Wolf Packs Suffer When Humans Kill Their Leaders
From Psychology Today:
Wolves are amazing and magnificent carnivores. They are highly social, pack-living animals whose numbers have been decimated globally because of their predatory ways.
While it’s been known that human intrusions into their lives can affect their behavior, a new, landmark study–called “one of the most important papers to come out of Yellowstone in his 28 years with the park” by Doug Smith, one of the world’s leading wolf experts who led Yellowstone’s wolf reintroduction for many years–shows that when people kill wolves their pack becomes less stable and can disband and cease to exist.1
