Range: at one time, the wolf was present in the entire Northern hemisphere; it used to be the most widespread mainland mammal species. Due to their extraordinary adaptation ability, they have conquered all types of habitat. Due to human persecution, to the destruction of their habitats and the decrease of their animals of prey, they have been forced back to a small fraction of their former range: in the United States of America to 5%, in Canada and Mexico to 15%, in Europe and Asia to 25%. Currently the largest European populations can be found in Romania, Belarus, Ukraine, Spain, Macedonia and Bulgaria. West of Russia, 35% of the European wolf population lives in Romania.
Biological features: the wolf is the largest representative of the dog family (Canidae).
The wolf is the exclusive ancestor of the domestic dog that has devotedly served humans from ancient times. Wolves’ color and size varies considerably, this great genetic diversity giving the base to dog breeding.
In Europe, wolves are the third largest mainland predatory mammals after the polar bear and the brown bear. Their appearance is close to that of a German shepherd dog, but they have longer legs, a smaller body, and a shorter, bushier tail. Their chest is not as deep as is that of most dogs of a similar size.
Their fur is thick and varies from white through gray and reddish-brown to black. The color of European wolves gives the impression of gray – this is due to the mixing of hairs of different colors: white, black, yellowish brown and reddish. This is why the same animal may appear to us to have different shades of color, depending on the environment and on light conditions. The weight of an adult individual varies between 20 to 80 kilograms (45 to 175 pounds) for males and 15 to 55 kilograms (35 to 120 pounds) for females. In Romania, the average weight varies between 35 and 60 kilograms (75 to 130 pounds). The length of the body varies between 110 and 150 centimeters (44 to 60 inches), the length of the tail between 30 and 35 centimeters (12 to 14 inches). Their height is 50-70 centimeters (20 to 28 inches). The size of wolves relates to the size of their prey: the largest individuals live on the tundra of Asia and North America, feeding mostly on buffalo, musk ox, and moose.
Wolves walk on their toes; their tracks resembling to that of large bodied dogs (but due to the long fingers they are slightly oval in shape), with four toes and with claws. The characteristic of wolves is that on their hind legs the fifth toe, which can be found on several dog breeds, is missing.
Their dentition consists of 42 teeth. Their canines and fangs are well developed. A curiosity is that the volume of their brains can be 30% greater than those of the dogs of the same size.
Wolves living in the wild can live for up to 10 years, those in captivity for up to 16.
Way of life: wolves are animals adapted to a predatory way of life. Since they usually bring down prey larger than themselves – something they couldn’t do alone – they live in social units called packs. Cooperation between the members of the pack improves the chances of successful hunting, rising of the young, and defense of their territory. Within the pack the members communicate through different postures and howls. A strict hierarchy reigns in the pack, separately for males and females. A dominant (alpha) couple forms the centre of the pack, the others are their subordinates. The rest of the pack consists of the offspring of the dominant couple and, in some cases, of newcomers that have joined the family. Serious fights very rarely occur within the pack. Violence usually ends with the adoption of a subservient posture by the fight’s loser. The offering of the unprotected neck inhibits the fellow pack members’ aggression.
Normally, packs consist of 2-15 members. In Europe, pack formation is influenced by human interference, therefore larger packs are extremely rare. In Romania an average pack consists of 3-6 wolves. The size of the territory used by the pack depends on several factors: the size of the pack, the density and size of prey, geographic conditions, and human factors. While in arctic regions the area of a pack can consist of 2500 km², the smallest territory in Portugal is 16 km². The average territory in Europe is 100 to 500 km². Wolves constantly monitor their territory; they mark it and defend it from neighboring packs. They trot with an average of 8 km/h, and can run more than 50 km in a single night. They often kill other wolves straying into their territory. The latter are usually young wolves that have left their packs or ones that have been pushed out of their packs.
Their prey usually consists of large herbivores (ungulates). In Romania, their natural prey is red deer, roe deer, chamois, fallow deer, wild boar and small-bodied mammals (from hares to common voles). In some cases they feed on birds and even carrion, in the autumn they may eat ripe fruit. They often capture sheep because it is easy prey and is often accessible.
The pack chases its pray for many kilometers until its complete exhaustion. The way of life of wolves implies the ability to go long distances and feed whenever food is available. Their stomach has a great capacity to widen, so they can consume up to 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of meat at one time. Their digestion is very fast, four hours after they have eaten, they can eat anew. In order to survive, an adult wolf needs 1 kg (2.2 pounds) of meat a day and 2-2,5 kg (4.5 – 5.5 pounds) in order to stay in good condition and to be able to breed.
During the hunt, wolves usually bring down superannuated, feeble, sick or young animals. Healthy deer, chamois, or fallow deer can usually escape, while wild boars and stags can often defend themselves.
Reproduction: normally, only the alpha pair reproduces in the pack. This happens in February – March. Their gestation is of 62-64 days, the same as that of dogs. The alpha female chooses the place for the litter – in the following period this area will be the centre of the pack’s activity. The number of pups can reach 12 but it rarely exceeds 3-6. The whole pack takes part in the raising of the young. After the age of 3-4 weeks, the pups start consuming meat regurgitated by their mother and from this time on their growth accelerates. At the age of 7-8 months they are full members of the pack, but they only reach sexual maturity at the age of two years. Grown-up, dominant wolves will try to win the alpha (chief) position by the age of three years, or they leave their pack. In the life of wolves the first three years are the most critical. Only a small percentage of them will reach adulthood. From the above mentioned follows that wolves, in contrast to popular belief, are not prolific animals. Moreover, wolf populations regulate themselves anyway through needing a large territory, competition between packs, their breeding characteristics and territorial aggression.
Wolves and humans
(after: Wolfgang Schroeder (1994) – Le mythe du loup, Le loup: Entre le mythe et la réalité, Revue Panda no.1/94 )
The view that men are the descendants of wolves exists in the myths and religions of several primitive cultures. Every Turk’s mother was a female wolf. The mother of Dsinghis Khan, the great leader of the Mongols was Boert-a-Tschao, a mythological wolf. There are several versions of the legend that describes Rome ’s establishment. Both Kyros, the founder of the Persian Empire , and Dietrich, the old German hero, have lived among wolves. Within several North American Indian ethnic groups, like the Iroquois of the Great Lakes region, there have been ‘wolf-tribes’, Indians who had called themselves wolves and had made sacrifices to totems representing wolves. These Indians were convinced that their direct ancestors were wolves. In the same way, several ethnic groups had considered that wolves were superior beings, this is why they had asked for their protection, health and fertility. The Kantschal, a primitive people of Asia, being convinced that women cannot give life to two babies at one time, had believed that giving birth to twins could only be the work of wolves. Because women had to be, by necessity, faithful, and not even emotionally could they have been implicated with men other than their husbands, not even a god, the birth of twins was considered an accident and a wolf was considered as father. They made a wolf-figure out of grass that the mother had to keep along herself as ‘husband’. The Indians along the Columbia River esteemed wolves as saviors: long ago, when humans still had had animal forms (deer-men, beaver-men and other hybrid beings), monsters had hunted them down and had tormented them. This was the time when the wolf had appeared on earth: it had killed the monsters, had defeated evil in all its forms and had taught many useful things to people. Then, out of the monsters’ corpse-pieces, the wolf had created the Indian. In the same way, wolves escort and protect the gods of the German and Greek mythology: Wotan and Aphrodite. The image of the protective wolf exists in our time as well: the Sicilian peasants of the XIXth century had kept wolf-paws in their stables in order to hunt the bad spirits away. These beliefs have a base in reality: at the birth of man, wolves had already existed. Their presence has put its mark on the entire development of humanity. ‘ The first humans’ learning processes were based on the observation of the wolves’ behavior ‘ – claims the Russian biologist and wolf-specialist Dimitrij Ivanowitch Bibikow.
Physiologically, humans were not suited for hunting: they did not have claws or strong jaws, they weren’t fast nor very strong. Prehistoric humans had to face the same problems as wolves, which, after all, have become specialized in the hunting of animals larger than themselves. Humans, just like wolves, had to learn hunting in groups. Humans’ main help in hunting is still the dog, which is a descendant of the wolves.
‘ We have all the reasons to believe that the positive – or at least not negative – attitude towards wolves was typical in the case of most primitive societies, based on hunting, gathering or farming.’ – states Eric Zimen.
As we have already mentioned in the previous chapter, the relationship between man and wolf had begun to deteriorate only after humans have switched from the hunting-gathering way of life to farming and livestock breeding. The first human-wolf conflicts that we know about have happened in 5000 B.C., in the early farming communities of South-Western Asia.
The oldest marked evidence about humans’ negative attitude towards wolves is in the Old Testimony, in which the princes of Jerusalem , who must have been immoral thieves and despots, are compared to thieving wolves. Jesus had also used the example of wolves clad in lambs’ furs when talking about false prophets. The systematic and organized extermination of wolves starts in the Middle Ages, when Charlemagne (742-814) orders his knights to fight wolves and pagans. By this time, the former wolf-brother and humans’ hunting-partner had become the nobles’ hunting competitor and the thief of the peasants’ livestock. In tales and legends, the wolf is the incarnated evil. Bruno Bettelheim, psychoanalyst and writer of the book ‘ Children need tales’, states that in the tale of ‘Red Riding Hood’, the wolf is not just the symbol of male seduction but also the incarnation of all our antisocial and animal instincts. For others, wolves represent the animal form of the devil: Francis Bodin, inquisitor and witch-trial judge suggests that wolves are not even animals but magi and wizards that took wolf-shapes.
Nevertheless, the war for the extermination of wolves had reached its culmination well after the dark period of the Middle Ages, when the Enlightenment and Renaissance have had already become universal dogma. The wolf is not the incarnation of the devil anymore but a plain pest. Even so, this is enough to withdraw the right of existence from wolves. The first modern naturalists have backed the legitimacy of the extermination of ‘the enemy of humanity and its development’ with arguments –claims Friedrich von Tschudi in ‘The fauna of the Alps ‘, This work reflects the scientific knowledge of the time. According to this book, the wolves often descended to B âle, Soleure, l’Argovie, Fribourg, Zurich and Schaffhouse during cold winters, tearing the inhabitants apart and killing the dogs on their chains. The writer was an enlightened intellectual.
Eventually, the result of all this was that the wolf had disappeared from most of its former range. At the end of the XVIIIth century, wolves had died out in Britain, 100 hundred years after the last wolves were killed in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Denmark. In the beginning of the XXth century, they have disappeared from France, Switzerland and from 48 states of the USA. Following World-War II, they were exterminated in many countries of Central Europe as well. Today, wolf population is slowly growing in several European states, and in some places there are attempts to reintroduce them. If they find suitable life conditions, wolves can even repopulate certain areas on their own.
It is obvious that wolves have indeed caused damage to humans. It is also understandable that the fear of shepherds and farmers is well-founded; the loss of even a few animals could easily mean falling into poverty and misery for them.
There are innumerable stories about wolves that eat humans; in Russian literature for example, about wolves chasing sledges through cold nights. There are also American stories about lone trappers and gold-diggers that have to fight with wolves.
Wolves are too scared to attack humans. There is not one wolf homicide story from the past centuries that has been proven to be true. It is possible that in the faraway past, accidents of this kind could have happened in special circumstances. We can observe that these stories always date from times of war and famine like the 30 years war (1616-1648) or times of political crises or epidemics. During times like these, there were so many dead that often there was no place left to bury them and wolves often ventured into localities, eating the unburied corpses. Very likely, the bodies of people frozen to death in the wild came to the same end. Naturally, wolves were blamed for the death of people of whom only clothes or remains were left.
As a curiosity, we can mention that, during our researches, we have also found similar stories: for example, in the Valley of the Küküllo River, the inhabitants believe to know about a woman who was killed by wolves during a cold winter while she walked from one village to another. The same story is told in the villages of the Niraj Valley: people of different regions all believe that these cases have happened in their villages.
Wolves in Romania
According to estimates after World War II, there were 4000 to 5000 wolves in the forests of Romania . This number has later considerably decreased due to poaching. The post-war famine has lead to the growth of poaching for meat – the large number of guns remaining from the war also helped. In the absence of their natural prey, wolves had begun to seize more and more domestic animals. This way wolves received the attention of the government and, in the 50’s, their organized extermination had begun. The state paid a premium for every specimen shot or pup killed. They were killed by all means: traps, poison, until –at the end of the 60’s– wolf population fell to 1500 specimens. The poisoning campaign has significantly contributed to the vultures’ extinction in Romania. In the end, the communist regime has introduced the ban on arms, thus radically reducing the number of hunters. This way the population of animals of prey grew which has been beneficial for the rebounding of the wolf-population.
In 1991, the use of poison was banned by a ministerial order. In 1993, Romania has joined the Bern Agreement. This latter, along with Law no. 103/1996 regarding hunting (complemented by Law no. 654/2001) define the protection of wolves in Romania. According to these documents, wolves are a strictly protected species. Wolf hunting is defined yearly by special decree (for example, in accordance with the governmental decree no. 87/2004, 555 wolves could be killed on the territory of Romania in the 2004-2005 hunting season). According to official data, there were 4144 wolves in Romania in 2004.
