“While I was down there, I learned that they had two litters of pups, so I asked Larry if it would be possible to buy two of them. He said, ‘There’s no way that I would sell them! I’d sooner put them under first.’ He said that there was some man in Texas who wanted to buy two of them as well, but Larry’s concern was that he had to be sure that whoever got any of his wolves would know about these animals and would be able to do a good job raising them. He wouldn’t even consider selling them to some knucklehead like me because he didn’t think that I would be able to do a good job with them.”
Although he was disappointed at not being able to obtain two wolf pups, Jim’s enthusiasm was always rekindled whenever he remembered the Gehr pack. Eventually, obsessed by the thought of working with wolves, he realized he needed to learn a great deal more about the animals. He bought books dealing with the species and began to study them intently. He also went to see George Wilson on a number of occasions, listening with eager attention to the older man’s stories about wolves and about the pack that George had kept in St. Louis, Missouri.
Eventually, feeling that he had tapped all possible sources of wolf information, Jim decided to act. First he got in touch with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, to enquire about getting a permit to keep wolves in the state. The reply was disappointing. It said, in part: “The importation of wolves into Michigan, though an infrequent act, causes anxiety for the neighbours of the permittees, makes trouble for the local police agency, and causes poor public relations for the Department [of Natural Resources]. . . possession permits to keep wolves as pets will not be issued.” Import permits could be issued, however, to educational and research institutions. Would it be possible, Jim wondered, to secure the interest of scientists at Northern Michigan University?
With this in mind, he worked out a proposal in which he offered to provide the land, erect a safe and suitable fence around it, and feed and care for the animals at his own expense if the university was interested in conducting a long-range study of captive wolves. He and Scott then presented this proposal to the university’s department of psychology, where it received favourable interest. In due course, the plan was tentatively approved by the university, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington. But in anticipation, before all the paperwork was completed and the permits issued, Jim bought ten acres of well-forested land near the village of Ishpeming. There he started building a home for himself, his wife, Kaye, and their infant son, Jason. But while he was doing this, he kept on thinking about the wolf enclosure, drawing diagrams on paper and walking the area to determine where he would put in fence-posts, counting the number that would be needed.
Eventually, the university submitted to the local state authorities its completed proposal for “a study of captive wolf (Canis lupus) behaviour.” This was forwarded to headquarters of the Department of Natural Resources in Lansing, Michigan, where it was approved, although the permit from the state, and a second permit that had to be issued by the federal government to comply with the requirements of the Endangered Species Act of the United States, would not actually be granted until some months later. Nevertheless, Jim decided to get ready to receive the wolves, and early in 1977 he built the eight-acre enclosure that is now home to the pack.
It was a big day in Jim’s life when the two softly furred, wobbly puppies came into his care. One was a male, the other a female. At first, because they had not yet been weaned, the pups were kept in the house, for they had to be fed by bottle every four hours, a task that kept Jim and Kaye busy and was to continue to be a part of their routines for several weeks to come. But by the time the two were forty-two days old, the pups no longer needed milk and were then capable of eating meat, a task that they performed with eagerness, efficiency, and gusto. Now they were put into the enclosure and Jim decided to name them.
The male was called Shawano in memory of the place where Jim had seen his first wolves; the female he named Brigit because he had recently been impressed by French actress Brigitte Bardot’s fight to save the seals that were annually being slaughtered on the off Canada’s East Coast.
The pups were from different litters. Shawano had been sired – a wolf from Canada’s Arctic. His mother was an eastern timber wolf, but the pup, born that year on April 19, was destined to favour his father in size and colouring. He grew up to weigh somewhat in excess of one hundred pounds and to sport a honey-blonde coat. Brigit’s parents were both eastern wolves, but she was born black and destined to remain so, a gorgeous animal with a white star on her chest and a frosting of white around her muzzle. Born April 8, Brigit was eleven days older than her future mate.
The gestation period of wolves is about sixty-three days (as it is with domestic dogs), but pups may be born two or three days before or after that lime, depending upon the physiological constitution and health of the mother. The availability of prey animals and their kind and size exert considerable influence upon pregnant wolves, especially during the early development of the embryos. As might be expected, miscarriages may take place in times of famine, and accidental injuries can kill embryos within the womb – even relatively minor mishaps such as a fall against a downed tree trunk. In such cases, the mother, as well as the embryos, may die.
Wolves are sexually active only once a year. Most commonly, mating takes place during late February or early March, but the height of the breeding season is likely to vary in accordance with the latitude of the pack’s territory. Wolves in the extreme north will probably mate in early April, but those in the south may breed in early January; temperature and the amount of daylight appear to have some influence on the onset of estrus as well as upon the sexual readiness of the males, which, though they may show great interest in the hormonal scents of a female in estrus, will not engage in the business of mating until their own urges are aroused. (In contrast, domestic dog females come into estrus twice a year, while males are sexually motivated at all times.) The birth of the cubs, therefore, can take place between the first week of March and the first week of June, with a mid-time of late April to early May occurring in the region roughly contained between 45 and 55 degrees north latitude.
Newly born wolf puppies look more like tiny bears than like members of the dog family. They are blind, their hearing is poor, their ears are flattened forward, and their noses are squashed, as though someone had pressed them down with a forceful thumb. The legs are short and underdeveloped and the beautiful, plume-like tail sported by the adult bears no resemblance to the short, skinny appendage of the wolfling. These babies come into the world wearing dark brown or slate-blue coats of fine, woolly hair, except for those of their kind that are black, the coats in such cases being of a glossy sable shade. Jim, of course, did not get to see Shawano and Brigit immediately after birth, but from his studies he knew what they must have looked like as they emerged into the world: wriggly, mewling little bundles that weighed about one pound, each of which was to experience immediately the pleasantly warm stimulation of their mother’s tongue and then, perhaps abruptly, the small, sharp pain that stabbed them briefly when the maternal incisor teeth nipped through the umbilical cord to liberate the newborns from their embryonic ties, although it is not unusual for the cord to break on its own.
By the time Shawano and Brigit were settled in the Wuepper household, their eyes had already opened, an important event in the life of every wolf pup, and one that appears to be as fraught with anxiety as it is full of wonder. Before that magic moment, the little wolves are only vaguely aware of their surroundings, but keenly cognisant of the caressing tongue of their mother, the warmth of her body, and the solace of her rich milk. But when their birth-blue eyes are first liberated from the embrace of their lids, and even though little light reaches the den chamber, the experience of first sight is intimidating, puzzling, and exciting.
How well I remember sitting up all night with my wolf Wa after I noticed that on
e of his lids had become slitted, suggesting that the pup would soon be opening both eyes. Hour by hour I watched the slow process until, at last, the little animal’s eyes were uncurtained and he raised a wobbly head to stare myopically at his surroundings.
Wolf puppies open their eyes between nine and twelve days after birth, the variance accounted for by individual rates of development. More precise timing, therefore, cannot be determined, and it is not even possible to estimate average timing for this process because only a relatively few wild young have been monitored from the moment of birth to the moment of sight. Nevertheless, from observations made by George Wilson, Jim, myself, and other investigators, it seems reasonable to assume that the majority of wolf cubs are gifted with vision when they are eleven days old, although they are extremely nearsighted and will remain so for several weeks. Even then, their perceptive abilities are not fully developed; the cubs will not attain real visual efficiency until they are about four months old, at which point the colour of their eyes has changed from blue to amber.
The quality of sight, which the vast majority of people can only measure through personal experience, is a subject that is too loosely dealt with by many of those who study animals and subsequently write about their findings, perhaps because such observers measure acuteness of vision from the standpoint of their own perspectives.
As a rule, human beings see that which they want to look at, such perceptions being consciously noted. But for the most part, humans do not use their eyes as do wolves and other wild animals, who must look at everything in their world and take conscious note of it, no matter how small or insignificant an object may be. People don’t need to be so constantly alert. Compared with other mammals, we live in relatively unchanging environments in which such things as our safety, our home, our food supply, and our mode of travel are usually assured. We do not constantly scan our territory for signs of enemies or for the presence of food; and more often than not, we can usually avoid latent dangers because of the very order of our society. When we walk, most of us do so on clear, level surfaces; when hungry, we can eat practically at will; we rest and spend much of our leisure time in comfortable and secure “dens.” Because of these things, most humans do not make proper use of their visual capabilities.
During the last fifteen years I have been trying to exploit the full potential of my own eyes and for this reason I have been making careful field observations of animals, and especially of wolves, as well as researching the physiology and function of vertebrate vision. My findings are by no means complete, but I have attained a much better understanding of the capabilities and limitations of sight, particularly of those receptors that are hidden behind each eye lens. I have come to realize that this subject has been greatly neglected by those who study the behaviour of animals (and of humans, for that matter!) and because of this failure, a very important part of the biology of wolves has gone unrecorded. As a result, I feel that a brief explanation of the internal workings of the eyes of wolves, and a comparison with those of our own species, may fill an important behavioural gap.
The interior of a vertebrate’s eye is lined by a light-sensitive, layered membrane – the retina – in the rearmost, central portion of which is located the site of clearest vision. In humans, primates, diurnal birds, and lizards, this spot is furnished with a small pit known as the fovea. The eyes of most other vertebrates, including wolves, lack such depressions; nevertheless, the same rearmost area of each retina, called the macula in such animals, is also the centre of best visual definition. Eyes furnished with concave retinal foveas are capable of seeing distant objects in greater detail than eyes that lack the depression. The reasons for this difference are explained by the science of optics, and need not be examined here. Suffice it to say that because their eyes lack fovral pits, wolves are relatively nearsighted. They can see details clearly up to a distance of about seventy-five feet; beyond that limit, objects probably become blurred. This means that wolves cannot identify by sight faraway, unmoving objects, although the acuteness of their hearing and scent more than compensates for the visual lack. Movement is another matter. Because the outer perimeters of the retinas of all vertebrates are exceptionally sensitive to movement as well as to dim light, wolves are quick to notice any kind of activity occurring in their neighbourhood, even at long distance in areas of open landscape. Such peripheral vision allows wolves and all other wild mammals constantly to monitor the moment-to-moment events taking place in their environments.
Frontal sight, on the other hand, serves to alert the animals to the presence of trail obstructions, permits them to recognize each others features, and guides their actions while hunting, especially during the actual attack. Frontal sight is also used in conjunction with peripheral vision when distant events are being observed. In this context it is important to note that all wolves can immediately recognize previously encountered shapes and movements; they are well able to remember the differences that exist between, say, a moose and a deer by the general shape of each animal and by the distinctive ways in which they walk and run and feed. Indeed, I know from personal experience that wolves are acutely sensitive to the rhythms of movement, and are able to recognize each other, or a human with whom they relate, by the appearance of an individual’s motion as well as by the sounds made during locomotion. Time and again I have deliberately altered my shape, height, and walk and have in every case created confusion in the minds of my lupine friends. Although they have been able to scent me, and to recognize my scent, the changes in stance, rhythm, and height have always caused them to back away cautiously until the distance between us has closed enough for them to read my features clearly. Beyond serving to demonstrate that wolves are, indeed, frontally shortsighted, this also shows that they employ all their senses in equal measure at every opportunity. That is to say, no wolf is ever satisfied about any unknown influence encountered in its range until all of the messages received by its eyes, by its ears, and by its nose have been properly coordinated in its brain. But there is one aspect of the vision of wolves and that of most other mammals that for me remains open to question: colour perception.
Although it has been clearly established that humans, primates, monkeys, birds, and a few other species can definitely see colours, the scientific literature states unequivocally that all other animals are unable to perceive the hues of the rainbow. According to this thesis, wolves and most other mammals are held to be colour-blind, which suggests that they see all things in shades of white, black, and grey. I cannot accept this belief. Many experiments have show that most mammals do not perceive colour in the same way that it is seen by human eyes, but I am nevertheless convinced that wolves can detect colour in ways that have not yet been identified.
I have noticed on a number of occasions that wolves become interested in those colours that have red as a base when these are perceived in good light. The truth is that we just do not know what a wolf (or any other animal) sees when it looks at a green tree, a setting sun, or a lady, like my wife, Sharon, wearing a violet or mauve coat - colours that she favours and that often captured the interest of Shawano and the other wolves. Matta and Wa, the two wolves that I raised in the 1960s, also showed considerable interest in red tones and, to a lesser extent, in shades of blue. Some humans are said to be colour-blind because they may see red as green and blue as some other colour. Of course they are not colour-blind. They merely see colour in another way. Is the world of the wolf and his companion animals made up solely of greys and blacks and whites? I do not think so; but until more and better research is done in this field, the question cannot be answered with assurance.
When it comes to hearing, wolf observers are on firmer ground. As adults, these animals have acute auricular perception and can detect sounds that are much too faint for human ears, even in the total absence of wind. But, as pups, their hearing is poor until about the third week of life, when it begins to improve rapidly. It has been said that wolf pups are actually de
af at birth – I myself have said so, at the time placing too much faith in the available literature – but evidence I have gathered through the years appears to deny this claim, and more recently, Jim Wuepper and Scott Stewart, who have both crawled into wolf dens within hours of the birth of pups, discovered that the wolflings were able to hear, and discern as alien, the noises made by the intruders as they scuffed their way through the tunnel that led to the nesting chamber.
In the matter of sound, I think it likely that wolves can also feel the vibrations of movement. On three occasions, while wolf-watching in mountain country in the Yukon Territory and in British Columbia, I saw packs that were running along lowland areas suddenly change direction and head for prey that appeared to me, watching from a height, too far away for the animals to hear or scent. On two of these occasions the prey animals were moose and, on the third, caribou.
Although they cannot see and do not hear too well, newborn wolflings have an excellent sense of smell and this, very soon after they have been licked clean by their mother, guides them unerringly to the milk supply, although during this first, purposeful journey, they are also drawn toward the mother’s body heat.
As Jim was to learn from Shawano and Brigit, baby wolves begin to develop their teeth by about the third week after birth, when the needle-sharp tips start to poke through the gums. From then on, the teeth grow rapidly and about one week later they are quite capable of injuring human fingers, although this is not because the pups intend to bite the hand that feeds them, but simply because the canines, curved and very sharp, can cut almost as well as a surgical scalpel.
In Praise of Wolves Page 5