#wolf fact

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:

It’s hard to forget the whole alpha, beta, omega terminology when it comes to wolves. But that terminology comes from wolves being studied in captivity and not in the wild. In the wild, wolf packs are families. The leaders are Mom and Dad who are adults and get to do what they want, including pee on trees together. There may be an older sister or an aunt who sticks around to help feed the puppies when they’re small. The older children sometimes lead the hunt because hey, they have to learn responsibility too! And the brothers, they fight over who gets to babysit the younger puppies. The younger puppies like to play with everybody. And yeah, siblings like to fight and sometimes one sibling takes it upon themselves to be the peacemaker. But when they’re all grown up, they take off to start families of their own sometimes traveling up to 400 miles. Then they’ll have reunions at territory boundaries just to sniff each other and howl.

If you encounter a wolf in the wild that is acting agressive towards you and is not scared of approaching you, the following is best to do: don’t run or turn your back on them. Instead, stand your ground, make yourself as big and tall as possible and make as much noise as you can - scream, turn up loud music on your phone, anything. Throw stuff at them if possible. If they don’t go away, back away slowly. This goes for encountering a pack of wolves as well. If they attack and you can, climb into a tree. Otherwise curl up on the ground and cover your face and neck.

In case you’re in an enclosure and a wolf is seemingly agressive: stand with your back to the fence, and move to the exit while keeping your back to the fence. Make sure you don’t trip.

The above situation of wild wolves being agressive and unafraid towards humans is an unlikely one. During most wild wolf encounters, the wolf will flee once it becomes aware of your presence, or will curiously observe you from a safe distance for a while without you even being aware of it, to then most likely loose interest and proceed doing whatever it was doing.

Encounters with wild wolves are rare, because wolves are shy animals. Over time, wolves learned to see us as dangerous, and will typically avoid us. If you spot a wolf in the wild, it is most likely not aware of your presence or has decided you’re not a threat. Most of the time they are aware of our presence first, instead of the other way around.

When a human enters a place where wild wolves live who aren’t familiar with humans (and so haven’t learned yet that we are dangerous to them), there is a chance they will come and check you out when they feel you are not a threat (which would most likely only be the case when you’re not moving and are sitting or lying down). In this case I mean really coming up close to sniff you and check you out. If this ever happens to you (although this is a véry unlikely thing because as stated above, most wolves ‘know’ of humans and learned to avoid them and see us as dangerous), best thing to do is stay low to the ground, don’t make sudden movements, and don’t make any eye contact. This makes it sound like they are very aggressive animals, but this is just purely to make sure to act in the most save way and to communicate good intentions - better safe than sorry. Once they’ve discovered you are not a threat, they will most likely loose interest in you, leave you alone and no longer bother about you. (Here’s a great video from the documentary “A woman among wolves”, in which a pack of curious wolves not yet familiar with humans approaches German biologist Gudrun Pflueger. To communicate to the wolves that she has good intentions, she lays on the ground, trying not to move much). 

@thisisclemfandangocanyouhearme Hi! Wolves and dogs have similar digestive systems that are designed primarily to eat meat. 

Chocolate is poisonous for wolves as well, because like dogs, wolves lack the metabolizing enzymes that break down the theobromine and caffeine in it.

I couldn’t find any further proper information about this. If someone knows more about this subject or has a good source, please let me know!