The Wisdom of Wolves

by Jim Dutcher

  On one particular February day these two put aside their differences and appeared to hatch and execute a plan to get food away from the alpha. That morning we had brought the pack a deer that had been killed on the highway down in the valley. As always, Kamots took it upon himself to look after the youngest members of the pack, making sure that the yearlings had enough to eat. Later that day we had decided to give them another very small deer. We had thought we would save it for another time, but then decided it was too small to be a meal in itself. With all the chaos of snarling and growling around the food, Lakota and Chemukh were too timid to try to grab a bite. Motomo and Amani were torn between fearfulness and eagerness. They sniffed around the scene, snatching up any scraps that had been inadvertently cast aside, but they were not quite able to get in and find a spot on the deer. Evidently they were still hungry, and this bonus meal got them in a competitive mood.

  The small deer was disappearing fast. All that remained were two disembodied hind legs and a portion of the torso, and Kamots and the youngsters appeared to be intent on finishing it all. As I was recording them, I could hear Motomo and Amani whining back and forth to each other in what sounded like frustration. Perhaps their conversation was deeper than that, though, because in unison they turned toward Kamots as he ate. As they faced him, he uttered his warning growl, telling them to not even think of approaching the deer. They continued to whine to each other as they watched him.

  The scenario that followed occurred with such incredible speed that it stunned Jim and me as much as it did Kamots. Looking as if he had been shot from a cannon, Motomo leaped directly at the carcass and grabbed a small chunk of hide and meat. It was barely worth the trouble, but Kamots took the bait and chased after him, momentarily leaving the carcass unattended. Seizing his moment, Amani rushed in and snatched one deer leg and made a beeline for the willows.

  Kamots was distracted by this new attack and turned to chase after Amani. Now it was Motomo’s turn again. He dropped his small morsel of meat (which Lakota eagerly gobbled up), swung back around toward the carcass, grabbed the other hind leg, and veered off in a direction opposite to where Amani had gone. This final maneuver bewildered Kamots so completely that he broke off his pursuit of Amani and didn’t even bother to chase Motomo. He walked back silently to stand guard over what had become a nonexistent meal.

  Jim and I couldn’t stop talking about this interaction for days afterward. It all looked so perfectly coordinated that random opportunism seemed out of the question. The way they approached Kamots together, the unusual vocalizations they made to one another, the way Motomo dropped his “decoy” piece of meat the instant Kamots’s attention turned toward Amani—all these factors indicated to us that Motomo and Amani had hatched a scheme and deftly pulled it off.

  Had they been hunting for an elk or moose, Motomo and Amani would have probably been the grunts—the mid-ranking foot soldiers. They wouldn’t be in charge, but they had the experience to get the job done. Part of that experience would be a knack for reading each other’s signals and taking each other’s cues. They would be working together as a coordinated team, just as we watched them do.

  WE OFTEN HEAR THE TERM “LONE WOLF” in reference to a person who acts alone, cares for no one, and craves no companionship. Sadly, like so many negative things falsely connected to wolves, the term has now come to mean a loner who wishes to do us harm. Such a state is an aberration among humans, and it’s equally rare among wolves. In nature, a lone wolf is a temporary phenomenon—what biologists call a disperser. Most often it’s a wolf in its third year or so who has decided to leave its birth pack and strike out in search of new territory and a mate. What does a lone wolf want? It wants to stop being a lone wolf. It wants togetherness, to be a part of something bigger. Survival depends on it.

  In a pinch a lone wolf can survive by hunting field mice, gophers, and ground squirrels, but lone wolves have rarely been known to tackle large prey on their own. A solitary mountain lion has the power to crush the windpipe or break the neck of a 700-pound bull elk with its jaws and claws. One swipe from a grizzly bear’s powerful paws could take down an adult moose. Wolves don’t have especially powerful muscles or sharp claws. But they do have a few advantages—persistence, intelligence—and each other.

  Wolves survive by chasing down large prey as part of a team. Observers of wolves have reported that although most wolves in the pack are present for the hunt, fewer than half actually take part in bringing down the prey. The youngest wolves frequently do nothing more than observe and learn from the sidelines. Each of the other pack members contributes according to its particular experience and ability. Once the pack has selected a target, the speedy, lightly built females and young males often do the bulk of the chasing. They dart back and forth, trying to grab a hind leg, slowing the prey down and giving the other wolves a chance to move in. Big alpha males frequently lag far behind during the early phase of the chase, but then when they do catch up, they often attack the prey head-on and deliver a takedown blow.

  Equipped only with legs for running and jaws for biting, wolves need to make the most of their limited assets, working as a team, searching for the weak or injured animal in the herd. They don’t rely on ambush or physical strength, so it’s not uncommon for a wolf to be seriously injured by flailing hooves and slashing antlers. Wolves are very good at picking up on what another wolf is doing, so it’s not surprising that they would be good at cooperating. I’ve spent years recording the vocalizations of the Sawtooth Pack, but I have also observed that most of their communication involves posture and other visual cues. Anyone who has dog companions understands that they are very good at reading body language, posture, and movements. A dog is able to tune into so-called “gaze cues,” essentially watching where a human looks and turning its attention in that direction. It’s very likely that wolves hunting in a pack use the same cues. It seems instinctive for them: I was always amazed to see that whenever I came upon one of the Sawtooth Pack on its own, it would look straight into my eyes as if trying to read my thoughts.

  We would often catch one wolf or another observing us covertly, in what seemed to be a desire to know what we were up to. The dark wolf Motomo was especially fond of watching us carry out our daily activities. Sometimes I’d be shoveling snow off the yurt platform and Jim would be chopping wood a hundred yards away. Jim and I couldn’t see each other because a patch of evergreens stood in the way. Motomo would station himself off to one side, somewhere in between, where he could watch us both at the same time. It seemed important to him that the little human team of two was still together and accounted for, but more than that he just seemed to be trying to figure us out and understand our actions. We sometimes wondered who was studying whom.

  Recently Hiromi Kobayashi and Shiro Kohshima of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, as reported by anthropologist Pat Shipman, put forward an interesting hypothesis suggesting that the sclera of the eye may be involved in this type of cooperation. Although we commonly call it the “white of the eye,” it isn’t white in many animals. Even in our closest primate relatives, a light-colored sclera is highly uncommon. But humans, wolves, and dogs have true “whites” in their eyes. In canines the sclera is not usually visible when the animal is looking forward, but it becomes visible when they look to the side. The main advantage to having white sclera, so the theory goes, is that the contrast with the darker iris of the eye makes it very easy to deduce where the other person (or the other wolf) is looking. Developing a white sclera may have helped both wolves and early humans hunt silently and cooperatively. With just a look, a hunter can easily direct the attention of his comrades toward prey or danger. What’s more, the ability to pick up the gaze cues of another species may even have contributed to the hunting partnership between wolves and humans that created the domestic dog.

  IT SEEMS STRANGE TO ME THAT PEOPLE should vilify wolves for the teamwork that makes them so successful. Yet even before the co
lonization of America, it was common to hear wolves described as “cowardly” animals that descend upon their victims in a savage mob. And still today you hear references to violent street gangs as “wolf packs,” a term chosen to accentuate the horror that they inflict. For some reason we look upon the cooperative group hunting strategy of wolves as less honorable than the swift and brutal ambush of a mountain lion, but why? After all, our human ancestors lacked the speed and power to hunt alone, and we achieved an advantage in teamwork in exactly the same way wolves do. We attacked our prey in groups and likely killed it with multiple blows instead of a single deadly strike. Perhaps when we fear wolves, it is our own past we fear. Or perhaps it makes us uncomfortable to acknowledge the deep vulnerability of being human. As much as we admire individual prowess, we are only as good as our collective effort.

  Of all the opportunities we have to understand wolves and ourselves, this may be the most significant. Wolves need each other just as humans need each other. We have always known this, and the wisest among us have known that this is something to be celebrated. Over a hundred years ago Rudyard Kipling acknowledged this fundamental truth in “The Law of the Jungle” from his classic collection of fables, The Jungle Book. He was writing about the wolves of India, but of course he was writing about us too:

  Now this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky;

  And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

  As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back;

  For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

  We give what we can of ourselves to our family, our friends, our team, and our tribe. The benefits we receive in return are doubled—in strength, security, and survival. When a group howls together—whether they are a pack of wolves or a group of school students—they are celebrating that timeless and wonderful truth.

  Siblings Wahots and Wyakin

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NEVER STOP PLAYING

  JIM

  BY MID-NOVEMBER, THE BRIGHT ORANGE AND GOLD of autumn had long vanished from the Sawtooth Valley. Mountain chickadees flickered among the bare red willow branches, looking for the last of the insects. A thin film of ice had begun to form along the edges of the creeks and on the surface of the riparian pond next to our camp. The past several days had been uncannily still, as though all of nature was waiting for the inevitable arrival of winter. The wolves had been preparing for it too. Close to their skin, a thick, woolly undercoat had developed to keep them insulated and warm. Longer guard hairs on top of that would keep the wind and snow at bay. Their heavier coats made them look much larger than they did in summer, and their individual markings became much more distinctive and dramatic. I always preferred to film them in cold weather, when they looked their most “wolfish.”

  Clouds began to swallow up the peaks of the Sawtooth Mountains, intensifying the feeling of stillness. At last, huge, wet flakes tumbled out of the sky. In a matter of minutes snow was coating the straw-colored grass and boughs of the spruce trees. From the mountains to the valley floor, everything turned white.

  From the looks of it, the wolves of the Sawtooth Pack had been eagerly anticipating this moment for months. First I saw Lakota dashing out of the forest, with Motaki in hot pursuit, nipping at his heels. Then came Kamots, bounding into the clearing, snapping at the falling flakes and rolling ecstatically in the first snow of the long Idaho winter.

  Lakota turned to face his brother, Kamots. With a bounce, he bowed his head to the ground, forelegs splayed wide and hind end pointed high. It was the classic play bow, an open invitation to have some fun. Kamots was already gripped by the spirit and didn’t need to be asked. He lunged at Lakota and the two took off in a tear, sprinting a full circle around the clearing before returning to roll in the snow with their packmates.

  As a filmmaker, I was also having a wonderful time. The wolves were ignoring my presence and were completely focused on each other and the moment—or so I thought. I was intently trying to film their behavior while keeping my camera dry with a raincoat, peering through my lens and carefully adjusting the focus on Lakota and Motaki as they raced through the falling snow.

  I failed to notice Kamots, creeping in from the side. I was totally unaware of his presence until I felt the first tug, and by then it was too late. Instinctively I grabbed the tripod to keep the camera from toppling over, but I was unable to save the raincoat. Immediately it became the object of a game as each wolf tried to snatch it away from Kamots. Lakota closed in and grabbed hold of one of the sleeves. The jacket seams held tough for a surprisingly long time—a testament to quality construction, I thought. But these are animals who can dismember an elk carcass in a matter of minutes.

  It was a twofold loss. Not only did Kamots steal a very nice rain jacket, but he also ruined a wonderful filming opportunity. Of course he didn’t know what had made the scene so extraordinary to a filmmaker’s eye, with the diffused light so beautiful and everything looking like a fairyland with enormous flakes swirling about. Meanwhile, all I knew at that moment was that the wolves were tearing a man-made object to shreds—not at all the wild behavior I wanted in a wildlife film. But they were certainly having a great time.

  The wolves were youngsters that autumn—before we added Matsi, Amani, and Motomo to the pack—but even as they grew older, they never failed to greet a snowfall with pure joy. Nor did they lose the mischievous streak that cost me more than one personal item over the course of the six-year project. No matter how old wolves get, they never stop playing.

  OF COURSE, NO TIME IN A WOLF’S LIFE is more devoted to play than puppyhood, and at no other time is play more critical. We raised all the Sawtooth pups by hand and, like a mother wolf using her tongue to clean them, we would stroke them with warm, damp rags after they ate. Often we found ourselves in the middle of a tug-of-war over the rags, especially with Wahots and Wyakin, the brother- and-sister duo from the third litter. Those two were always full of mischief, and loved to take our attempts to clean them up as a chance to play. With all the ferocity of adult wolves, these two pups would bite on to a wash towel, growling and shaking it as if they were bringing down a bull moose. They were so adorably feisty that we were tempted to be drawn into their playtime and roughhouse with them as if they were dog puppies, but that would have been against the standards I had established at the beginning. We wanted these wolf pups to accept us as a trusted presence in their lives, but we didn’t want them to look upon us as playmates.

  Very young wolf pups face many risks that larger adults can ignore. Chief among these are great horned owls, which could snatch a wolf pup in the night. For their safety, Wahots, Wyakin, and Chemukh, like the older wolves before them, spent their earliest days at our home in Ketchum, an hour’s drive south of wolf camp. By mid-June we began taking them with us on trips to camp to introduce them slowly to their new extended family. We configured a small pen to fit in the back of our van so the pups could stay together for the trip north. Domestic dog puppies are known for their innate enthusiasm for car rides, but I had learned with the previous litters that five-week-old wolf pups were not the same. While I drove, Jamie had the job of sitting in the back with the pups. Wahots, Wyakin, and Chemukh were the first litter that we had raised together, and I warned her, based on my earlier experiences, that the three pups might be affected by the motion of the van—but I’m not sure Jamie took me seriously.

  We were barely out of the driveway when Jamie gasped. Wyakin started to vomit, and then Chemukh and Wahots, one by one, like exploding bottles in a bootleg brewery. After 20 minutes of driving, the road began twisting its way over Galena Summit in a series of hairpin turns. We had barely begun to climb when I heard Jamie exclaim again from the back. I knew from experience what was happening. No sooner would one pup finish than the next one would begin, and wh
en they all had taken a turn, the first one started again.

  I should mention that we had been feeding them a mixture of raw chicken and special puppy formula. The mixture was enough to make one gag the first time around. Reappearing in a homogenized state and flowing across the newspaper-lined floor of the pen, it was a bit more than Jamie could take. From the front of the van, I could hear the pups snarling playfully as they tore up the newspaper and spread the mess around. Jamie uttered a few phrases not appropriate for this book. Whenever she reached into their pen with a handful of fresh newspaper, Wahots, Wyakin, and Chemukh grabbed it and tore it to shreds, just having a marvelous time. When we arrived at camp, the pups were perfectly happy and ready to play some more. Jamie walked wordlessly to our tent and disappeared for an hour.

  WAHOTS AND WYAKIN WERE INSEPARABLE PLAYMATES, and as they got older they developed a little comedy routine that they’d perform every time we fed them. Wolves are gorgers. When they get food, they’ll eat as much as they can, because they can’t be sure when the next meal is coming. It’s especially visible when pups eat. Their bellies inflate like basketballs, and they stumble around in a daze of contentment. So toward the end of every meal, when the food was nearly gone, Wyakin would be blown up like a tick, but she was not content simply to fill her belly to near bursting. She began collecting chunks of meat and carrying them off into the willows to hide them. In her greed, she kept trying to carry more than she could possibly hold in her jaws. Halfway to her hiding place she would drop some, and when she’d try to recover it, she’d inevitably drop another. I used to call her the “laundry lady” for the way she waddled toward the willows, dropping things as she went.