t form packs, but friendly groups without any strict hierarchies, or in fact wander alone.

[ginnyzero]

Fun Wolf Behaviors

Outside of humans, wolves are some of the most social animals on earth with each other. I have discussed some interesting wolf facts about their instincts and behaviors. Here are a few more fun things about wolves that I tried to work into my books about the Heaven’s Heathens (The Lone Prospect and Rodeo’s Run.)

Wolves greet each other by kissing!

Most people know that dogs and wolves get a lot of information about their surroundings through scent. They use their noses to get information about almost everything and if they can’t smell something it scares them. Wolves have strong scent glands all around their body that excrete pheromones that tell other wolves a lot about them. Wolves smell these glands as part of their greetings. There are glands around the cheeks, the flanks on the tail and of course, under the tail.

But wolves also greet each other by what looks like to a human a French kiss. They open their mouths and look like they are kissing each other by sticking their tongue into the others mouth! Of course, this probably sounds disgusting, but you aren’t the ones doing it.

There is actually one man in Europe who integrated himself into a captive wolf pack and actually did exchange wolf kisses with them. (Ick.)

Wolves love to sing!

Of course, we all know that wolves love to howl. 99% of wolf art is either a wolf howling or a wolf snarling. (Frankly, I’m over both types.) Wolves love to sing so much that they start doing it as puppies while their parents are off hunting and they’re being minded by older siblings. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is or what time of night. Singing is an activity that wolves will engage in by themselves or in large groups. In fact, one wolf howling can start other wolves howling. (Just like in Zootopia.) Humans can also get wolves to howl with them!

Once wolves really get going, it can be difficult to tell if there is one wolf, two wolves or twenty wolves. This is because they can vary their pitch up and down the key of E.

Wolves love to party!

Neighboring groups of Wolves love to get together for something we humans call a howl. They’ll gather in order to exchange greetings, see pups and basically run around yipping in excitement and of course howling. This is like humans having a big party!

Wolves love to play.

Among each other, wolves can be pranksters. They like to play games on each other involving pouncing and attacking. To humans, this looks like they’re fighting. Sure, wolves do fight as most groups and families do, but many times it’s simply wolf play. Wolves have thick fur and hide so what would really hurt and bloody up a person barely makes a scratch on them. Wolf play is mostly practice for the very important skill of hunting.

Wolves can fish!

Hunting big animals like deer and elk are not the only sources of protein for a wolf. If a wolf pack lives near the water they also get a lot of their protein from fishing! They can snatch fish right out of the water. In fact, wolves also eat small rodents such as mice and a lot of berries. Wolves’ bodies are designed for a feast or famine type of life. So, they eat what they can, when they can, that way when food is scarce, they won’t starve to death even if they get very hungry. A wolf can eat up to five pounds of meat in one go.

Wolf courtship involves dancing.

Yep, like humans wolves like to dance! If a male and female wolf are in the process of courtship or it’s around mating season (October to January depending on weather,) they’ll get to know each other by dancing. Wolves can go up on their back legs and put their front legs on each other’s shoulders and either sway or walk around a bit. This makes them roughly six feet tall.

Apparently dancing in all social cultures promotes intimacy! Who knew?

Raising the puppies is a family affair.

There are three things that happen in wolf families when it comes to raising puppies. Everyone in the family helps take care of them and brings back food from the hunt for them. It’s an egalitarian society because survival is so difficult. When the puppies are very young and are still nursing, an older sister can have a false pregnancy with their mother in order to help her mother nurse her younger siblings. That way there are two females giving the puppies nourishment.

Once the puppies leave the den, for several months they are too young to go on the hunt and have to stick to the den area. (The den tends to be in the middle of the pack’s established territory.) So, the older siblings have to babysit. Now unlike humans who may whine and moan and fight not to take care of their siblings, wolves love their little siblings so much that even the male wolves will fight to stay behind and watch them. Older siblings are very indulgent of their younger siblings and let them pounce on them and even bite their tails.

Lastly, tragedy can happen and puppies can die due to sickness or injury or even starvation. When this happens before the mother buries the puppy, the entire family mourns the loss of the puppy. The mother will take the dead body of the puppy around to the entire group and they will lick it and howl and essentially say their good byes. Then the mother will bury the puppy. Wolves feel loss and sadness much like elephants and humans.

Wolves are fascinating animals and predators and there’s a lot we don’t know about them. These are just a few of my favorite behaviors (mostly geared towards social interaction I’ll admit) that I’m trying to work into my books in fun ways as they meld with human behaviors!

[wolfparkinterns]

Fiona, Kanti and Bicho at the start of a rally. Note how high Kanti’s tail is, indicating very high emotional arousal.

A rally is when wolves gather together, often regrouping members of the pack that have been further away. It usually is paired with howling and lots of excited greeting behaviors. It also send emotional arousal levels very high so sometimes it escalates into play or even aggression. However, this depends on the pack and the relationship between members.