Maya continues to be a dominant force without a second female to display this dominance. She takes this role seriously and is often found guarding the carcass or wrestling with Grizzer. In her video this week, she comes down the hill from feeding on the deer carcass to meet the play behavior of Grizzer.
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MacKenzie had a good day during Friday’s wolf check (jan 26th)… You can see her in a full submissive posture, with good mobility and range of motion. She later took a beaver carcass to her straw bed for an afternoon snack. As I said in last week’s log, she has her good days and bad, we are always appreciative of the good.
What can we say about Denali except that he is constantly active, and always involved with whatever event is occurring. He continues to socially wrestle with Grizzer and Grizzer shows no real sign of intensified response to Denali. We did observe something interesting this morning. At the densite, Maya was jaw sparring with Aidan, Shadow came in to assert dominance over Aidan, then Denali came over and did a grab bite to Maya, distracting Maya from Aidan. Denali proceeded to stand tall and face off Maya. It was clearly a sign that Denali is not taking Maya's dominance as easy as Aidan. With Denali intervening, Maya left Aidan alone and continued to try to show some status over Denali with little success. We don't think it was Denali protecting Aidan (he does his fair share of dominance over Aidan), but more a show of confidence in Denali that he is willing to confront whatever dominance is in the enclosure.
Aidan’s photo says it all, he has assumed the role of the bottom of the pack, and he understands the body language necessary to be accepted in this rank. As the photo shows, and as we will talk about in Shadow’s logs, Shadow is back to being an active participant in rank order, and has had more social behavior this past week. Aidan still seeks Shadow out, and finds himself in the middle of Maya/Shadow dominance.
As we wrote last week, Shadow was very subdued, not interacting with the pack in his normal fashion. We had discussions with the Vet about any possible physical issues that we could be testing, and it was decided, at the age of ten, maybe he needs something stronger than nutritional joint supplements. We started him on a dose of anti-inflammatory medication, and his behavior improved. At his age, he may have some arthritic or spinal pain that was just not making him feel like interacting. We will continue to treat him and hope for continued improvements. There is far more stress to the life of a pack leader than to the other pack members, of course, you might want to get Aidan's opinion about that.
Aidan's had a tough week, as Maya peaks in dominance. There have been a few good things, Shadow is feeling better, so Aidan has a chance to greet and interact. An other good thing for Aidan is that when Maya focuses on Aidan, Denali has been posturing and even grab biting Maya. This is obviously a distraction, that draws her attention to Denali, and as one staff person commented, the dominance over Aidan "fissles" out. The morning temperatures seems to be consistently 15 – 18 degrees below zero, and that makes wolf care a challenge, as well as filming with cameras.
Denali had his first scuffle with Maya that resulted in some bleeding. He had a bite on the fleshy part of the nose, and like his social companion Grizzer, he isn't a wolf that takes pain very well. He was very docile after the incident, and spent a fair amount of time with the curator, as she inspected what resulted in a pin-hole bite wound. In contrast, Maya, who could be nicknamed scar face from her constant jaw-sparring with Aidan, doesn't show any favoritism of wounds, nor does she solicit care giving attention from staff about them.
Shadow is feeling better, affirming that we have achieved the right medical treatment for his aging bones. He is healthy, comfortable, and very much an important part of this pack. Last Monday, we saw a great webcam photo of Aidan resting on the den, with his head touching Shadow. If I can locate the photo, I will post it. Shadow is important to the pack, but at this point, we would say Shadow is most important to Aidan.
Sorry, I forgot Grizzer in the first log postings. It's not like he's a hard animal to forget, at ~125 lbs, he is the biggest wolf on exhibit, of course, we haven't weighed Denali lately, so that may change. Grizzer is still showing no signs of change in rank order. It's hard to determine the position between he and Denali, as almost all of their interactions are social wrestling, there's very few aggressive or tense issues between these two. One thing we have noticed, when Shadow is dominant over Grizzer, Denali makes no attempts to join in, like he does when Maya's engaged in dominance. This must mean that Denali has no interest in taking status from Grizzer, or maybe Shadow is such a strong pack leader, that Denali doesn't want to get involved, either way, it's good for Grizzer.
Aidan has had a noticeable increase in his boldness around the enclosure, which has gotten him into trouble. Maya likes to keep Aidan around the densite, but recently, Aidan has been observed in the woods, around the slate den, and basically showing more freedom around the enclosure. On Saturday, wolf care staff reported: "Maya was standing on top of the wolf den with Aidan. She proceeded to let Aidan smell her (lifted her tail and he smelled all along her, etc.), then she trotted off to the direction behind the slate den…. Aidan started to follow her staying maybe 15' behind and he kept going and going and going! Then all the wolves came from all directions…." When the pack discover Aidan outside of his safe zone, it caused a rally that turned into a short mobbing. It was intense, as is all aggression during this time of the year. Aidan was stiff, spent some time on the den, but was active and eager by the time Saturday night's feeding occurred, getting 10 lbs of extra venison in the holding pen.
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