70 Fun Facts About Wolf

What is the scientific name of the gray wolf?

Canis latrans is the coyote and Canis aureus the golden jackal; the wolf is close enough to both to produce fertile hybrids.

The wolf is the largest living wild member of which animal family?

It is set apart from coyotes and jackals by a broader snout, shorter ears, a shorter torso and a longer tail.

According to biologists, what effect do the phases of the Moon have on wolf howling?

Wolves howl to assemble the pack before and after hunts, to raise an alarm at a den, and to find each other in storms or unfamiliar terrain.

A wild wolf pack is, at its core, what kind of group?

Offspring typically stay with their parents for anywhere from 10 to 54 months before dispersing to find mates of their own.

Resting in the open at -40°, northern wolves cover their faces with what?

They tuck the muzzle between the rear legs; a well-fed wolf also stores fat around the heart, kidneys and bone marrow for winter.

In what condition are wolf pups at birth?

Newborn wolf pups look a lot like German Shepherd puppies and first leave the den at about three weeks old.

How many teeth does an adult wolf have?

Those heavy teeth are better suited to crushing bone than any other canid's, though not as specialised as a hyena's.

Yellowstone biologists put a wolf's bite pressure at roughly how many pounds per square inch?

Wolves typically start feeding on the largest internal organs first: heart, liver, lungs and stomach lining.

What is a wolf's top running speed, according to Yellowstone's wolf biologists?

Most of the time wolves travel at a cruising pace of about 5 mph, saving the sprint for the final moments of a hunt.

In what year were gray wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park?

The first 14 wolves arrived in two January shipments and were held in acclimation pens until late March.

The first Yellowstone wolves were captured near which Canadian national park?

Ranch groups objected that the wrong subspecies, the northwestern wolf, was being brought south instead of the Northern Rocky Mountains wolf.

In Roman legend, which twins were suckled by a she-wolf?

The image of the she-wolf nursing the twins was a symbol of Rome by at least the 3rd century BC and appears on some of the city's earliest silver coins.

In Norse mythology, the giant wolf Fenrir is fated to swallow which god at Ragnarök?

The god's son Víðarr then avenges him, kicking one foot into the wolf's lower jaw and tearing it apart.

Which Norse god lost a hand after placing it in Fenrir's mouth as a pledge?

The unbreakable fetter Gleipnir was forged by dwarves after ordinary chains failed to hold the wolf.

Which French author published the first written version of Little Red Riding Hood in 1697?

In that first version the wolf simply falls asleep after eating the girl and the story ends; the rescuing huntsman came later with the Brothers Grimm.

In The Three Little Pigs, what is the one house the Big Bad Wolf cannot blow down made of?

The now-standard line 'I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in' first appeared in print in 1886.

'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' is a fable attributed to which ancient storyteller?

It is number 210 in the Perry Index, the standard catalogue of the fables.

In Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, which instruments represent the wolf?

The bird is a flute, the duck an oboe, the cat a clarinet and the grandfather a bassoon; the hunters' gunshots are the drums.

Arctic wolves of the High Arctic islands mainly hunt Arctic hares and which large shaggy animal?

Wolves on Ellesmere Island see so few people that they show little fear and will approach humans cautiously and curiously.

The Ethiopian wolf, Africa's most endangered carnivore, is a specialist hunter of what?

It hunts by day, when its prey is active, and in the Bale Mountains has learned to forage among cattle herds to hide its approach.

Roughly how many wild gray wolves are there worldwide?

Persecution has still shrunk the species' range to about one-third of its historic extent.

How does the IUCN Red List classify the gray wolf as a species worldwide?

Its wide range and stable numbers earn the lowest-risk category, even though it is locally extinct across much of Western Europe, the United States and Mexico.

Which country holds an estimated 50,000–60,000 wolves, making it the species' most important stronghold?

Its wolves still occupy about 80% of their historical range, and as many as 4,000 may be harvested there each year.

Under the right conditions, a wolf's howl can be heard across up to about how many square miles?

Scent-marking with urine is actually a more effective way of advertising territory than howling.

In what year were the last wolves killed in Yellowstone before their eventual reintroduction?

The final victims were two pups found near Soda Butte Creek and killed by park rangers.

Within two years of wolves returning to Yellowstone, what happened to the park's coyote population?

Coyotes learned to flee uphill: heavier wolves cannot stop on a slope, letting the coyote open up a big lead.

Which animal is the favoured prey of Yellowstone's wolves?

The recovery plan predicted each wolf would kill about 12 a year; the real figure turned out closer to 22.

The chain of ecosystem changes set off by returning wolves to Yellowstone is a textbook example of what?

Wolf kills also feed ravens, eagles, wolverines, grizzlies and magpies, and grizzlies benefited from more berries as elk browsing fell.

Yellowstone had a single beaver colony in 2001; how many did it have by 2011?

Elk under pressure from wolves browse more widely, easing their grazing on the willows beavers need to survive winter.

In 2011 the collared wolf OR-7, 'Journey', became the first wild wolf confirmed in which US state since 1924?

He wandered more than 1,000 miles from northeastern Oregon, and his descendants later formed packs south of the border.

Captive-bred red wolves were released in 1987 at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in which state?

The species had been declared extinct in the wild in 1980 so the last 400 animals could be captured and a breeding programme started.

Since 1996 the IUCN has listed the red wolf under which category?

By late 2021 the wild population in eastern North Carolina had dwindled to about eight animals.

Captive-bred Mexican wolves, or 'lobos', were first released back into the wild in 1998 in which state?

Just 11 animals were released that first year; by 2026 there were at least 319 in the wild in the US.

The largest collection of dire wolf fossils comes from which site?

Isotope studies of those Los Angeles specimens suggest dire wolves fed mainly on juvenile bison and camels.

Per a 2021 DNA study, dire wolves last shared an ancestor with wolf-like canines how long ago?

That deep split is why the animal now sits in its own genus, Aenocyon, 'terrible wolf', a name first proposed in 1918.

Colossal's 2025 female 'dire wolf' pup was named after what Game of Thrones title?

The IUCN's Canid Specialist Group ruled the animals were neither dire wolves nor proxies of them; Colossal's own chief scientist later called them 'grey wolves with 20 edits'.

The idea of the wolf-pack 'alpha' traces to a 1947 study of captive wolves at a zoo in which city?

Up to ten unrelated wolves were kept in a 10-by-20-metre enclosure, a setting that manufactures the very dominance battles wild families rarely have.

L. David Mech's 1970 book The Wolf popularised the 'alpha' concept. What did Mech later do about it?

In 1999 and 2000 he published papers arguing that in wild packs the so-called alphas are simply the parents.

About what share of its own body weight can a wolf eat in a single sitting?

It can digest that meal in a few hours and feed several times in a day, storing fat around the heart, kidneys and bone marrow for lean times.

On average, how far does a wolf pack travel per day while searching for prey?

That works out to roughly 9% of the pack's territory covered every day.

The largest wolf territory on record, some 6,272 square kilometres, was held by a pack in which US state?

The smallest on record, just 33 square kilometres, belonged to a pack of six in northeastern Minnesota.

In which country did wolves survive until about 1770, a century after Great Britain?

Central Europe lost its wolves by 1899, France by the 1930s and much of Scandinavia by the early 1970s.

Which country has an estimated 7,000 wolves, more than the rest of the Middle East combined?

Elsewhere in the region the entire wolf population may total only 1,000 to 2,000 animals.

Which Swedish naturalist first classified the wolf, giving it its two-part scientific name in 1758?

He treated the dog as a separate species because of its 'cauda recurvata', the upturned tail found in no other canid.

Roughly how many adult Ethiopian wolves were estimated to survive in 2011?

They cling to seven isolated mountain ranges above 3,000 metres, more than half of them in the Bale Mountains.

Nate Blakeslee's American Wolf tells the life of which Yellowstone wolf, shot by a hunter in 2012?

Also known as 832F, she was killed just outside the park during Wyoming's first hunting season, the eighth wolf legally taken there that year.

The largest pack ever recorded in Yellowstone, 37 wolves in 2001, was which pack?

Yellowstone's average pack size is 9.8, and the average lifespan inside the park is only four to five years.

On Isle Royale, wolves are studied alongside which prey animal, the only place the two coexist without bears?

The two populations rise and fall in a cycle, and 19 wolves were relocated to the island in 2018–19 to stop the pack dying out.

In November 2020, voters in which US state narrowly approved a ballot measure to reintroduce wolves?

Proposition 114 set a 2023 deadline, and the first wolves were released onto public land that December.

How long do mated wolf pairs typically stay together?

Females can produce a litter every year, with pups usually born in spring after a gestation of 62 to 75 days.

Yellowstone biologists estimate which wolf sense to be thousands of times keener than a human's?

It has never been precisely measured, but it lets a pack locate carrion and rivals from far away.

The word 'lycanthropy', the werewolf transformation, comes from Ancient Greek roots meaning what?

Ancient writers used the term only for a clinical delusion in which a patient imagined himself to be a wolf.

Which author wrote White Fang, the 1906 novel about a wolfdog in the Yukon?

It was serialised in Outing magazine before appearing as a book that October, a companion piece to The Call of the Wild.

In Never Cry Wolf (1963), Farley Mowat claimed the Barren Lands wolves lived largely on what rather than caribou?

The biologist who supervised his fieldwork later called the book 'semi-fictional' and said Mowat was never alone in the field.

In Kazakhstan and Mongolia, wolves have traditionally been hunted with the help of which animal?

The practice is fading because experienced falconers are becoming few in number.

Most recorded wolf attacks on people have been attributed to animals suffering from what?

A rabid wolf usually acts alone, travelling long distances and biting large numbers of people and livestock.

Where did North American black wolves get their dark coat colour, according to genetic research?

Dogs first crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 to 14,000 years ago and left the gene behind.

Besides meat, which of these do North American wolves eat?

European wolves go further, eating apples, pears, figs, melons and cherries; grass is swallowed mainly to induce vomiting and clear parasites.

Descended from wolves, the dog holds what distinction among all the animals humans keep?

It is also the only large carnivore humans have ever domesticated, and the only animal brought into the household during the Pleistocene.

Wild gray wolves are native to North America and which other landmass?

Africa's only wolf is the separate Ethiopian species, and Australia's dingo is a feral dog rather than a wild wolf.

Wolves have been killed while trying to bring down which of their smallest hoofed prey?

A single wolf has occasionally been seen killing much larger prey unaided, but the hunt is never risk-free.

The extinct Japanese wolf is still honoured at roughly 20 shrines on Honshu belonging to which religion?

The wolf lived on Kyushu, Shikoku and Honshu but never Hokkaido, which had its own separate wolf.

How long is a wolf's gestation period?

Pups are usually born in spring, weigh 300-500 grams at birth and begin to see after nine to twelve days.

In Ancient Greek religion, wolves were associated with which god?

Apollo was the god of light and order; the Bible meanwhile uses the image of a wolf lying with a lamb as a vision of utopia.

By what year had wolves been exterminated in Great Britain?

Ireland followed by 1770, Central Europe by 1899, France by the 1930s and much of Scandinavia by the early 1970s.

Which big cat significantly suppresses wolf numbers in the Russian Far East?

Tiger-wolf interactions there are well documented, sometimes driving wolves to localized extinction.

What is the mean body mass of a modern wolf?

Wolf size increases with latitude per Bergmann's rule; the largest specimen on record weighed 79.4 kg.

In Russia, wolf hunters encircle a pack with poles carrying a human scent. What is this method called?

Historic methods also included coursing with dogs, strychnine poisoning and trapping; the Borzoi was bred for wolf hunting.

In what year was the last Japanese wolf captured and killed?

Wolves are now completely extirpated from both Japan and the British Isles.

Where in Italy was one of the oldest fossils of the modern grey wolf found, dated to about 406,500 years ago?

Remains from Cripple Creek Sump in Alaska may be older still, around one million years, but are hard to tell from C. mosbachensis.