Archive for: boltz

Boltz continues to be keenly aware of anything that flies, especially when it is flying over his head. With the influx of extra food the past couple of days there are a number of ravens in the exhibit looking for opportunities to help themselves. Boltz was observed a couple of hours ago going up the hill to take a chicken away from some ravens and he brought it back to the front of the exhibit to eat it while the ravens watched.

Boltz was engaged when the pack was brought back together. When he and the arctics surrounded Aidan, Aidan made it clear with threat displays that he did not want them around him. At one point Boltz and Axel were doing a bit of an investigation at the rear of Aidan which did not elicit much of a response. Later on Aidan did a full speed charge across the exhibit to run Boltz off of the pump housing where Aidan had food. Boltz left and gave Aidan room after that. While Boltz was aware of where Aidan was at all times he was not focused on Aidan or his wound. He was able to get a good amount of food to eat and is spending today resting in front of the exhibit while he keeps an eye on the ravens.

You may have read the press release addressing Boltz’s anxiety about bees, flies, wasps, hornets, basically anything that flies around his head.  We certainly didn’t want to portray any negativity towards our fellow insects, they are an important part of the ecosystem, we just want to help Boltz through this negative conditioning.  In an attempt to desensitize him to the movement around his head, some of our “Pups at One Year” participants forwarded the idea of using “Peanut Butter Bubbles”.  These are made for dogs and available on Amazon, we certainly want to make Boltz’s life less stressful, so we tried it.  Not only does Boltz show an ear posture of interest (pricked forward), but he tasted one and seemed to like the taste. 

We don’t know when it happened, but sometime in Boltz’s life, bees became an obsession.  During the summer season, Boltz has the stress of looking, ducking and running from the variety of insects that frequent Minnesota’s great outdoors.  On an overcast and cooler summer day, he’s right with the pack, but heat and humidity mean bugs and that means Boltz makes an upper enclosure retreat underground.  This isolation can be problematic as the rest of the pack members treat his anxiety and retreat as a weakness and he can be the focus of some unwanted attention when he comes back down the hill at night.  In order to overcome this summer stress, we are trying to devise ways to give him a distraction, but so far, there hasn’t been much success to change his mind

We apologize to those of you who follow Boltz in the wolf logs.  Being in the middle of the pack based on age and rank, it seems like Boltz gets overlooked when it comes to some interactions, including the posting of wolf logs. This is in part due to Boltz’s more timid behavior, especially during the fly season.  In his younger days, he had some negative associations with bees and now he seems to obsess about anything that buzzes over his head.  Once the temperatures warm enough for the bugs to arrive, he tends to retreat to the upper wood line out of sight to the photographers.  This seasonal change in confidence has not gone unnoticed by the yearlings.  Initially, they backed off and watched as Boltz spun in circles catching flies.  Now, they seem more tolerant and continue to show some bonding behavior with Boltz.  Boltz seems to revert back to his juvenile mind, obnoxiously submitting to Denali.  This timid seasonal behavior includes the weekly carcass feedings, where he waits on the sidelines before he gets an opportunity to tug at the carcass and retreat with his possession.  The “What’s for Dinner” crowd cheered on Saturday night when Boltz acquired a hind deer leg from Denali and the yearlings.  Staff monitor feedings closely as well as monitoring the condition and color of scat to ensure that each wolf gets the resources they need.  When the weather is cool and damp keeping the bugs from being airborne, Boltz is right in the mix showing some dominance over anyone willing to stand there long enough to take it. 

We just completed a training for the wolf care staff to help us remain attentive to behavioral changes in the upcoming year.  We are always cognitive of behavior, but in the upcoming year, we have two circumstances that happen to be occurring simultaneously in the winter/spring of 2018.  The first is the yearling pups, Axel and Grayson, will be maturing to full adults at the age of 2, which usually means a bit more testing behavior.  The second event is that our pack leader, Aidan, will be reaching 10 years of age.  During the training, we discussed our historical yearling behavior that we experienced with the 1989, 1993, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 litters and looked for behavioral cues that are important to document and in some cases may require a modified handling technique.  We have less data for which to draw details about pack leader changes since we have only had MacKenzie and Lucas as the dominant pair deposed in 2002 and a pack leader change initiated by a management decision to remove Shadow in 2010.  Boltz is definitely on our radar to watch for the obvious eye contact and following behavior that might tell us that his focus is intensifying on Aidan.  Fortunately, one can’t focus on much with the pups near by, as soon as one of the wolves looks interested in something, a yearling comes over to see what’s up.