One of the most
misunderstood animals in my opinion is the wolf.
In North America there
were 24 different species of wolves--the Alaskan Tundra Wolf, Alexander Archipelago Wolf, Arctic Wolf, Baffin Island
Wolf, Bernard’s Wolf, British Columbia Wolf, Cascade Mountain Wolf, Eastern
Timber Wolf, Great Plains Wolf, Greenland Wolf, Hudson Bay Wolf, Interior
Alaskan Wolf, Kenai Peninsula Wolf, Labrador Wolf, Mackenzie Tundra Wolf,
Mackenzie Valley Wolf, Manitoba Wolf, Mexican Wolf, Mogollon Mountain Wolf,
Newfoundland Wolf, N. Rocky Mountain Wolf, S. Rocky Mountain Wolf, Texas Gray
Wolf, and the Vancouver Island Wolf.
Sadly, the Texas Gray, S. Rocky Mountain, Newfoundland, Mogollon
Mountain, Manitoba, Kenai Peninsula, Greenland, Cascade Mountain, British
Columbian and the Bernard’s Wolf are all extinct, due mostly to indiscriminate
hunting.
The Vancouver,
N. Rocky Mountain, Mackenzie Valley, Labrador, Hudson Bay, Great Plains, and
the Eastern Timber Wolf are all subspecies to the Gray Wolf. The Interior Alaskan is the largest wolf species in North
America at 5-7 feet from nose to tip of tail.
This past
summer I went to Divide, Colorado where I came across an amazing sanctuary
called Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Sanctuary. The staff not only taught my husband and I all about wolves, but they showed us the animals’ great
“personalities.”
One thing that
made a big impression on me is that they mate for life, which a number of other animal species do also. However, if a
wolf loses its mate it mourns for life and very
rarely finds another mate. They will
also mourn for other wolves that have died in the pack. I am a huge family person, so this hit
me hard.
One of the
wolves at CWWS lost her mate due to an illness. It is believed she howled every night for
six months for her lost mate. It was noted that all the other wolves in the sanctuary never howled
when she was howling. In this six
month period the sanctuary tried to put other
wolves in her enclosure that she got along with previously to see if that would help her. However, she would
fight any other wolf that came near her. This
behavior continued until the day the sanctuary received an orphaned wolf
pup. They were looking for a wolf
to foster the
pup and to their surprise the lonely she wolf took him in instantly. The people at the Colorado Wolf and
Wildlife Sanctuary never thought their girl would ever accept another
wolf, but this orphaned pup seemed to steal her heart. To
this day they are inseparable, and she is very protective of him.
Wolves are a
very important part of our environment and have a lot to teach us if we just observe.
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