The Wisdom of Wolves

by Jim Dutcher

  Normally when the wolves gathered for a pack rally, they would howl enthusiastically together, often punctuating their song with excited yips, whines, and happy Chewbacca vocalizations as they whirled about each other in a display of camaraderie, pressing shoulder to shoulder. Following Motaki’s death, their howling took on a different tune. They still howled, but not as a group. It was a long, slow howl, the kind of howl a lone wolf might make when it is searching for a lost pack member, not the lively rally sounds I was used to hearing. On several occasions, Kamots and Lakota didn’t even bother to stand up to howl. The arrival of food still generated some interest, but other than that they seemed to drift about in a listless manner. Head lowered, eyes down, ears back, their behavior was not unlike that of a dog that has lost a human companion. There’s only one word I would use to describe it: grieving.

  After six weeks the wolves began to return to some normalcy. Introducing the second litter of Matsi, Motomo, and Amani gave them something to focus on and maybe even a sense of hope. Yet months after Motaki’s death, I observed some of the most moving behavior I’d ever seen from the pack. I was walking among the aspens with the pack following curiously behind me, as they sometimes did, when I reached the spot where I had found Motaki’s body. As the wolves caught up, they broke away from me and inspected the area, silently sniffing the ground. At that moment every one of them took on the posture of a submissive omega. Even proud Kamots had his ears pinned back and his tail drooping low. There’s no better way to explain it than they were depressed.

  I would have given anything to know what was going through their heads as they did this. How much did they comprehend her absence? How deep was their understanding of death? At this moment they appeared to grasp what had happened at that exact location many weeks before, and they were mourning the loss. Motaki had been their littermate, sister, playmate, and packmate. She was a cherished member of their family, and I believe they missed her.

  Perhaps the wolves even remembered trying and failing to help her. That’s where my speculation ends. I have no doubt that they felt the pain of losing her, but I’m fairly certain wolves don’t experience regret or self-recrimination. Humans certainly do. Once I realized what had happened to Motaki, I doubled my own agony with a hundred “should have”s and “if only”s. In some ways I admired the wolves for their ability to experience grief in its pure form, feeling the loss in all its intensity and then moving forward.

  Among my regrets, analysis, anger, and blame was a realization that I didn’t fully comprehend how deeply they cherished Motaki until she was gone. The project was only in its first year. The behavior I had witnessed had always simply been “wolf behavior” to me. I couldn’t quite understand that within all of their interactions—the eye contact, the gentle games, the pressing of shoulders while walking—were countless expressions of affection. I came to understand these things so fully, so completely only when faced with their absence.

  When Motaki died, something began to change in me. Until then I had thought of myself as a wildlife filmmaker. I had always assumed that after the wolf project I would begin a new film on a new animal subject. But seeing the wolves grieve and struggle with the loss, and seeing them shower so much affection and care on the second litter of pups, I realized I wasn’t just a filmmaker anymore. My work, and all the energy and passion I put into it, was for wolves now.

  GORDON HABER WAS ONE OF THE WISEST BIOLOGISTS I’ve ever known. He was one of the first to write unabashedly about the devotion wolves have for one another. He began to notice that courting wolf pairs snuggled while walking and lying together. He reasonably surmised that this has the same value as it does among human couples—a reaffirmation of their special bond. He especially noted that wolf pairs maintained this physical closeness and displayed “emotional attachment” well outside of mating season. Just as my clearest understanding of wolf family bonds came at Motaki’s untimely death, Gordon’s most moving observation of the devotion between a pair of wolves came at the moment when that bond was shattered.

  The male and female were one of the last alpha pairs of the Toklat Pack that Gordon observed in Alaska. They paired in 2002 and together endured the loss of their first pups to a marauding bear, but by the end of 2004 they had successfully raised two litters. Most of the Toklat’s territory fell within the huge protected area of Denali National Park and Preserve, but some of it fell outside the park boundaries. The hatred of wolves burns just as hot in many parts of Alaska as it does in the lower 48. Some of the most vitriolic anti-wolf people run legal traplines just outside the borders of the Denali park. Wolves, unable to discern whether they’re inside the park or out, run into a gantlet of death the moment they cross the invisible boundary.

  One of these leghold traps just outside the northeastern boundary of Denali ensnared the Toklat alpha female in January 2005, just before mating season. Leghold traps don’t kill outright; they simply hold the wolf in place to starve and suffer from a painful wound. If a wolf is lucky, the trapper will appear within a few days to finish the job. The Toklat female languished in the trap for two weeks before she was finally shot. During her entire ordeal, her mate stayed in the area, most likely by her side. It’s quite possible he brought food to her, desperate to help but ultimately unable to keep her alive. When at last she was killed, he and their young fled the area.

  The loyalty he displayed during that ordeal would have taught us enough, but his behavior over the next few weeks would prove even more heartbreaking. When he and his offspring left the trap site, they crossed back into the national park and returned to the den site where most of the pups had been born. There the male dug through the snow and cleaned out the den, removing the leaves and loose soil and readying it for a new litter of pups that he would never father. The next day he traveled 14 miles back to the spot where she had been trapped, moving at such a fast pace that his pack often struggled to keep up. He searched for his mate with an intensity that Gordon called “almost obsessive.”

  He probably didn’t see his mate die. When the trapper appeared, fear likely overwhelmed his senses and he fled into the forest. Perhaps he heard the gunshot and understood what it meant, but perhaps not. Most likely all he really understood was that his mate was in trouble, and then she was gone. Did he prepare the den and search for her, believing she was still alive? Or did he do those things because he was distraught to the point of madness, unable to accept what he knew?

  When you look at wolves only as vermin, or as identification numbers, nothing can explain his behavior. Only through the lens of our own human empathy does it become clear. He and his mate had begun the process of pair bonding after they had first met. They flirted and snuggled and affirmed their affection for each other in a way that any human would recognize. They had suffered the loss of their first litter and persevered through the ordeal together. They worked tirelessly as a team to raise their subsequent litters. Powerless to help as she died, what else would he be feeling? The Toklat pair was as closely bonded as any human couple. They expressed their bond with a purity and openness that only the most enlightened humans would achieve. When he lost her, his grief was equally pure and terribly sharp. When Gordon left him in mid-February, he was standing on a high plateau howling over and over in the direction of the trapping site.

  How far would this wolf have gone to help his mate if he were able? As humans we like to think that altruism and sacrifice belong to us alone. After all, it’s not an easy mental or emotional process. The act of risking personal harm on behalf of another requires a complex cognitive analysis to take place before the ultimate moral decision. First one has to be able to foresee an undesirable outcome for another. Then one must deduce that putting oneself in danger might deflect harm away from others—and one must decide that saving oneself is not as important as saving the other, whether an individual or a tribe. We humans are inclined to claim all those cognitive processes and emotions for ourselves alone, but t
hose who spend their lives observing wolves have observed exactly this type of behavior—the ultimate display of devotion and sacrifice.

  RECENTLY JAMIE AND I were in Yellowstone National Park, talking to Rick McIntyre, who has been monitoring the park’s wolves since they were first reintroduced there in 1995. At this last meeting he told us the incredible story of the Lamar Canyon Pack alphas.

  The Lamar Canyon Pack had struggled over the years. Hunters had killed the pack’s original alpha male and female. The next alpha male, a bruiser of a wolf known as Big Gray, took over the pack with a new alpha female, only to have it dissolve. As the rest of the pack dispersed, one subordinate female, called simply the Black Female, stuck by Big Gray. Eventually she became his mate and the alpha of the reborn Lamar Canyon Pack. Together they produced six pups in 2014, and held on to a territory in the northeast corner of Yellowstone.

  As one of the few places in the lower 48 states where wolves are protected from hunting and trapping, Yellowstone now has a dense wolf population. As a result, territorial conflicts between packs appear to happen more frequently than elsewhere. As wolves move to follow elk herds, there is a high probability that they will cross into another pack’s territory, possibly sparking a conflict.

  In March 2015, the Lamar Canyon Pack did just that. With their six yearlings in tow, they set out westward on a hunting trip. The Black Female was pregnant with their next litter. Wolves seem to like to ramble in the early months of a new year, before their pups are born. They probably know that a period of restricted travel and responsibility is coming and want to have one last hurrah before settling into their den site. Once they return to their territory, the alpha female begins the process of clearing out last year’s den and readying it for the new pups.

  The Lamar Canyon Pack’s journey took them across the territory of the larger, rival Prospect Peak Pack. Outbound they had crossed without incident, but they were not so fortunate on the journey home. As they attempted to cross, 12 Prospect Peak wolves descended on them from the east.

  The pregnant black female and the six yearlings made a beeline westward, backtracking. In her condition, though, she could neither fight nor outrun the Prospect Peak wolves. The yearlings were barely older than pups. That left Big Gray as the only wolf of the pack capable of confronting the attackers. As 12 Prospect Peak wolves charged up a hill, he turned to face them. Rick McIntyre watched it all, and, as he said, “The action was deliberate, taking courage and resolve to have your enemy run straight at you while you stand your ground.”

  As the Prospect Peak wolves got close, Big Gray ran straight downhill back through them. It happened so fast that the Prospect Peak Pack had to turn around to go after him, giving Big Gray’s mate and the yearlings more time to escape. The yearlings watched as the Prospect Peak wolves caught up with their father and fell upon him in battle. At their age they had neither the muscle of full-grown adults nor the experience to fight a battle like this. Still, they could run. One of the yearlings ran back into plain view, and when the Prospect Peak wolves saw him, a few peeled away from Big Gray to give chase, but they couldn’t catch him. A second and then a third yearling did the same, drawing off more attackers. Big Gray was left in a four-against-one battle. Rick says he watched them fight for about five minutes until they disappeared into deep sagebrush. He assumed Big Gray had not survived the assault.

  Soon Rick began to hear howling in the distance. The Lamar Canyon yearlings and their mother were calling for Big Gray. The Prospect Peak Pack, also hearing the howls, went looking for the Lamar Canyon wolves, but they couldn’t find them.

  Eventually, the Prospect Peak Pack gave up their search and returned to the site where they had left Big Gray, but he had disappeared—and they lost interest. But one young Prospect Peak wolf picked up Big Gray’s trail and followed it, only to find that the Lamar alpha had a lot of fight left. Without 12-to-1 odds, the young Prospect wolf turned tail and ran. Big Gray, bleeding and gravely wounded, disappeared into the sage.

  From this point on, all Rick knows is what he was able to ascertain by monitoring the signals from Big Gray and the Black Female’s GPS tracking collars and following their movements. The next day he listened as the Black Female’s signal showed her returning toward the danger zone, inching closer and closer toward her mate as he lay there, weak and unable to move. By nightfall the two signals were side by side. She had come to say goodbye.

  A GPS collar is programmed to give off a special signal if it remains motionless for a certain length of time—this is called a mortality signal. The next morning Big Gray’s collar began emitting that signal. The signal from the Black Female’s collar showed that she had moved safely back into her territory at her den site. Rick believes that she had made a deliberate decision to visit her mate one last time. “The Black Female had to find her mate,” Rick went on, emotionally, affected by his own story. “She had to let him know that it was not in vain,” he says. “She was safe, his unborn pups were safe, and his yearlings were safe.”

  To follow the ever changing fortunes of Yellowstone wolves is to witness a real-life saga, complete with acts of heroism, sacrifice, tragedy, and resilience. Objectively, of course, there are no real heroes and no real villains. Wolves do what they need to do to survive, and they are always full of surprises. The Lamar Canyon Pack saga continued beyond this epic moment. The Black Female found herself in dire straits with a new litter of pups and six inexperienced one-year-olds, still needing support. So she accepted the advances of a wolf called Twin—none other than one of the Prospect Peak males who had attacked her mate only weeks earlier. Ultimately three other Prospect Peak males left their pack and joined them in the Lamar Canyon territory. In true wolf fashion, they helped raise Big Gray’s pups. His legacy lives on.

  SO MUCH OF WHAT WE HEAR about the devotion wolves have for one another comes from observations of bonded pairs in epic tales we’ve heard from Yellowstone and Denali. After Chemukh joined the Sawtooth Pack and grew to maturity, we were able to witness this kind of pair bonding firsthand between her and Kamots. Once nature had ordained that they become the alpha pair, their relationship became stronger and stronger. Kamots would make sure that his mate had a secure place at every meal. He was emphatic about this: There would be no squabbling; Chemukh would eat first with him. It was a complete reversal from the way he had treated her when she was a pup.

  Over the years we saw again and again how every wolf in the family cared deeply about every other wolf in the family. In the beginning it was evident in the way the young pack reacted to Motaki’s death. Throughout the project it was the special friendship between Lakota and Matsi, as Matsi protected the omega. In the end it was the ever endearing bond between two siblings. When Wyakin died, her devoted brother, Wahots, was found posted by her side.

  For me, the moment that truly drove home the depth and power of the Sawtooth Pack’s devotion to one another was one of the last moments Jamie and I would spend as their constant companions. I had always known the wolves could not stay forever in the idyllic territory beneath the Sawtooth Mountains. Our land use permits expired, and the Forest Service would not issue another extension. After a great deal of negotiation we reached an agreement with the Nez Perce Tribe to build a new home for the wolves in northern Idaho. It was a huge relief, but it also meant our time with the pack was coming to an end.

  The move from the Sawtooth Mountains to the Nez Perce Reservation in August 1996 was probably the most stressful event of these wolves’ lives, and of ours too. We did our best to ease their transition, transporting them overnight when it was cool, but I can only imagine how bewildering it must have been.

  We waited until the heat of the day had nearly passed, and in a painstakingly coordinated procedure, fed each wolf a piece of meat that contained a sedative, reinforced with a mild injection. We covered their eyes and gently placed them in the crates. There was no need to do this to the pups, Ayet, Motaki, and Piyip.
They were still so young that we just picked them up and placed them in the crate.

  Kamots did not want to go under. Perhaps knowing the safety of the pack rested on his shoulders, he resisted the tug of sleep. Watching our trusted friend stumble, fight to his feet, and finally succumb to the sedative was pure agony. Even worse, as the drug began to wear off and the wolves awoke safely in their crates, Kamots did not rise. We had given him a fraction of the dosage that government veterinarians routinely administer to wild wolves, but his heartbeat was faint and his breathing shallow. More than any of the other wolves, the pack needed him desperately.

  It seemed to take forever, but finally his ears twitched and his eyelids fluttered. We could see he was conscious but unable to rise. His yellow eyes, usually so bright and alert, seemed to be gazing at something invisible and far away. I reached into his crate and put my hand on his neck. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m so sorry. It’s going to be OK, I promise.” Jamie knelt beside me and whispered, “Kamots, please wake up. We need you. We can’t do this without you.”

  Jamie and I agreed that the best course would be to make the trip and end the ordeal. We carefully hoisted the crates into a horse trailer, and as the sun began to drop into the Sawtooths, we pulled out across the flats toward Stanley and the north. We drove in silence, Jamie and I in our van, following behind the trailer, thinking of Kamots inside. Finally, I signaled for our caravan to pull over. Fearing the worst, I released the latch and carefully swung open the door of the trailer. Kamots was sitting upright in his crate, blinking. I put my hand up to the door of the crate, and he gently licked my fingers. A collective sigh went up from our small group. He was a bit groggy, but he was going to be fine. His eyes caught the moonlight as he looked at me, and I could see the old, confident Kamots returning. There was so much trust in his gaze. I wished I could have explained to him the reasons for this ordeal we were putting all of them through, and how painful this was for me too, but his look reassured me.