Finding myself drawing comparisons between the behaviour of the wolves and that of humans, I recalled the effects of the syndrome known as cabin fever, which often manifests itself after one or more individuals of our species become isolated from the main- stream for long periods. Trappers, prospectors, pioneers, miners, and others who are thrust into the wilderness and held there because of weather or other conditions today represent a minority of such sufferers, the vast majority of whom are now found as shut-ins in metropolitan centres. But whether in the wilderness or in a Manhattan highrise, such individuals develop an angst that in lone people can lead to suicide or severe mental breakdowns. And when two or more individuals are thus held captive by their environment, although they may have started out as close friends or as married couples, hatreds can develop that, in many instances, have been known to last entire lifetimes. In extreme cases, actual combat has occurred and murders have been committed.
Was there that much difference between wolves held in captivity, even under such optimum conditions as were available to the Ishpeming pack, and humans isolated and held in one place against their natural desires?
Examining this question at the time, it seemed to me that there was hardly any difference at all. But now, after reflecting upon the biology of aggression and linking this with my observations of wild wolves, when I had seen Alpha females drive away subordinate competitors during the breeding season, I realize that there is an enormous and most significant distinction to be made between the yearly harassment of Brigit – which has its origins in wolf hierarchy, but continues abnormally because of captivity – and the interactions between humans suffering from cabin fever, who are, of course, also held captive.
In the case of wolves and other wild animals, when the cause of conflict is removed, normal societal relationships are re-assumed. Denali, for instance, invariably accepts Brigit when the breeding season is past, and Brigit just as readily forgives her daughter, so the pack once again becomes a self-supportive, tightly knit unit.
In the case of humans, however, most people who have had serious quarrels during enforced confinement (or for any other reason, for that matter) continue to resent and distrust each other long after the cause of the dispute has ended; in the absence of forgiveness and acceptance, the actual or supposed wrongs are kept alive in memory and are often exaggerated in the course of time. Individuals so afflicted became angry whenever they are reminded of the conflict. Thus, rancors from the past survive to influence the present negatively and, unless purged, will continue to do so in the future.
Although I had not formulated such theories while I was watching Denali and Brigit in 1984 I did detect some similarity between their condition and that of humans suffering from cabin fever, having recognized years earlier that wolves and humans are both highly social animals. There are, of course, differences to be noted in the behaviour and physiology exhibited by the two species, but there are also many similarities that stem from the natural survival traits inherited during the course of evolution. These are particularly to be noted within the nervous and endocrine systems of wolf and man, which bear a close relationship to each other. In this regard, there is ample proof that many human behavioural traits are similar to those also found in wolves, not the least of which involve dominant-submissive behaviour. Humans like to believe that they are truly free and not subservient to anyone, but the truth is that all of us are socially insecure and inherently ruled by the primordial “pecking order.” Clearly, as in the wolf pack, dominant-submissive traits and behaviour begin within the family. As wolves do, humans leave the parental fold to mate and to start their own “pack.” The offspring of these unions are subjected immediately after birth to the disciplines of the dominant adults, their parents. When more than one infant is born to the human family, sibling rivalry develops and intensifies and, as the offspring approach puberty, dominance clashes result between them and their parents, although in the human condition the word dominance is rarely used: instead we talk about such things as disobedience, child abuse, the generation gap, wife-beating aggressive tendencies, and parental guidance. But no matter what labels may be applied to the functions and dysfunctions of any truly social group, there is no escaping the fact that the struggle for high rank within any such group has existed since the beginnings of the first prehistoric liaisons and will no doubt continue to exist to the end of time. Even within the best regulated and most democratic human social system, there must be leaders and a subordinate hierarchy. In a wolf pack, the “top dog” is called the Alpha; in human mega- societies, he or she is called president, prime minister, or perhaps der Führer, and in human clans, the Alphas are Mom and Dad and so on, down to the newborn infant, who is loved by all – at least in the great majority of cases – but is yet ruled by all.
There are those who may feel that I am guilty of anthropomorphism when I speak of human and wolf in the same breath, but although I am comfortable about the use of human terms to describe certain aspects of animal behaviour, in this instance I am not ascribing human characteristics to wolves, but rather the other way around.
Soon after coming to these conclusions, I telephoned my friend Dr. Allyn Roberts, a clinical psychologist who practices in Madison, Wisconsin, and read to him the results of my deliberations. When I had finished, he said, ‘’As a psychologist, that feels right to me. It shows the social needs of the human and the wolf. We must learn to face our own nature, and it is hard to do, so by looking at the nature of animals, we may find it easier to understand our own.”
The last part of Allyn’s comment touched me personally, for I have indeed learned more about myself and about my own species by observing animals than by observing those of my kind. After leaving the wolf pack and returning to Marquette, I called Jim at his studio to ask about the seeming absence of Toivo and the pups, only to be told that they had become infected by a virus and were all dead. Shocking though this news was, I knew that wolf-pup mortality rates can be high in the wild, so I did not find it altogether unusual that the Ishpeming pack should undergo what appeared to be regular cycles of disease leading to fatalities. I had not seen any of the newborns, of course, and their death for this reason was not quite as saddening as the death of Toivo, the care- free young comic who had made such a favourable impression on Sharon and me. Both of us were sad for the rest of our stay in Michigan, unable to forget a wolf who, although we had only known him for a short time, had nevertheless managed to affect us deeply by the grace of his being, his carefree attitude, and his charming personality.
We have a photograph of the harum-scarum Toivo, hair all awry, eyes glinting with vivacity and humour. He is standing in the snow, head raised and ears erect while staring about him as though planning some new prank. Both of us like to remember him that way.
Two years ago, after noticing that very little information about the diseases of wolves was included in the books dealing with these animals, I began compiling a list of infectious agents that can cause illness in coyotes, red wolves, and timber wolves; but finding that although I had listed forty-seven different kinds of harmful organisms, I nevertheless had little information on their biology, their lifespans, or particularly on the ways in which they are able to infect their hosts. I turned to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington, D. C., members of which had already been exceptionally helpful to me in other areas of biology and conservation. Assisted by Megan Durham, a public-information specialist in the Office of Public Affairs of the Service, I was put in contact with Dr. Danny Pence, a scientist with the Department of Pathology at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Centers, in Lubbock, who answered my immediate questions and later was kind enough to send me a reprint of a study conducted by himself and Dr. J. W. Custer, also of Texas Tech, but in the Department of Range and Wildlife Management.
My conversation with Dr. Pence, and my reading of the results of the study reported by him and his colleague, revealed, to my astonishment, that
North America’s wild canids are parasitized by no less than 134 disease-causing agents, a number of which also affect domestic dogs and cats and other animals, such as foxes, as well as humans. The study (entitled Host-Parasile Relationships in the Wild Canidae of North America: Pathology of Infectious Diseases in the Genus Canis) says at the conclusion of its abstract:
While a few case reports document diseases such as juvenile osteomalacia (a disease of the bone due to vitamin-D deficiency) in a coyote from Alaska, bilateral blindness in a coyote from Texas, osteoarthrosis (degeneration of bony joints) in a coyote X dog hybrid from Nebraska and two timber wolves from Canada, and coyotes with broken bones, missing feet, and gunshot wounds, there is little evidence that non-infectious diseases are serious problems in the morbidity and mortality of wild Canids. In contrast, many infectious disease agents are reported from these hosts. Some of these reach epizootic (of a temporary nature) proportions and occasionally affect their populations.
The present study reviews the infectious disease agents reported from coyotes (Canis latrans), timber wolves (C Iupus), and red wolves (C. rufus) and their feral and dog hybrids from North America and discusses the pathology of the more common and serious epizootic diseases in these hosts.
The study shows that all three species of wolves can be infected by eight viruses, four rickettsial organisms (a group of microorganisms smaller than bacteria, but larger than viruses), nine kinds of bacteria, seventeen species of cestodes (tapeworms), two species of acanthocephalan intestinal worms, twenty-five species of nematode worms, two kinds of mites, three species of lice, fifteen kinds of ticks, and thirty infections caused by fleas.
Important viral infections affecting wolves and coyotes are reported to include distemper and canine hepatitis, but it may come as a surprise to many that the most dreaded of all the animal viruses, rabies, does not appear to affect wolves or coyotes in any serious way. In this context, the study reports:
Finally, the enigma of wild species of the genus Canis and rabies virus continues to defy elucidation. Although rabies has been described as a “potential killer of coyotes” (Gier et al., 1978), only occasional cases of rabies in coyotes are reported in most western states of the United States. The coyote is listed as a highly susceptible host (World Health Organization Chronicles, 1974) and experimental infections indicated that strains isolated from coyotes have a faster rate of spread than certain fox strains (Behymer et al., 1974). Of the 9,943 ,laboratory-confirmed rabies cases from the United States, Canada, and Mexico reported in 1977, there were only three cases involving timber wolves in Alaska and one case each involving coyotes from Canada and Mexico (Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia, 1978). In rabies surveillance programs reported by Centers for Disease Control, twelve of 435 (3 percent) coyotes examined in the United States had rabies, while six wolves in Ontario and one wolf from the Northwest Territories were found positive for rabies. Of the 8,598 reported rabies cases in Ontario, Canada, from 1961 to 1969, only thirty-five (0.41 percent) involved coyotes and/or wolves (Johnston and Beauregard, 1969). Of sixty-five coyote and twenty- nine wolf brains from wild populations trapped for pelts in Iowa and examined by fluorescent antibody procedures, none were positive for rabies (Hendricks and Seaton, 1969). Indeed, in most epidemiological reviews of wildlife rabies in North America, the coyote and timber wolf are hardly mentioned and certainly cannot be considered with anywhere near the epidemiological significance as hosts such as foxes, skunks, bats, or raccoons (McLean, 1970; Sikes, 1970). The prevalence of rabies virus and its role in the mortality of feral canids is in need of clarification.
This aspect of the study interested me greatly, for I am frequently asked by friends and acquaintances if I am not afraid of encountering rabid animals during my frequent and often lengthy stays in the wilderness. When I reply that I am not at all concerned about encountering the disease in the wild because during all the years that I have travelled the backwoods I have met only two rabid animals, one a female timber wolf and the other a male red fox, my questioners show surprise that seems to border on disbelief. (I shot and killed these animals, suspecting from their behaviour that they were rabid; subsequent tests proved that both had contracted the disease.)
Before Dr. Pence sent me a copy of his and his colleague’s study, I had done considerable research on rabies in Europe and, later, in Canada. My findings strongly indicated that the virus is most at home in urban-rural areas where relatively large populations of domestic animals, particularly dogs and cats, are to be found. In such areas, rabies outbreaks occur on a regular basis. Yet the disease seems to be either rare or altogether absent in the true wilderness, the reason for this being that the Achilles’ heel of any infectious organism is that sooner or later it runs out of hosts. It is logical to postulate, therefore, that a disease-causing agent such as the rabies virus will thrive in those locations where it can be transferred easily from host to host, particularly when many of the hosts, like dogs and cats, may well have developed seriously weakened immune systems from the continuous inbreeding to which they have been subjected during the many centuries since domesticated strains were “perfected,” just as Western people are easy prey for many of the diseases found in areas of large population where hygienic practices are not well understood, although the local inhabitants are far more resistant to the infectious agents.
Because they live as packs and usually have less frequent contact with others of their kind, and also because populations of rabies- susceptible animals, such as foxes, skunks, and raccoons, are considerably smaller in wilderness areas than they are in rural-urban districts, wolves are less likely to come into contact with rabies. And it may also be that the wild canids, exceptionally hardy to begin with, have developed strong resistance to the disease. In this context, it appears significant that wolf-dog hybrids seem to be much more susceptible to the rabies virus than are wolves. However, from studies of the available literature dealing with wolves in Europe, particularly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one gains the strong impression that the majority of attacks on humans were made by rabid animals, both full-bred wolves and wolf-dog crosses. The late Dr. C.H.D. Clarke, who for years was head of the Fish and Wildlife Division of Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, certainly believed that rabies was the principal cause of attacks in Europe. In a manuscript entitled Beast of Gévaudan,* he said: “Down the long list of recorded attacks by wolves, it becomes clear that the Russian baron in his troika is folklore, but the rabid wolf is grim fact. The pattern is universal. The famous wolves of medieval song and story were all rabid.”
Rabid wolves in Europe, but not in North America? The contradiction can be explained. A number of factors probably contributed to the spread of rabies among European wolves. In the first place, wolf wilderness areas that had come under the influence of large human populations had been drastically reduced, or eliminated altogether. Where the wolf packs had once lived and hunted relatively undisturbed, human villages and towns had burgeoned, forests had been cleared, domestic livestock had multiplied: so had dogs and cats. Starving wolves began feeding on cattle and sheep, pursued by hunters and their dogs; as is the case even today, every smallholder had at least one farm dog, and many of these animals were allowed to roam free and to breed with their own kind as well as with lone wolves. In such a climate, the rabies virus began to thrive, first attacking domestic dogs; then, because it is probable that no wolf is totally immune to the disease if exposed to it frequently enough, the wolves became seriously affected. Huge wolf-dog hybrids began to appear and these, rabid or not, attacked people. The two that are described in Dr. Clarke’s manuscript terrorized the regions of Vivarais and Gevaudan, France, from 1764 to 1767. A history of the depredations of these animals was written in 1901 by Father François Fabre, a priest in the parish of Gevaudan who obtained his information from church records and municipal documentation. These two predators killed sixty-four humans and attacked more than a hundred. Mo
st of the victims were children. One of these animals was killed in 1765; it weighed 130 pounds after it had been dead for some hours, so, allowing for dehydration following death, this creature in life would probably have weighed between 140 and 145 pounds. The other animal was killed about a year later. It weighed 109 pounds, but here again, it was not put on the scales until some considerable time after death. Both killers were much larger than those wolves generally found in that area of Europe. Descriptions of colour and skull measurements have been preserved, and these, added to the size of the animals, caused Dr. Clarke to believe that they were not purebred wolves, but wolf-dog crosses.
Whatever doubts may still remain about the wolf situation in Europe up to the latter part of the eighteenth century, there is no doubt that in North America rabies is not a serious problem among wolves and coyotes, which is more than can be said for many of the remaining 133 infectious diseases that do affect the wolves of our continent. To give details of all the infections discussed in the study by Drs. Pence and Custer is a task beyond the scope of this narrative, but at least a few should be mentioned.
Canine parvovirus is of particular concern to me because it killed Toivo as well as Denali’s newborn pups in 1983. It is also suspected of having caused Siskiwit’s death in the late summer of 1982. This disease is new. It was first discovered in dogs in Texas in 1977. Soon afterwards, it was reported from other areas of the United States and from Canada. Because its pathology resembles a syndrome known as feline panleukopenia, which is also caused by a parvovirus, I am tempted to speculate that the organism that now attacks dogs is a rogue, a disease agent that was confined to cats until the late seventies and then, as viruses are known to do, mutated in order to expand its scope, invading dogs, coyotes, and wolves. Whether I am correct or not in my surmise remains to be seen, but my view is strengthened by the fact that protection from the disease is afforded by vaccinating dogs and captive wild canids with an inactivated feline panleukopenia serum.
In Praise of Wolves Page 9