#old wolves

but first let me say thank you so much for your blog! i love wolves so much and learning even more about them is something i value very much!

onto my question, i see talk about rare “blue” coated grey wolves (apologies in advance for the taxidermy photos)

is this just elderly black colored wolves who have lost some of their pigment and greyed?

is it a coat only seen when wolves are molting?

what is this special and rare blue coat color??

Hello, what a nice message and question, thank you!

Just like humans, wolves their fur grays as they age. This is particularly noticeable in the development of a gray or silver mask on their faces, like you can clearly see on the two photos below.

Some wolves may have naturally had a silver or grayish coat colour or hue, making it a bit more challenging to tell if the colour is caused by ageing.

Photo by dfbphotos

Photo by Thomas Kennedy

There's some more photos in this tag:

Last two wolves at Blijdorp Zoo the Netherlands passed away

July 13, 2017 - The male and female wolves were the last remaining wolves from the Diergaarde Blijdorp Zoo pack. Both the wolves were 13 years old. The she-wolf had been ill for a while: her heart wasn’t functioning well. These heart problems caused a lot of fluid retention, which led to breathing problems. The zoo decided to put her down to redeem her from her suffering.

Even in his short time left, the sole remaining wolf was bound to get lonely without compagny. But introducing new wolves into the lone wolf’s enclosure wasn’t an option because of the wolf’s old age, so the zoo decided to put him down as well.

The wolf couple, who both were unnamed, had been a part of the zoo since the beginning. It is not yet known if new wolves will be introduced.

Source

This is such sad news to me. It must have been less than 1.5 years ago since I last visited them, and during my last visit there still were at least five of them. I never knew so many of them passed away so recently, nor that apparently they all were so old.