Grizzer has been observed in much more submissive behavior than in previous weeks. A program called Wolf Watch occurred on August 2nd, where participants spend the evening hours observing the Exhibit pack and analyze the cohesiveness of the pack and the behavioral interactions between individuals. The night of the observation was one of the first nights where temperatures have cooled down in the early evening. The participants observed some very social interaction between the pack with Grizzer willingly submitting to Shadow, but keeping an eye on Malik to assert dominance when the opportunity arose. As you see from Grizzer’s video this week, he still wrestles with his littermate Maya as they did when they were pups.
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MacKenzie is doing well this summer. Last year at this time, she had shown signs of increased anxiety toward the increase in traffic and noise around the wolf exhibit during summer. This year, she maintains a relaxed posture and has good mobility. MacKenzie is being slowly weaned off of prednisone and seems to be doing well on the lower doses.
Written by Planning for Pups participants Deb Lewis and Betty Magnuson: At 14, Lakota is still exhibiting good mobility. Her posture is relaxed and she is still capable of stealing a beaver carcass from Mackenzie. The benign growth on her face does not affect her in any way. Lakota is still shedding. Wolf Care Staff have been grooming her with the new Furminator brush donated by Lori Rhodes. The weekend fresh sawdust was added to the den boxes. The staff wets down the sawdust as well as the surrounding vegetation to help keep the area cool during unusually hot temperatures.
Malik is doing well, despite being the focus of Grizzer. He manages to stay very alert to the location of the other pack members and positions himself in a way that he is facing them and has a good path for escape. While he seems to get anxious and growl before Grizzer is even close to him, he does seem to seek out the activity. One other point of information that the Wolf Watch participants noticed was the Malik and Shadow tend to lay near each other. Their association as brothers is very strong, even though we see Malik take advantage of Shadow when Grizzer has him cornered.
The terms ponytail ears and chin rest are part of a behavioral Ethogram that the Wolf Care Staff have developed as a way of interpreting behavior and having all the staff communicating the same terms. Pony tail ears are the sign of a wolf that is very intimidated, when the ears are flat back looking like they are pulled into a pony tail. A chin rest is a sign of dominance. When Grizzer gets a bit excited by the dominance hierarchy with the male rank order, he sometimes redirects to his littermate, playing like they did when they were pups. You will see this on Grizzer’s clip as he asserts dominance over Maya. In Maya’s video, you will see the status of a dominant female (because she’s the only female), taking on the lead role in a howling session standing on the highest rock.
The behaviors in the image for Shadow are classic rank order postures. One wolf shows more dominance by standing over another wolf, sometimes showing threat displays of their teeth, while the subordinate wolf has submissive ears, and paws up toward the dominant wolf with a foreleg stab. This is a sign of submission, pawing at the air. There is a fine line between pawing at a wolf in submission, and placing a paw on top of the dominant wolf. If the lower ranking wolf places a paw on the wolf, that’s a push for more dominance. In many of the cases where Grizzer starts out submissive, he may end up pushing his status. One of the more memorable photos we have of Grizzer and Shadow is Grizzer with a paw placed right on Shadow’s muzzle. Shadow’s video this week shows a bit of that testing behavior, with some pawing, but he doesn’t follow through with placement.
The Exhibit pack has been dealing with the heat by remaining inactive, as all of the videos show this week. Grizzer has completed the summer shedding and has begun growing a winter coat. The photo shows the physiological structure of a wolf with a significant amount of rotation to the front scapula or shoulder. When wolves travel, they display a pattern termed direct registering, where a slight rotation of the shoulder blade or scapula, allows alignment of the front and back paw when traveling. This is very efficient, especially when breaking trail in the snow.
The text and video for the rest of the Exhibit Pack logs is all the same, when the temperatures increase, the wolves become less active. It has been a bit of a challenge to give visitors a good sighting of the wolves when daytime temperatures have increased over 80 degrees on a regular basis. The wolf care staff use a sprinkler system on both enclosures to decrease the ambient air temperature by several degrees. The wolves are also called down to the front of the exhibit 3 times a day to draw them into the sprinkler and get a physical check on them. The videos this week for Maya, Grizzer, Malik and Shadow all show a typical summer day for wolves, stay cool by finding a good area of cool dirt in the shade.
The cooler weather has increased the wolves activity levels. Grizzer is growing a good winter coat which has increased the appearance of his body size. Just a few short weeks ago, staff was commenting on how skinny he looked, now, he's back to the bulky frame that is very recongizable in winter photos. He hasn't increased in weight, just in winter undercoat that pushes his guard hairs out making him appear larger. Grizzer and Maya continue to socially interact as litter mates, and Grizzer continues to push his dominance as would be expected with a young adult, but overall, the exhibit remains calm and very compatible. This week's video of Grizzer shows him spending time on top of the den. The wolves use of the enclosure tends to be very seasonal. The den is the most likely spot to see the wolves during the winter months, and they are already showing more presence there now.
Malik seems to be doing well. In recent week's, I've captured video of the pack howling, but never seem to get Malik in the camera view. In this week's video, I focused primarily on Malik as he answered the call of a fire siren.
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