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Living With Wildlife: Mammals For specific issues and solutions based on mammal type, click on the photos below. Note: Many techniques used for terrestrial mammals may work for more than just the species listed, e.g. some sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell deterrents can be tried for foxes, raccoons, skunks, and otters.
To promote the well-being of wildlife and their habitats through rehabilitation of injured and orphaned wildlife, public education and non-invasive research. Non-invasive research is an important part of our mission at Wolf Hollow.
Since Wolf Hollow began in 1983, over 220 different species of wild animals have been treated at our Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.
- Overview
- Gray wolf
In addition to the well-known gray wolf (Canis lupus), other types of wolves include the red wolf; the eastern wolf; the Ethiopian, or Abyssinian, wolf; the extinct Falkland Islands, or Antarctic, wolf; and the extinct dire wolf.
How many wolves are there in a pack?
Wolves can live in packs of up to two dozen individuals, but groups numbering 6 to 10 are most common. A pack is a family group consisting of an adult breeding pair (the alpha male and alpha female) and their offspring of various ages.
How big is a wolf pack's territory?
A wolf pack’s territory can be 80 to 3,000 square km (31 to 1,200 square miles), depending on prey abundance. A wolf pack strongly defends its territory against neighboring packs.
What is the lifespan of a wolf?
Pervasive in mythology, folklore, and language, the gray wolf has had an impact on the human imagination and has been the victim of levels of misunderstanding that few animals have shared. With the exception of humans and the lion, the gray wolf once had a larger distribution than any other land mammal, once ranging over all of North America from Alaska and Arctic Canada southward to central Mexico and throughout Europe and Asia above 20° N latitude. It lived in every type of habitat except tropical forests and the most arid deserts, and it was the premier hunter of the large hoofed mammals. Several subspecies occur throughout North America, Eurasia, and Africa; however, classifications disagree on the number of wolf subspecies. Wolves were first domesticated in northern Eurasia sometime between 14,000 and 29,000 years ago, and selective breeding produced dogs (C. lupus familiaris).
The wolf is built for travel. Its long legs, large feet, and deep but narrow chest suit it well for life on the move. Keen senses, large canine teeth, powerful jaws, and the ability to pursue prey at 60 km (37 miles) per hour equip the wolf well for a predatory way of life. A typical northern male may be about 2 metres (6.6 feet) long, including the bushy half-metre-long tail. Standing 76 cm (30 inches) tall at the shoulder, it weighs about 45 kg (100 pounds), but weight ranges from 14 to 65 kg (31 to 143 pounds), depending on the geographic area. Females average about 20 percent smaller than males. The largest wolves are found in west-central Canada, Alaska, and across northern Asia. The smallest tend to be near the southern end of their distribution (the Middle East, Arabia, and India). Fur on the upper body, though usually gray, may be brown, reddish, black, or whitish, while the underparts and legs are usually yellow-white. Light-coloured wolves are common in Arctic regions.
Early human societies that hunted for survival admired the wolf and tried to imitate its habits, but in recent centuries the wolf has been widely viewed as an evil creature, a danger to humans (especially in Eurasia), a competitor for big game animals, and a threat to livestock. Depredation of livestock was the primary justification for eradicating the wolf from virtually all of the United States, Mexico, and most of Europe. Wolves in the United States were killed by every method imaginable in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and by 1950 they remained only in the northeastern corner of Minnesota.
Britannica Quiz
Animal Factoids
In the late 20th century, greater tolerance, legal protection, and other factors allowed their range to expand in portions of North America and Europe. In 1974 gray wolves were classified as an endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act. In 1995 wolves from Canada were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho, and captive-reared Mexican wolves (a subspecies) were released to their former range in eastern Arizona beginning in 1998. At the beginning of the 21st century, an estimated 65,000–78,000 wolves inhabited North America. Canada had the largest population (although the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island had no wolves), followed by Alaska and Minnesota. Some of the western states as well as Michigan and Wisconsin have smaller but recovering wolf populations, which numbered more than 6,000 in total by 2020. Canadian wolves are protected only within provincial parks, and despite the species’s removal from the Endangered Species Act in 2021, all wolves in the contiguous United States receive some level of legal protection by federal and state governments. Populations in southern Europe and Scandinavia are relatively small but are increasing. The Eurasian population probably exceeds 100,000 and is stable or increasing in most countries, and most afford the wolf some degree of legal protection. Worldwide, there are between 200,000 and 250,000 wolves, and they still occupy about two-thirds of their former range. Although often thought of as wilderness animals, wolves can and do thrive close to people when they are not excessively persecuted and food is available.
- Steven H. Fritts
Den Living. Wolf cubs are born in a den and spend the first several weeks there. The den may be a natural burrow, a rock crevice, a hollow log, or an overturned stump. The parents and other wolf pack members, known as helpers, take care of the pups. Pups are weaned from their mother’s milk at about 10 weeks of age.
Wolves are social animals. They live in groups called packs. A wolf pack usually has a pair of adult wolves and their offspring. The male and female leaders are known as the alpha pair. Wolves normally hunt at night in groups. They eat deer, moose, squirrels, and mice.
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Older siblings help raise the youngsters, which are born in dens in hollow trees or the banks of streams. Red wolves prefer to hunt small mammals like rabbits , mice, rats, and raccoons . They’ll...
