The Wisdom of Wolves

by Jim Dutcher

  Before Jim began this project, many people thought that a wolf pack was just a group of individuals who stuck together for mutual benefit. When the Sawtooth Pack came into his life, he realized that they were so much more. A pack was an extended family, wholly devoted to one another, bound together by a common purpose and at times what seemed like a common mind. Before he understood this, he worried that one of the wolves would try to climb the fence and run away. A bold wolf, he thought, would find the call of the wild impossible to resist. Ultimately, we found the exact opposite was true. Although certain individual wolves can be gripped with the urge to wander, no member of the Sawtooth Pack ever tried to leave the enclosure, nor did we ever see them restlessly pace the perimeter. Their spacious 25-acre territory was an ideal place to live, but we don’t think that was the reason for their contentment. The reason was each other. Each wolf knew that it belonged with the pack, with the family.

  On his second day as pup-sitter, Matsi must have decided that his duties should include showing the pups around their new territory. He began by leading them out of the meadow near our camp to a marshy forest of willows and then up into a dark woodland of pine and aspen, where they briefly disappeared. Their two-year-old uncle, Amani, also tagged along, apparently curious about what they were up to. The rest of the pack, exhausted from yesterday’s meet and greet, continued snoozing in the warm summer sun on the edge of the clearing.

  At nearly every other step the pups wanted to pause and sniff the wet ground or chew on willow twigs or pinecones. Matsi waited patiently for a moment or two as they did this. Then he’d continue walking, and they’d bound after him. He led them in an arc around our camp, eventually ending up at a small pond near the north end of their territory. It was a pond that Jim had renovated, back when he was just starting the wolf project. He had found the remnants of an old beaver dam long abandoned by its builders. It only took putting some of the beaver-cut sticks and a few rocks back into place for the pond to refill. The result was a lovely water feature and one of the wolves’ favorite places to play and explore, especially in the warm days of summer.

  The pups hadn’t seen anything like a pond or a flowing creek before, and they were at once fascinated and a bit tentative. They stopped frolicking and huddled close to Matsi as he walked to the edge and waited patiently for them to investigate at their own pace. One by one they summoned the courage to dip a paw, then a nose in the cold mountain water. Immediately fear turned to delight as they began slapping the surface with their forepaws, then darting away as though the water might chase them. The excitement of the new discovery prompted Wyakin to pounce on her brother, Wahots, and the two rolled around on the muddy bank in a joyful snarl. Chemukh, always the timid one, held back from the roughhousing, but she bounced and splashed by herself along the water’s edge.

  All the while Matsi stood stiff-legged and attentive, not participating in playtime but seemingly content to watch the pups become comfortable with the new environment. After 10 minutes or so of watching them retrieve floating sticks, Matsi turned and stepped out onto the rickety beaver dam and walked to the other side. The whole thing was no more than six feet across, and Matsi was on firm ground again with just a few steps. Nevertheless, the three pups promptly stopped their play and stared at him as if he had just levitated. Their little faces seemed to say, “Whoa, you can DO that?”

  They had just conquered their fear of touching the water, but crossing it was a brand-new challenge. Wyakin made a tentative attempt to step onto the beaver dam, but when one of the sticks shifted under her weight, she retreated. She made little feinting steps toward the dam, but it was clear she had lost her nerve. Matsi understood her apprehension and made his way back. He stood on the dam, leaned over, and touched his nose to Wyakin’s. She began to lick his muzzle in submission, as pups do. Then Matsi carefully turned 180 degrees and walked back to the other side.

  This time Wyakin stepped up behind him and tentatively began to pick her way across. To be fair, it was a bigger challenge for her little legs. Every so often she lost her footing, and one of her paws would slip into a gap between logs. She’d scramble back to her feet, acting like the dam had just tried to swallow her up. Eventually she made it across, leaping over the last six inches in a break for solid ground, then tumbling into Matsi. As soon as she had made it, she became all puffed up with confidence. She turned and paced the bank, whining to her littermates as if to encourage Wahots and Chemukh to follow her. At a similar pace and with similar grace, the two other pups summoned their courage and made the passage. Their triumph sparked another round of play, and this time even Chemukh joined in.

  It was fascinating to watch Wahots, Wyakin, and Chemukh explore and grow with each passing day. Watching, following, and imitating the older wolves was just another form of play to them. If an adult sniffed or touched anything, one of the pups would be there to investigate it, too. If an older wolf stepped up onto the trunk of a fallen tree and had a look around, one of the pups would have to scramble up and stand in the same spot.

  We noticed that the three-year-olds, Kamots and Lakota, were always gentle with the pups, but they didn’t indulge the little ones as much as two-year-old Matsi, Amani, and even Motomo did. The younger adults tolerated all manner of ear chewing and tail pulling, annoyances that their elders probably wouldn’t have stood for. In fact, the two-year-olds seemed to enjoy all the attention. I’ve since heard from wolf biologists that it’s common for young adults to regress into a bit of a “second puppyhood” when new pups appear on the scene. While the oldest wolves look over the well-being of the entire pack, the junior members act as playmates and teachers, showing pups the ways of the world and helping them to build confidence.

  It’s not easy to document these moments of teaching because the behavior is often very subtle. Gordon Haber recorded one of the best examples of this from a plane over a river channel in Denali National Park and Preserve. It involved a small traveling party of six wolves from the large Toklat Pack: two older females, a 15-month-old yearling female, and three pups born four months earlier. The pups were just a couple of weeks older than Wahots, Wyakin, and Chemukh were when Matsi took them under his wing. When pups reach this age, the adults move them from the den site to an area that is more conveniently located so the pack can go on hunting expeditions but the pups can stay behind in a safe place with a pup-sitter to wait for the older wolves to return with food. Biologists call this location a rendezvous site, and, just like a den, a wolf pack may use the same site year after year. Gordon recognized that because these wolves, including the pups, were on their way to the rendezvous site, this would have been the pups’ first foray into the wide world beyond the immediate vicinity of their den—and their first encounter with fast-moving water.

  The two older females, one of whom was the mother of the three pups, waded across the river with little apparent concern. The yearling female crossed with them but remained very attentive to the little ones tagging along behind. As the three pups hesitated at the river’s edge, she turned and waded about a third of the way back into the channel, crouching into a bow and slapping the water playfully with her paw, making a game out of the frightening moment. One little black pup made it out to her but lost its nerve and retreated to the bank. Next, a little tan pup gave it a go, but it crossed too far downstream, where the opposite bank was undercut and steep. It succeeded in making it to the other side but it couldn’t climb out. The yearling female saw its plight, leaped up the bank, dashed back, and grabbed the pup in her jaws and lifted it out.

  By this time the black pup was trying again, even farther downstream. It was now struggling in deeper water and being carried away. The yearling wolf ran to it and jumped in just down current, blocking the little black pup from being swept away farther and letting the pup use her body as a brace to climb up and out.

  All this while the third pup had been observing from the far bank. After seeing the struggles of its tw
o littermates, it chose a crossing spot farther upstream, where the water was shallower and the bank was low. Once they had all safely crossed the river, the dominant female and her adult packmate continued the journey with little fanfare, but the three little ones gathered around the yearling, their guide, with a great deal of bouncing, and she seemed to relish their success.

  NAVIGATING THEIR PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT is only part of what wolf pups need to learn. They also need to learn how to navigate the social environment of a wolf pack. Pups begin their lives in a blissful state outside the adult hierarchy, but as they mature, the adults begin to enforce the rules.

  For example, Jim and I began to notice that after Wahots, Wyakin, and Chemukh had been with the pack for a few weeks, Kamots started dominating Chemukh at mealtimes and making her wait with Lakota, the omega. Kamots appeared to single out Chemukh for extra discipline. His rule was intense. Sometimes he would leap over the kill to pin Chemukh to ground, growling and snapping his jaws as he straddled her. Chemukh would cry out and appear to yelp her surrender, and then she would retreat into the willows with her tail between her legs.

  We often wondered what caused this behavior. Our best conclusion was that it had something to do with Chemukh’s timidity and insecurity. If she had aggressively leaped on the kill, as Wahots and Wyakin did, perhaps Kamots would have let her eat earlier. As it was, when she approached the carcass in a nervous crouch—ears back, tail tucked, in a submissive posture—Kamots wouldn’t stand for it. It almost seemed as if he was playing the part of drill sergeant, trying to toughen her up and make her more assertive. After all, it is in the best interest of a wolf pack to have all its members strong and working together as a cohesive unit. A wolf who can’t work with the others is a liability. Perhaps this was his way of making sure Chemukh would grow up to be an asset to the pack.

  Observing a wolf pack with pups, we became more and more aware of how obsessed the adults are with the little bundles of fur. Most of the time they are very gentle with young wolves, but watching the way Kamots dealt with Chemukh, we became convinced that the adults initiated these interactions, whether doting or disciplinary, for the sake of guiding their young on the confusing path toward adulthood.

  A wolf needs to grow up and make a contribution. She may turn out to be a swift hunter; he might have a protective streak and excel at defending pack territory. An especially gentle wolf might be suited to help raise the next generation or become an instigator of play, like Lakota. A wolf can proffer benefit to the pack society in many ways, and understanding the social rules is the first step. That’s not to say these future benefits play consciously on a mother wolf’s mind as she plays with her pups or scolds them when they get out of line. Her actions are instinctive in wolves, as they are in us, springing from pure affection, and concern for the protection and social well-being of the little ones. All the same, this guidance, whether it comes from parents or pup-sitters, will bring tangible benefits to the pack as a whole.

  As humans we instinctively understand this behavior—at least on a small scale. Sometimes it seems like we have forgotten that this simple truth applies to our entire society beyond the family. We claim to value education, but in practice we treat failure as an unfortunate but unavoidable outcome. In a wolf pack, there are no forgotten children. Every pup is worth teaching, every pup is valued, and every pup is eventually expected to make a contribution to the well-being of the pack. Whatever it was that Kamots was trying to teach Chemukh, it worked. As an adult she became a force to be reckoned with.

  IF YOUNG WOLVES REPRESENT THE FUTURE of a wolf pack, then old wolves represent its past. The soul and wisdom of the pack lives in its elders. In the developed world, where we prize youth and vigor, always looking toward the next technological advance and all too eager to forget the past, the elderly are often marginalized. We tend to think of our senior citizens as a group that needs to be cared for but not necessarily venerated. How often do we acknowledge our elders as ones who remember history firsthand, as the holders of knowledge and experience, as the keepers of our culture? Wolves do, and they do so for a very good reason: survival.

  Kira Cassidy is a young biologist working in Yellowstone National Park. Her research project examined the impact of old wolves in a pack, asking if they were an asset or an impediment to pack success. With 16 years of data from Yellowstone, she offered her discoveries as part of a fascinating TED talk.

  Yellowstone has the highest density of wolves in North America, and because of that, conflict between neighboring wolf packs appears to be more intense than in other areas where wolves live. In that environment, certain packs command large and bountiful territories while others struggle to hold a few square miles. Kira’s study revealed that a wolf pack was 2.5 times more likely to win a territorial dispute with another pack if it had at least one old wolf—that is, a wolf upwards of four or five years or older. The explanation doesn’t involve superior strength or vigor: As they age, wolves may actually participate less in the physical act of hunting and fighting. Instead, Kira concludes, the reason is experience. Old wolves know the terrain and are better equipped to pick the location of engagement. Where young wolves might panic, older, experienced wolves are likely to be calmer and more able to keep their pack unified during a conflict. The pack elder may even have engaged with the rival pack in years past and know the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. In fact, smaller packs with older wolves fared better than larger packs with no elders, Kira observed. The benefits of having an old wolf actually result in a positive feedback loop: Packs with old wolves are better able to protect their pack, and a better protected pack enables more wolves to achieve old age; thus, packs like Yellowstone’s Mollie’s Pack are able to dominate a region for years. Elder wolves aren’t pitied and cared for, they’re needed.

  The presence of elders is what shapes the very character of a wolf pack. Young adults bring vitality and strength in numbers, but the older wolves guide the behavior of the pack as a single cohesive unit. The longer scientists are able to carry out continuous studies of wolf packs, the more they see that different packs actually have what could be considered different cultures. Some Yellowstone packs, such as the Mollie’s Pack, have developed a culture of bison hunting, using large numbers to tackle the biggest and most dangerous prey on the continent. Other packs never look twice at a bison, focusing exclusively on elk and deer.

  Gordon Haber wrote extensively about the Toklat wolf pack, which had developed a unique style of hunting Dall sheep on the rocky slopes of Denali National Park. When attacked, Dall sheep instinctively run uphill and into terrain where they have an advantage. The Toklat Pack’s strategy was to move up the slope unseen and then attack from above, thus cutting off the sheep’s escape route. The tactic created confusion among the sheep, and the Toklat Pack exploited it time and again. Other packs occasionally hunted Dall sheep, but none did it the way the Toklats did, or with as much success. It was their culture.

  In 2005, the Toklat Pack suffered a devastating blow. Knowing that a wolf pack’s territory doesn’t follow man-made boundaries, hunters set up trap lines just outside the borders of Denali, waiting for the wolves to step across. Eventually the Toklats did exactly that. The alpha female was caught in a leghold trap and killed, along with two younger wolves, and a little later the alpha male was shot. The six youngest wolves who remained retreated into the park.

  Gordon, devastated by the loss, resumed his study of the pack, but he never again saw them hunt Dall sheep as they once did. Instead, the pack subsisted on snowshoe hare, a prey animal the youngsters were already able to hunt (and that were, fortunately, abundant that particular year). The young wolves hadn’t yet learned to catch Dall sheep the way their elders had done, and so that aspect of the pack’s culture vanished, erased by a few traps and bullets, perhaps never to be recovered. Gordon’s story offers a clear example of how a wolf pack passes knowledge from generation to generation. When too many of its elder
s are killed, experience and wisdom disappear along with them.

  I remember in college watching Carl Sagan’s wonderful program Cosmos on PBS. One of the episodes was about the catastrophic destruction of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. When the library burned, a wealth of human knowledge and learning went up in flames, and it took 500 years or more for some of it to be rediscovered. I still wonder where the human race might be if that hadn’t happened. Perhaps we have to wait until the year 2500 to catch up to where we should be now. I think of the loss wolf packs have suffered in the same way. Humans in North America have killed more than a million wolves since European colonists first arrived on these shores. I wonder what those wolves knew back then—those that had lived for generations hunting eastern elk in the Appalachians or chasing bison across the Great Plains. Think of all the cultures that were lost.

  BEFORE I JOINED JIM IN IDAHO, he would call me, asking advice about a particular wolf named Makuyi, the one whose eyes needed medical treatment. On one of these phone calls he told me about a curious event involving her and a male wolf, Akai, during feeding. Only many years later did I realize that this story offered another window into wolf culture and had many similarities to Gordon Haber’s observations in Alaska. One of the neighboring ranchers gave Jim a steer that had died. Jim brought it in for the wolves. At the time Akai was the oldest. Kamots and his littermates were just six months old. Akai had never eaten beef at his original home in Minnesota, and he was unwilling to take a chance on the new food. The younger wolves, following his lead, would not touch it. Makuyi, on the other hand, had grown up eating beef, as well as deer and chicken. After the rest of the pack rejected the steer, Makuyi moved in and ate her fill.