Grizzer – Contact Outside of the Enclosure

Grizzer has been having a bit of howling stimulus from outside of the enclosure lately.  It is the wild wolf breeding season, and certainly wild wolves may be more actively defending territory.  We haven’t been fortunate enough to catch it on camera, but the surveillance camera and our closest neighbors have been providing time and dates of these communications.  Otherwise, Grizzer has been extremely fortunate that we have an excess amount of deer in the freezer and he has shared two deer torso’s this month with the ravens.  You can definitely see why wolves have evolved to eat large portions of food at one time, the ravens can make short work out of any deer carcass left in their view.

I wanted to comment on a question asked in one of my recent YouTubes about Grizzer’s blink response in his right eye.  Grizzer had some altercations with Denali in the winter of 2010/2011 that resulted in some wounds to the top of his head.  Two things resulted from these altercations.  Grizzer was retired and he has some nerve damage that controls his ability to blink his upper eye lid.  If you look at Grizzer’s infrared video (our night time webcam view), you will see his blink reflex does occur, but it’s from his 3rd eyelid blinking from below.