Wolf
An apex predator and the likely ancestor of your pet dog, Rex.
The Big Bad Wolf
Most humans seem to have an ingrained evolutionary disposition to fear carnivorous predators like wolves. As apex predators at the top of the food chain, wolves seem to play on our imagination as a symbol of true, dangerous wilderness.
And pardon me, but ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ should be sent packing. Single-handedly, that little girl and her grandmother have managed to spread enough lies about wolves to get them poisoned, trapped, and shot into near extinction.
Since the wolf is one of my kindred animal spirits, you can imagine that I’m also not too fond of the ‘Three Little Pigs’ story or the myriad of Republican politicians and ranchers determined to eradicate Canis lupus in the wild.
So, should humans be afraid of wolves?
The perception of wolves as a danger to people has a long history in human society. Many myths about wolves originated in Paris in the Middle Ages — where wolves allegedly dragged off children. Now, it’s believed that the animals in question were actually hybrid wolf dogs.
In reality, the risk of wolves attacking or killing people is low. In North America, there are no documented accounts of humans killed by wild wolves between 1900–2000. In the 21st century, wolves may have killed a Canadian man in 2005. Wolves killed a woman jogging alone in a remote part of Alaska in 2010. In 2019, a wolf attacked a tent camper in Banff National Park.
Such encounters foster the perception that wolves are far more dangerous to humans than they are. Attacks are still exceedingly rare. By comparison, domestic dogs bite 1 million people and kill 16 to 18 people every year in the United States alone.
It should be noted that wolves typically avoid people, buildings, and roads — and encounters are rare. A purebred wild wolf is more afraid of you than you are of him. He will not attack unless something makes him feel that his safety has been threatened.
Many people believe that wolves kill everything they encounter. In truth, they only kill to eat. Even when they attack a herd of prey, they do not slaughter every animal. The alpha wolf specifically directs which member of the herd should be brought down.
Many people believe that wolves frequently infiltrate farms and ranches and kill livestock. In truth, this happens so seldom — and so few animals are killed — that biologists do not even count such events as a category of predatorial risk.
Many people believe wolves decimate the deer, elk, and caribou populations. In truth, for every ten times wolves hunt, they make a single kill.
A keystone species
Picture the top stone in an archway — the arch collapses if that keystone is removed. Now, imagine that happening to an entire ecosystem.
When an animal species is so essential to its habitat, the habitat would literally fall apart without that animal species — we call it a keystone species. Bison, sea otters, starfish, beavers, and elephants all exert this power.
And then there are wolves — another keystone species. Scientists have long known wolves to be capable of robustly remaking their ecosystems through indirect interactions known as ‘trophic cascades,’ which I will describe below and in a future article.
Decimation and recovery in Yellowstone
Wolves used to roam the entire North American continent — from northern Alaska to southern Mexico. But by the early 1900s, humans almost entirely wiped them out in the lower 48 states.
By 1926, wolves had been shot and trapped out of existence in Yellowstone National Park. This enabled elk to increase in population and wreak havoc on the surrounding ecosystem.
The overpopulation of elk is usually a problem in areas where wolf numbers are low or non-existent. It’s also important to understand that elk often eat large quantities of native grasses, bushes, small trees, and domestic crops.
Wolves were reintroduced as apex predators back into the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (which includes parts of Idaho) in 1995. Since their reintroduction, we have learned much about large carnivores’ effect on building or reestablishing an ecosystem.
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In the past, it was largely thought that an ecosystem was built from the bottom up, with plant life as the foundation from which everything else grew. Once healthy plants were established, insects, small rodents, birds, larger herbivores, and finally, the top predators all fell into balance. Almost all conservation and species reintroduction efforts were based on this ‘bottom-up’ theory.
The trophic cascade
The reintroduction of wolves as apex predators resulted in an explosion of life and biodiversity in Yellowstone. Scientists called this beneficial ‘top-down’ effect the “trophic cascade” as wolves initiated a more natural ecosystem balance. Today, scientists have come from around the world to watch the effect wild wolves have on the park.
The idea of a “trophic cascade” is simple. The term “trophic” refers to the different levels of a food chain — with plants being the bottom trophic level, insects the next, all the way up the ladder to herbivores and then predators.
The “cascade” part means looking at the traditional food chain differently. In the case of Yellowstone, wolves — as apex predators — have had a cascading beneficial effect on all the trophic levels below them.
Wolves vs Elk
Wolves have this beneficial trophic cascade effect for one simple reason — they make elk move around.
Consider what elk do when left alone without the threat of predators. Entire herds like to go to riversides and eat everything they can find in one place (grasses, bushes, saplings, even small trees) before moving on to another location and doing the same thing.
After decades without wolf predation, elk had vegetatively stripped Yellowstone’s landscape — including killing many smaller trees that line riverbanks.
As you might expect, wolves cause nervous behaviors among their prey. Some scientists believe that newly reintroduced predators create what’s been called a “landscape of fear” among prey species — a term that isn’t positive or negative, just descriptive.
And so, when wolves were reintroduced, the elk herds no longer desired to stay in one place and eat everything nearby. They were forced to keep moving in response to wolf predation.
This action of wolf preying on elk had myriad benefits. For example, when wolves chased the elk during a hunt, the elk were forced to run faster and farther. The act of wolves culling the elk herds helped improve the health of the elk by reducing disease and creating more resilient populations. As the elk ran, their hooves aerated the soil, making it prime for water retention and allowing more grasses to grow.
Since the elk couldn’t remain stationary for long periods, aspens and willows were not heavily grazed and could fully recover between elk migrations. This meant that songbirds could return in droves to nest in the new habitat. It also meant there were more trees to shade the rivers — making the water colder. Colder water can hold more oxygen, which boosts fish populations.
And so, we have seen the incredible ‘trophic cascade’ effect that wolves have had on Yellowstone since their reintroduction. Effectively, when wolves were reintroduced, balance was restored to the Yellowstone ecosystem.
That’s the kind of impact a keystone species has on its habitat — and that’s why it’s so important that we protect the wolf from annihilation by hunters, ranchers, farmers, and mindless politicians.
The return of wolves
It should be noted that no wolf has attacked a human in Yellowstone National Park since wolves returned in 1995. Yellowstone receives 4 million visitors per year, including tent campers. About 100 wolves currently live in Yellowstone and are exposed to people, with few issues.
The return of wolves to areas across the lower 48 states of the U.S. has helped restore some of the natural balance lost in their absence. Wolves are now once again causing elk and deer to move around the landscape more and allowing streamside vegetation to flourish along with species that depend on this restored habitat.
Wolves have taught humans about the importance of habitat connectedness, biodiversity, and apex predators in maintaining the balance in ecosystems.
At a time when we are facing a catastrophic biodiversity crisis, it is more important now than ever to protect wolves and the habitats that depend upon them.
Wolves — the ancestors of our beloved family dog
Thousands of years ago, our human ancestors sought the companionship of wild canines with a frisky spirit that lives on in modern dogs — particularly hunting and herding breeds.
For humans, playing with a dog usually lifts our spirits. So, it’s no surprise that the temperament of dogs to want to play with us may have been a key factor in their domestication ages ago — and may have steered our ensuing efforts to breed canines for specific purposes.
Researchers continue to argue over how, when, and where dogs were first domesticated. But there is a consensus that a wolf ancestor most likely initiated the first contact with humans. This as-yet-unidentified wolf species probably began to associate with humans by snagging garbage and leftovers in early settlements in Siberia or Germany 20,000–40,000 years ago.
The less-fearful ‘wolfdog’ individuals in the pack that intermingled with early humans most likely lost their wolfish behaviors, such as shyness and skittishness. These early semi-wild dogs then evolved into the happy, friendly, and loyal domestic dogs that warm our hearts today. Atta boy, Rex!
