Axel – Enjoying the Benefits

There have been several improvements in the Exhibit Pack thanks to a generous donation from an incredibly generous young woman, Anika Hahn.  Anika chose to celebrate her Bat Mitzvah by inviting friends and family to make gifts in her honor to the International Wolf Center. To read more about Anika’s commitment to wolf education, check out the Fall 2016 Issue archived on our website https://wolf.org/wolf-info/wolf-magazine/fall-2016/.  This week’s photo shows Axel enjoying the benefits of a new misting system to help keep the wolves cool on summer day.  This is just one of the many projects funding by Anika.  Other projects include new shade trees, rocks in the pond to allow the wolves an opportunity to climb in and out of the water, a new pump housing to protect the electrical pumps and filters needed to run the pond and a new UV filter system to reduce algae growth.  It has been a busy spring getting all of these pieces in place and the improvements to the Exhibit have been a tremendous improvement for the wolves. 

We are attempting to weigh the pups every month on their birthday.   Axel has reached 100 pounds.  As a yearling arctic wolf, this is a very good weight.  Our past arctic pack leader, Shadow only weighed 95 pounds in his prime.

Here are the weights for Axel to see his progress over the last few months:

Date                 Age                  Weight              Weight Gain

4/1/17             11 months         96.8 lbs.             4.2 lbs.

5/2/17             12 months        97.8 lbs.             1.0 lbs.

6/2/17             13 months         100.3 lbs.           2.5 lbs.

In order to assess the behaviors of maturing yearlings, we rely on outside observation programs to gather data independent of the daily wolf checks.  Recently, the Vermilion Community College Ethology class completed 100 hours of observation on the Exhibit Pack and had the following assessment on Axel:

“Axel was one of the most active wolves during our observation. He is a bold and curious wolf, and spent a lot of time interacting with the others. He was usually the first wolf to walk up to the observation area to investigate the people behind the glass, and did so more often than the other wolves. He interacted the most with his litter mate Grayson, but was not timid in front of any of the other wolves. He spent a fair amount of time with Aidan, who seemed very patient with the young wolves. Axel would often test the other wolves, even Aidan, perhaps trying to find his place in the pack. Axel seemed to be very confident. Other times he was passively submissive to Aidan when Aidan felt that he needed to show Axel his place. When Axel wasn’t interacting with the other wolves, he spent much of his time investigating. He often wandered around the enclosure and was interested in what was happening outside of the fence. Overall Axel seems to be a very confident and inquisitive wolf, and displayed a lot of investigatory behavior.”