Denali is getting some pack attention especially when Aidan is involved. The male rank order hasn't been very active in the last few years with just two males in the Exhibit Pack. With the addition of Boltz, we will see Boltz taking opportunities to climb rank, but we will also see Aidan being more forceful of his rank. Both scenarios involve Denali. While Boltz is timid about food possessions, rank order is independent of food social rules, so Boltz plays an active part of Aidan's assertive behavior over Denali.
Denali is respecting Aidan's defense of the pups, of course, it's relatively warm and he can afford to wait for a meal. This dynamics may change when the subzero weather arrives. There's been a few observations of some hackle responses from both Aidan and Denali indicating some intensity to their interactions. We are slowly transitioning the pups to every other day feedings of the small amounts of beef and adding another larger carcass feeding in the middle of the week. This will typically be a beaver, deer legs or deer scraps from hunters which we will feed on Wednesdays. The pack will still get a large carcass feeding on Saturday night, so it should distribute more resources and caches in the enclosure and reduce some of the conflicts between Denali and the pack.
When we look at social alliances, we just don't see Denali displaying anything similar to Aidan. That's not to say the Denali doesn't interact with the pups, he's always near them (especially if there's food), but it's not the same. It appears more antagonistic including behaviors such as jaw sparring, wrestling and chasing rather than socially greeting. These alliances at this age can dictate the testing behavior as the pups mature. Denali may already have a plan, he's been spending a lot of time on the raven rock, which is a double stacked rock that Luna doesn't climb. He might experience the pup's maturity from the safety of a high vantage point.
To summarize the pack dynamics, Denali is getting some more active testing behavior from the pups, especially Luna who seems to pin Denali on a regular basis. Most of the time, Aidan is close-by which seems to inhibit Denali’s behavior to defend himself. I wonder about the social bonding between the pups and Denali. Aidan clearly initiates a lot of social behavior rolling over for the pups, whereas Denali doesn't display this behavior very often. He's more inclined to wrestle with the pups and take their food, which might be why he's getting the pinning response from Luna.
Red Paw is 23 days old today. We also took another measurement on their height, actually, it was taken while they were sleeping, a measurement from the bottom of there paw to the top of the shoulder blade. Red Paw is 25.5 cm tall. The most noteable behavior was the voluntary wag of the tail. Every day their coordination continues to improve, and in the last week, we have observed several involuntary muscle and nerve spasms. But today, Red Paw clearly did a tail wag with a playbow to one of the caretakers. Red Paw has been showing more dominant postures, doing a full stand-over on Attila. The other behavior that is noted is the howling to the main pack. On several occasions, Red Paw howls back when the main pack starts. During one howling session, Red Paw appeared to be fast asleep, lifted his head and howled, then fell asleep again. In the video this week, you will see him tucked underneath the stuffed moose. He seems to find comfort in closed places, and the moose seemed like a good fit. The audio recording is a portion of his howl during his sleep. The howl lasted one minute and 4 seconds, due to file restrictions in these pages, you are hearing 20 seconds worth.
What can we say about Denali except that he is constantly active, and always involved with whatever event is occurring. He continues to socially wrestle with Grizzer and Grizzer shows no real sign of intensified response to Denali. We did observe something interesting this morning. At the densite, Maya was jaw sparring with Aidan, Shadow came in to assert dominance over Aidan, then Denali came over and did a grab bite to Maya, distracting Maya from Aidan. Denali proceeded to stand tall and face off Maya. It was clearly a sign that Denali is not taking Maya's dominance as easy as Aidan. With Denali intervening, Maya left Aidan alone and continued to try to show some status over Denali with little success. We don't think it was Denali protecting Aidan (he does his fair share of dominance over Aidan), but more a show of confidence in Denali that he is willing to confront whatever dominance is in the enclosure.
Denali had his first scuffle with Maya that resulted in some bleeding. He had a bite on the fleshy part of the nose, and like his social companion Grizzer, he isn't a wolf that takes pain very well. He was very docile after the incident, and spent a fair amount of time with the curator, as she inspected what resulted in a pin-hole bite wound. In contrast, Maya, who could be nicknamed scar face from her constant jaw-sparring with Aidan, doesn't show any favoritism of wounds, nor does she solicit care giving attention from staff about them.
Denali continues to show that he may be mature physically, but he's mentally a big pup. He really does submit well to Shadow, co-exists well with Grizzer, socially interacts with Aidan, and tries to test Maya whenever possible. The straw beds have been important to Denali, he likes comfort. He has reduced the wrestling and dominance over Aidan, which is good for Aidan, because when Aidan was pinned by Denali, he was vulnerable and nervous, causing him to be a target.
Denali hasn't had any notable behaviors this week; He's the same easy going, food is a priority wolf that has defined his pup and juvenile traits. His interactions with Grizzer continue to be social, and his tolerance for Maya's dominance seems to be declining. He is quick to do a grab bite on Maya when she's showing dominance over Aidan, and that has created an adversarial role between these two. Denali clearly sees Shadow as higher ranking and has many submissive postures in his presence, but a scuffle over a deer leg on Thursday, left Denali with a leg and Shadow with frustration that he redirected toward Grizzer. Food possession is about who is on top of the food, not about dominance rank.
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.
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