Wolf Park Interns

Wolf Park in the media: Inside the Animal Mind

Anyone interested in the sort of research Wolf Park participates in? We had the very exciting opportunity a few years ago to be a part of BBC’s Inside the Animal Mind. A fascinating series about animal cognition.

While we recommend watching the whole documentary (because animal cognition is interesting and awesome!) here’s some parts our wolves feature in:

At 17:13 the presenter is walking in the main enclosure with Dana and Monty. Then we see Dharma (sadly passed away), Wotan and Wolfgang and then Bicho in a log. Then at 17:54 the presenter and Dana howl with Dharma and then we get a look at Kanti swimming across Turtle Lake.

At about 18:53 we see a gorgeous shot of Fiona up close. Then the presenter puts down a perfume that the two wolves, Dharma and Wolfgang, scent roll in. The umwelt (how they experience the world) of wolves is mostly based in smell and we used to use this same trick to get the wolves to roll in fly spray to protect them from flies.

Wolfgang enjoying a evening meal of deer ribs.

All our wolves are fed roadkill deer that are very simply butchered and thrown into enclosures. By feeding them this diet they’re able to exhibit natural feeding behaviors and exercise their head and jaw muscles when they chew through the hide and fur. The fur also acts as a natural teeth cleaner, the abrasive action keeps our wolves’ teeth shiny and clean.

We don’t just have wolves at Wolf Park! We also have bison. This is Wonky, called that because of her mismatched horns. We currently have kids camps out and they’re getting some great bison encounter opportunities where they feed our bison out of a truck in the field.

Bicho in his summer coat. 

Some classic examples of ritualised aggression interactions in the main pack, mostly between Kanti and Bicho. In these high arousal moments you will hear a lot of growling and snarling from Kanti paired with posturing and muzzle grabs (sometimes hard, if Kanti is over threshold) as well as pinning, mounting and agonistic puckers. Bicho will display exaggerated pawing, licking and whining. A lot of the times Bicho is the one who initiates this and often will elicit these responses from Kanti.

Why he does this is unclear. There has been many times where Bicho has pawed Kanti in the face and caught his nail on his mouth, which makes Kanti retaliate. 

Here’s one of the awesome livestreams Chriag Patel, an amazing positive reinforcement trainer, did while out for a walk with our grey foxes. Hunter absolutely adored him and loved working with him. I really recommend you guys check this video out, it’s got some great advice for training and how important free choice is in animal training, especially with skittish animals like foxes.