Usually this male and female are the only animals of the pack to breed. All of a pack's adults help to care for young pups by bringing them food and watching them while others hunt.
All rights reserved. Wolves With their piercing looks and spine-tingling howls, wolves inspire both adoration and controversy around the world. Find out how many wolf species exist, the characteristics that make each wolf's howl unique, and how the wolf population in the continental United States nearly became extinct. Common Name: Gray Wolf. Scientific Name: Canis lupus. Type: Mammals. Diet: Carnivore. Group Name: Pack. Size: Head and body: 36 to 63 inches; tail: 13 to 20 inches. Weight: 40 to pounds.
Size relative to a 6-ft human:. Least concern. Least Concern Extinct. Wolf packs usually hunt within a specific territory. It is not uncommon for territories to be as large as 50 square miles but they may even extend up to 1, square miles in areas where prey is scarce. Wolves often cover large areas to hunt, traveling as far as 30 miles a day.
Although they trot along at 5 m. Most wolves disperse from the pack they were born into by age three. Dispersing wolves have traveled as far as miles. In the Midwest, wolves eat mainly white-tailed deer but they also eat moose, beaver, and snowshoe hare.
In the Rocky Mountains, wolves feed on elk, deer, moose, bison, and beaver. Wolves even eat some insects, small mammals, nuts, and berries. They may not eat for a week or more but are capable of eating 20 pounds of meat in a single meal. Wolves have lived with their prey for many thousands of years, and the health of wolf populations is dependent on the health of their prey base.
Under certain conditions wolves can cause local decreases in prey numbers. But if deer and elk numbers were to decline over an extended period of time, due to severe winter conditions or habitat changes, wolves would have less food available and their health would decline.
They would then produce fewer pups and fewer pups would survive to adulthood. Also, more adult wolves would die because of poor health or in conflicts with other wolves. Thus, wolf numbers would decline before their prey could be eliminated.
Isle Royale, Michigan, serves as a living laboratory to illustrate this point. One female gray wolf naturally emigrated to this island about , acres more than 50 years ago and eventually three packs were established.
Their primary prey is moose. Through the years the numbers of moose and wolves have fluctuated, but after 50 years a moose population continues to survive on Isle Royale. It is well-documented that wolves tend to do this. Hunting and bringing down big game is dangerous work and wolves are sometimes killed by elk, moose, and even deer. In the wild, they cannot afford to be injured; therefore, they go after the safest animals to kill and often leave strong animals alone.
A recent study of wolf predation on elk in Yellowstone National Park, for example, found that wolves tend to kill calves and older animals — adult elk killed by wolves were about 7 years older than elk killed by hunters. If weather or other conditions make prey unusually vulnerable, wolves can and do kill prime-aged animals but wolf predation tends to be selective. Wolves survive by preying primarily on the most vulnerable individuals in the deer population the very young, old, sick, injured, or nutritionally compromised thus under certain conditions their impacts on the deer population are most likely compensatory rather than additive.
That is, many of the deer that wolves kill likely would have died from other causes such as starvation or disease. However, when weather events occur, such as deep snowfalls or drought, wolves can be a factor that reduces deer numbers further. For example, since wolves became protected in northern Minnesota in , there has been a high and even increasing harvest of deer by hunters. Wolves likely were accountable for a portion of the lower deer numbers and, in turn, the lower deer harvest. Subsequent mild winters resulted in a rebounding of the deer herd, despite the increasing wolf population.
The years through produced the highest deer harvests ever, with Minnesota deer hunters harvesting over , white-tailed deer during each of those hunting seasons — an approximate five-fold increase in hunter deer harvest since wolves were listed under the ESA in Locally, the presence of wolves can reduce hunter success.
The presence of wolves changes deer movements and behavior. Also some wolves hunt around bait piles that attract and concentrate deer, which may reduce the chances that deer will frequent the bait sites. Sometimes, but rarely. The few times that wolves have been documented killing more than they could eat were when conditions such as deep snow or other unusual circumstances made it easy for them to kill their prey. Even then, they returned to those kills and continued to use them.
As one of the top predators in the food chain, wolves have a definite impact on their ecosystem. Ravens, foxes, wolverines, coyotes, bald eagles, and even bears benefit because they feed on carcasses of animals killed by wolves.
Coyotes declined because wolves view them as competition and keep them out of their territories; which may be responsible, in part, for an increase in small rodents. Their coats are made up of wooly fur to provide insulation and long guard hairs to keep out moisture. The gray wolf's large paws have fleshy pads and claws for traction and can spread to provide better support in snow.
Wolves have a sense of hearing twenty times sharper than a human's and have a sense of smell a hundred times keener. The wolf's jaws can deliver a crushing pressure of over pounds per square inch! Wolves' vision is very motion sensitive. They have a reflective retina, called a tapetum that enhances their night vision. They can't see color. Wolves have great stamina. They can cover a distance of more than eighteen miles at a quick trot. They have a top speed of about 40 miles per hour. The maximum lifespan of a wolf is 17 years.
Wolves reach sexual maturity at 1 year for females and 2 years for males. Wolves typically mate once every year between January and March. They have a gestation period of about 63 days. The average litter size is 5 or 6, born in a den, such as a rock cavity or a hole in the ground.
Males are usually larger than females. They have silvery gray-brown backs, light tan and cream underparts, and long bushy tails. The fur can be any shade of gray, brown, black, white, or tan.
In winter, their fur becomes darker on the neck, shoulders, and rump see photo below. Where they live: Gray wolves are one of the most wide ranging land animals. They occupy a wide variety of habitats, from arctic tundra to forest, prairie, and arid landscapes.
Hunting and habitat destruction have caused a steep decline in populations.
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