Part 1: Canis Lupis Linnaeus
1. Origin and Description
- Wolves once ranged over most of Earth; many different subspecies (hard to distinguish)
- Most closely related to coyotes, dogs, dingo
- Most socially evolved and intelligent of their group— high degree of social organization, communication, individualized “personalities” and specialized roles
- Often assumed to be much larger than they are: usually only 80-120 pounds
- Much bigger paws than similar-sized dogs, though!
- Incredible stamina: spend 8-10 hours a day on the move
- Litter size depends on how limited resources, space, etc. are → sometimes not breeding actually increases chances of pack survival
- No natural predators, usually live 8-9 years
[T]he woods is a hard place to get on, and yet the wolf survives.
2. Social Structure and Communication
- Three social structures in a pack: male hierarchy, female hierarchy, note seasonal cross-sexual hierarchy
- “Male hunter-male leader” image is misleading; females actually better hunters
- Very dynamic system that depends on context
- Howl = social signal, though function is not understood; wolves howling together → harmonize, creating illusion of more animals than there are
- Markings on fur around nose, eyes, ears, tail, etc. emphasize details in postural expression
- Lots of little-understood communication involving scent
- Not necessarily that wolves are much better than us at detecting faint odors (we are actually pretty good at this), but that they can distinguish between far more scents
3. Hunting and Territory
- Different system regulating their hunger and feeding habits → adapted to feast-or-famine existence
- “Conversation of death” → moment of staring down between predator and prey before one starts to run
- Wolf “territories” are highly plastic, more areas of high probability to find then than private property
- Defined by scent marking and hunting activities
- How do other species react to wolves moving in? Some leave the area (coyote, lynx), others feed off their scraps (Fox, raven, wolverine)
- The irony…
I write now in a country and at a time when man’s own brutal nature is cause for concern and when the wolf, whom man has historically accused of craven savagery, has begun to emerge as a benign creature.
Part 2: And a Cloud Passes Overhead
4. Amaguk and Sacred Meat
- What can studying people who live in similar environments, with similar hunting patterns (Nunamiut Eskimos) tell us about wolves? What about the other way around?
- Seminomadic hunting societies ,3/5 similar foods as wolves
- Difference btw what biologists observe and what the Eskimos do, what they find relevant and significant
- Eskimos do not seek an ultimate explanation or cause— “Some of the wolf is known, some is not.”
- Build precise but open-ended knowledge: more attuned to picking up visual cues than whites, speak more in likelihoods and about individual wolves than collective
- Most hunting tribes preferred eating herbivores to other hunters— seen as more nutritious, bc getting concentrated healing power of plants
- Hunting → much more than just killing, a sacred act between species… → eating domestic animals is antithetical to this
- Similiar to how wolves fed in captivity are missing fundamental component of their lives
5. A Wolf in the Heart
- In addition to similarities in hunting style (more by convergent evolution), more conscious imitation of wolves by Native Americans
- “Help me to fit, to be valuable in the world, like the wolf.”
- Wolf epitomized ideal of both being strong as an individual and submerging personal feelings for the good of the tribe/pack
- Association with wolves = pervasive across Native American cultures
- Wolf rarely hunted, but if it was, mainly used for pelt
- Pelt used as disguise for scouts, to give them the mind of a
6. Wolf Warrior
- Wolves admired for strength, stamina stoicism → often incorporated into symbology of war
- Women often appear in Native American folklore and history as wives or helpers to wolves
- Symbol of renewal: wolf who was first to be killed became first to return from the dead
Part 3: The Beast of Waste and Desolation
7. The Clamor of Justification
- How did the wolf become the enemy in America?
- Killing of wolves often goes beyond predator control, beyond casual cruelty → more to do with fear, superstition, duty… even murder
- Theriophobia = fear of the beast as an irrational, violent creature; comprises self-hatred and anxiety over the human loss of inhibitions → ultimately a projected fear of one’s own nature
- To Western colonizers, wolf became symbol of “man’s primitive origins in the wilderness… his bestial nature” → needed to be destroyed as taming of the wilderness and explanation by Europeans (Manifest Destiny) took place
- Conflicted with other idea of nature as a retreat, soul-stirring and majestic (Romanticism, transcendentalism of Muir, Thoreau)
- Also demonized bc preyed on domestic stock, which seemed to call for retribution
- Idea that animals were put on Earth to serve men, so life that was not useful to men (wolves) were not pleasing to God
- Cartesian and Roman Catholic idea that animals were not only put on Earth for man’s use, but also has no souls and could be killed without guilt
8. Wolfing for Sport
- Another justification for killing wolves → it was just “good sport” to do so
9. An American Pogrom
- Even compared to Europe, American extermination of wolves was intense
- Colonists drew parallels btw the “savagery” of the Indian and the wolf; murdered/persecuted them both
- Wolves scapegoated for any downturns in luck in livestock industry → further bolstered extermination (bounties, mass poisoning, etc.)
- “Dead wolves were what Manifest Destiny cost.”
Part 4: And a Wolf Shall Devour the Sun
10. Out of a Medieval Mind
- Have been considering wolf from three POVs: object of scientific inquiry, object of interest to people bound up in natural world with them, and objects of hatred for livestock raisers… not really so different!
- In each case, we create wolves, comes from man’s never-ending struggle to understand the universe
- Association of wolves with both dawn and dusk, transitions from and into darkness (seemingly opposites)
- Basis for Latin idiom for dawn: inter lupum et canem (between the wolf and the dog)
- Similarities in words for wolf and light in Greek (lukos/leukos), Latin (lupus/lucis) → could just be coincidence, but similar associations found in other cultures (Icelandic, Pawnee, etc.)
- Concept/imagery of wolf, prejudice against it → roots in the Middle Ages
11. The Reach of Science
- No unbiased, ecological works on wolves until 1949s
- “It is hard to think of another animal… that has suffered such prejudice as an object of our scientific curiosity.”
12. Searching for the Beast
- Myth of the werewolf
- “No amount of carnage, no pile of wolves in the village square, no number of human beings burned as werewolves, was enough to end [the perception of self-hatred]. It is, I suppose, not that different from the slaughter of Jews at the hands of the Nazis, except that when it happens to animals it is easier to forget.
13. Images from a Childhood
- Depictions of wolves in myths, fables, children’s stories, literature→ much more nuanced than pure evil
- Aesop’s fables of the Wolf and the Dog → all the comfort, ease of living is not worth servitude and chains
14. A Howling at Twilight
Epilogue
- Lopez’s wolf pups (rescued) → “moved always… in search of clues.”
We have begun to see again, as our primitive ancestors did, that animals are neither imperfect imitations of men nor mchines that can be described entirely in terms of endocrine secretions and neural impulses. Like us, they are genetically variable, and both species and the individual are capable of unprecedented behavior. They are like us in the sense that we can figuratively talk of them as beings some of whose forms, movements, activities, and social organizations are analogous, but they are no more literally like us than are trees. To paraphrase Henry Beston, they move in another universe, as complete as we are, both of us caught at a moment in mid-evolution.
- To truly learn about animals, have to get out into the woods… to integrate intuition with science
- Alfred North Whitehead → “in simply discussing the issues, the nearest hint of dogmatic certainty is an exhibition of folly. This tolerance for mystery invigorates the imagination; and it is the imagination that gives shape to the universe.”