On weekends, the wolf care staff may be in for morning med's and the evening feedings, but may not be on site during the day. So, staff that are working in retail or education will send email updates to the wolf curator, and of course, wolf care staff are on call for any emergencies. The following is the report from last Saturday: 4:00 PM on Saturday…Aidan is doing much better! The morning hours were very quiet with all the wolves resting up in the woods (including AD). Then throughout the afternoon it seemed all were social, including AD. MY didn't seem as intense. On Friday, GZ came up to AD on the Wolf Den and licked his mouth a few times… AD & MY came out of the den around 1 PM… It seemed that AD wanted to be social with all. A side note: At one point today, AD was laying on his back, legs stretched out and relaxed while surrounded by 5 or 6 ravens… Relaxed until they all took off!
Archives
There’s some great footage on Youtube of Aidan blocking and then asserting some dominance over Denali when Denali was trying to get a deer hide from Luna. Aidan has really taken the lead in this pack. He also has taken to licking Luna’s lips after she receives her supplement. Luna stands still while Aidan cleans her up. Every other wolf here seems to like Luna’s nutritional supplement except the one who needs it. This grooming behavior can also strengthen the pair bond between Aidan and Luna.
Boltz timid personality is helping to avoid confrontations as he seems to accept a lower ranking role as the male pup with two strong male adults. His biggest challenge is when he has an item that he wants to keep and he becomes the focal point of a chase. Luna and Boltz have a great relationship showing an equal amount of dominance over each other and great tolerance to feed together on a carcass.
Aidan and Denali had a slight confrontation over Luna and some deer hide. Denali just seems satisfied to take whatever food he can acquire, but when he’s going to take it from Luna, Aidan gets involved. We filmed this confrontation and observed some very interesting behaviors. Denali was carrying a T-4 tail when Aidan asserted himself and did an face lick appeasement behavior towards Aidan. He also had all of his hackles raised from the scruff of his neck to his tail. This tells me that there’s some Denali anxiety about Aidan’s new assertive behavior and Denali isn’t accepting it very well.
Grizzer has become very obsessed with food lately. Fortunately for him, the pups always have leftovers. This is typical this time of year as the cooler weather has increased all appetites. We are still lean on food resources, but with deer season starting at the first of November, we are very appreciative of scraps from hunters.
We have been noticing some limping from Luna after she has an active period. We are providing fresh straw beds earlier than we usually do in an effort to give her some comfort at night. It doesn’t seem to affect her attitude or make her slow down. We are adding some specific medications for joint issues as well as providing her a baby aspirin to control inflammation. Judging an animal’s discomfort is always a difficult task but this is why we ask staff to spend plenty of time observing so we can notice subtle differences in attitude, mobility and compatibility within the pack on a daily basis.
We fed a deer carcass during the day on Saturday since the night time temperatures have been a bit cool. We thought the Retired wolves would do better with a day time feeding and bed down at night. The only challenge is that the Ravens are active all day long. Malik solved this problem by dragging the deer into the den and sleeping with it. We will have to judge Shadow’s consumption since Malik was very possessive of the deer. We make that assessment by scat analysis. If the scat is very dark, we know that they have meat in their system.
Staff have been commenting on how they are seeing a lot of Shadow in Aidan’s behavior. It makes us wonder if the traits that Aidan is displaying (and Shadow displayed for so many years as a pack leader) are just inherent leadership traits or did Aidan watch Shadow and learn from the Master. We do know that a strong leader keeps the pack from having significant conflict. If everyone has a place and that place is defined every day, the testing behavior is minimized.
Sorry for the break between log postings, I should be back on a regular schedule now. In the last few postings we've been referencing some cold weather limping on Luna. After consultation with the University of Minnesota, we decided to get an x-ray on Luna. The logs today will feature the reactions of each individual wolf. We wondered about the impact on Boltz, since these pups are not genetically related, we are mindful of the potential for a weaker social relationship especially since there was so much separation between the pups during Luna's medical issues. We were somewhat surprised to see Boltz intently trying to get to Luna while she was in recovery. He even started biting and tearing off small tree limbs near the holding pen. We decided to feed out some deer legs as a distraction, which seemed to work well. When Luna returned to the pack, Boltz followed her intently, did a bit of jawsparring and showed a lot of excitement on her return. Later in the evening Boltz, Luna and Aidan joined in on some social chase interactions, with Luna doing some dominating over Boltz.
The main pack had an uneventful week, with the exception of a special program scheduled on December 28th. An enclosure enrichment was a special offering this week to holiday visitors at the Center in Ely, Minnesota. At 1 pm, wolf care staff locked the wolves into holding and placed some treats throughout the enclosure, including a 10 lb turkey, some pigs ears, milk bones and meatballs. The purpose of enclosure enrichment is to give the wolves an opportunity to use their sense of smell and investigate the hidden treats inside the enclosure. In this wee's video, you will see Shadow climb the rocks and the den to recover his share of the treats. The sound you hear in Shadow's video is a 2-way radio between the curator in the pen and the visitors inside the building. The curator interpreted behavior as the visitors watched the action unfold.
The International Wolf Center uses science-based education to teach and inspire the world about wolves, their ecology, and the wolf-human relationship.