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With the Center being closed throughout the early winter due to COVID restrictions, Axel and Grayson seemed very interested in the return of visitors to the Center by late January.  They positioned themselves at the windows, watching the activity as visitors made some face-to-face connections, especially those exuberant younger visitors.  As the Center went back to the “What’s for Dinner” program, we switched from smaller, more frequent feedings to the larger deer torso feedings.  This created some interesting rank-order behaviors between Axel and Grayson who have been posturing for some rank since Denali retired.   Grayson seems to be increasing his confidence without Denali’s intimidating presence.  With Grayson’s tendency for bonding, we are very interested to see how he interacts with the pups next summer.

This week’s Explore.org Gallery image is a photo of Axel and Grayson in a duel scent roll.  Apparently, they killed a small mammal in the enclosure and spent a significant amount of time tossing it and scent rolling.   We recently reviewed a publication entitled: Grey wolf may show signs of self-awareness with the sniff
test of self-recognition co-authored by Karen Davis from Wolf Park (originator of the Wolf Ethogram that we frequently use).  We are definitely interested in learning the motivations of wolf behaviors.

In this preliminary study, wolves showed some signs of the ability to recognize themselves
through the “olfactory mirror” and exhibited some clues of mark-directed responses,
particularly scent-rolling, which may shed more light on this still unclear behavior
and represent a sort of olfactory equivalent to passing the original mirror test.

Since we established the partnership with Explore.org in 2020, we have definitely been enjoying the many images submitted by the viewers in their Gallery.  I search the gallery to get an indication of the behaviors, feeding patterns, and overall dynamics of the Exhibit.  This week’s photo shows the “Interspecific (between species)” interaction between a raven and Axel.  I would like to thank Explore.org camera viewer “mashaka2020” for sharing this mirror moment between two social species.

We are still experiencing some warmer than average January Weather. Not only has it been stimulating wolves in an interesting way, but it has also been beautiful to photograph.  You may have noticed some recent facebook posts by staff showing the “Hoarfrost” back drop of the trees in our Exhibit Pack.

According to the definition on Britannica.com

Hoarfrost, deposit of ice crystals on objects exposed to the free air, such as grass blades, tree branches, or leaves. It is formed by direct condensation of water vapour to ice at temperatures below freezing and occurs when air is brought to its frost point by cooling.

With these background images, the wolves have been providing many behaviors to interpret. Normally January is filled with dominance, but this warmer weather is bring out a more social, bonding behavior.  There are many bouts of chase, resting in close proximity, nose to nose moments that are not part of our usual winter dynamics.  Will this behavior continue?  We will wait and see as a cold front is approaching and returning our winter norm temperatures back to zero and below.  To find out how the winter dynamics will change, log in to our website and join us for the “Winter Dynamics” webinar on February 4th at 4 pm Central time or sign up for the entire Webinar Series of 14 webinars, with many including the dynamics of our 2021 pup adoption.