Maya is doing well, with less focus on Aidan and more focus on courting Shadow. Of course, her idea of courting may involve jaw sparring. She has been much more social with wolf care staff and has been greeting with more social behavior towards the pack. Her behavior will likely peak in February before calming again in spring. Her response to Shadow is usually one of submission. Although, if there's a chase in the pack, she's stimulated to a more predatory mode, which can involve Aidan.
Maya is the scent rolling queen. Her video this week shows her response to scent stimulus, doing a full roll on back behavior for several minutes. This is good for the pups; When Maya's occupied, things are calmer here. We do see her dominance increase if there's activity around the wolf yard, and if there's a howling bout. Aidan continues to be the focus of Maya's dominance, but he is taking it in stride. When he sees her coming, he submits or tries to climb under some rocks to face her. When she's done, he shakes it off and continues whatever he was doing. The female dominance in inherently more intense than males, even in a spayed and neutered exhibit. This is likely due to the role that the females play in reducing pack overpopulation by having only one female breeding. As I said, spaying only calms this behavior, it doesn't eliminate it. This is why we decided to manage only one female, if we had two females in this pack, the aggression would be much more intense. To stimulate the pack, we did two enclosure enrichments last week, one was scent based that resulted in scent rolling behavior, the other was food based that stimulated the wolves to search and find treats. A YouTube video showing both enclosure enrichment activities will be posted.
Since the wolf roles of dominance hierarchy tend to be gender specific, Maya doesn't get involved with much of the males rank order issues. She is there to watch, and does interact when the pack is interacting with Grizzer, since he's her littermate. But, Maya generally spends her day, calm and peaceful, until the pups come into her realm. She is still actively dominating them, but has been observed in a submissive roll over with Aidan.
Maya displayed some good behavior after the bison head was brought into the pack. Initially, she was very timid, and had an extended reach to sniff the area, then she attempted to approach, but was dominated by Grizzer. This resulted in a tug of war behavior with Grizzer, before she went off to do a ride-up on Aidan and roll him to the ground. After all of the initial food possession issues calmed down, she was then observed rolling over for both pups and grooming Shadow as he watched the action. This pack is showing some great social cohesiveness, much more than we have ever observed with our previous pack structures.
Maya is showing an increase in hormones and an increase in dominance. She tends to pick Aidan for dominance, and seeks him out when the males become active. Female aggression can be quite intense, which is why we chose to only manage one female at a time in the Exhibit Pack. Aidan has been doing everything right, dropping to the ground and submitting, leaving Maya to do a Stand over as an expression of dominance. This will be interesting to see if Aidan continues to accept this as he matures.
We had a little problem with video editing this morning, so all the logs will be the same and we hope to get video in the logs and a new Youtube video posted by the end of the week. The fall colors have been tremendous in the enclosure, and thanks to local moose hunters, we gave the pack a moose head mid-week. The pups were actively feeding on the moose head, but soon cached it, and have not been back on it since. They consumed an entire deer this weekend, despite the warmer than average weather conditions.
Maya is under the influence of a hormonal surge. Even in a spayed and neutered exhibit, the dominance of a female can be very intense, which is why we are only managing one female at time. Maya has become a bit intense with the pups, especially Aidan. These are short-lived burst of dominance that are loud, have some hard muzzle-biting, to keep the pups in their place. Why Aidan over Denali? We’re not sure, and I don’t think Aidan is either. But, she is doing her job keeping the pups from climbing rank, and that helps Shadow. The female dominance role is so critical in the wild to reduce the rate of multiple litters, so Maya’s behavior is just part of the behavioral instincts that keeps wild wolves functioning.
Maya was very intense in the reintroduction of the pups. In the first few seconds of filming, the camera had to be shut off as she was trying to jump the fence to get in to see them. We thought she would be far more aggressive, but when the door was opened, she ran to investigate the enclosure, while the pups ran out to chase Malik. She did continue to assert more dominance over Aidan than Denali, and she immediately investigated his suture site. Aidan and Denali both ignored the sutures, but once Maya focused on them, Aidan began licking and chewing. We distracted a bit and checked the site, and all is intact, but this is why we hold them off so there is at least 24 hours if not longer. This time, we waited 42 hours before returning the pups. We have to weigh the consequences of waiting too long and having the pack reject them versus letting them back too soon and having sutures compromised. One other management strategy is providing fresh straw. Maya does like to lay on the den site with fresh straw, and that helps keep her calm.
Maya has reduced the amount of time focusing on Aidan which is typical of spring. We are now waiting for the ice to thaw in the pond drain to begin the spring cleaning process of getting the winter straw removed from the enclosure, another sign of spring.
Maya has been showing much more pair bonding behavior with Grizzer, and it seems that she has accepted Grizzer as the dominant male. It is interesting to watch the influence of the social relationships and the alliances that have formed between the Great plains subspecies versus the Northwestern subspecies.
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