Denali seems to have reduced some of his testing behavior, possibly because Grizzer has become more proactive in showing dominance. We have noticed Denali trying to engage Grizzer through direct eye contact, but Grizzer is really a non-confrontational personality, he tends to avert Denali's gaze and avoid interacting. Denali still looks a bit nervous when Grizzer starts chasing him, but his long legs can our distance every member of the pack.
Archives
Grizzer is developing some dominance skills. He's been controlling the carcass at the feeding program and he seems to be more proactive in showing status towards Denali. What's interesting, is that he does this dominance with the same kind of laid back personality that he's always had. In this week's photo, Denali's growling and trying to do a direct stare; Grizzer gives him a grin and a tail wag, ignoring Denali's testing.
Malik is really starting to put on winter weight, likely in response to taking some of Shadow's daily feeding. Shadow is still a very temperamental eater, which means we sometimes need to feed Malik with Shadow, as Shadow is more stimulated to eat when he competes with Malik. The only new stimulus for the pack was the draining of the pond, the weather is getting colder now, and we don't want the older animals taking a dip and having some stiff joints. There was another dead raven in the enclosure on Monday, based on the amount of focus Malik places on the raven's when they fly over, he is probably the one who catches them.
Maya has a new quirk… well, if you ask Aidan, she has many. The new issue we have relates to the window washing bucket. Maya has a desire to scent roll in the bucket, and if we block the bucket, she will try to scent roll on the windows when we are washing them. It's gotten to the point that we need to pour soapy water on the ground to keep her distracted while we get the windows clean. We use Dawn dish soap to wash the windows, and even though we've been using this soap on the windows since before she was born, it now has her stimulated. She even did a RLU in the bucket a few months ago. Needless to say, that ended the window washing session for that day.
The following observation was written by Wolf Watch participant Cameron Feaster. <br> Aidan still remains at the edge of all the activity. When Grizzer is chasing Denali or othewise dominating him, you'll often find Aidan scraping at or stomping the ground just out of reach. He continues to give Maya plenty of foreleg stabs, but Maya is ignoring him more and more as time goes on. During our observations, we found Maya fully submitting to Aidan, who performed some playbows and foreleg stabs in response. Eventually Aidan lost interest. <br> The following was observed by Wolf Care Staff member, Laurie Feela:<br> Aidan wanted to go into the pond and tripped when he was looking to see where Maya was, he went in and just stood there for a few minutes. Then Maya came over and blocked him from getting out. He finally managed to get out and ran, but then he shook himself off and kept going after her to play. He did several playbows and jabbed her a few times. She didn't know what to think and ended up walking away. Since he wasn't running from her she wasn't sure what to do.
The following observation was written by Wolf Watch participant Cameron Feaster. <br> There is little doubt that Grizzer now holds the rank of dominant male in the Exhibit Pack. Grizzer is a very passive animal, but he is also very confident. Grizzer and Denali often stare down one another, but more often than not, these interactions end with Denali retreating up the hill with Grizzer in pursuit. Grizzer uses his body language to enforce his dominance, and very rarely (if ever) uses physical assertion to get his message across.
Shadow has settled into a routine of eating 3 – 5 lbs of food every 2 – 3 days. His preference rotates between chicken and beef, with a portion of a deer carcass every 7 – 10 days. He's taking a break from beaver. The last two beaver we fed were taken out of the enclosure 5 days after feeding. They looked the same, but smelled much worse. In contrast, anything that is fed to the Exhibit Pack, doesn't come out unless it's in the form of scat. Winter may change the retired wolves feeding pattern, but as long as we have chicken and beef on the defrost table, Shadow enjoys life.
Malik's abscessed tooth is healing well. We did extend his antibiotics and increased his dose as the first week of treatment didn't have the response we wanted. We've observed this situation with the 1993 litter when they were in retirement, and we are confident that we will be able to overcome this situation without a tooth extraction. Malik and Shadow are very compatible in retirement, sharing den space without issue and they tend to follow each other throughout the enclosure.
One thing we've learned about retired wolves is that they have a way of wrapping the wolf care staff around their paws…. What do I mean by this? Well, let's start with food. As we've written about before, Shadow had lost a lot of weight in his last few months as the pack leader of the Exhibit Pack. So, we were very concerned about increasing his weight prior to winter. This meant the offering of food several times a day, changing the variety of food, delivering food so that he didn't have to compete with Malik. Now, we have a good solid weight on Shadow, but we've also got a wolf who has become picky about what, how and when he eats. He will only take chicken if it's held up for him, not placed on the ground, he only wants beef in small chunks and it should be room temperature, he doesn't care for beaver any more, a deer torso should have some of the hide removed… You get the point. Of course, they're wolves and there is a side that says, if he's hungry enough, he'll eat whatever we serve (like Malik, who eats anything). But, there's another side, he's old, he maintained order in the Exhibit Pack for 8 years, he deserves some comforts, that's what defines Best Management Practices.
The Curator hauled a load of rocks into the retired enclosure to cover some chain link fence and ground wire. Malik spent a lot of time sniffing the rocks and marking each as is customary for anything new in the enclosure. Malik sure does get excited when the Exhibit Pack is active, often running the fenceline and looking up towards the top. We're not sure if he thinks he could clear the fence, but he is certainly spry enough to do it.
The International Wolf Center uses science-based education to teach and inspire the world about wolves, their ecology, and the wolf-human relationship.