This 9-minute video clip was filmed by Dean Cluff, in collaboration with wolf biologist Dave Mech. The caption on Youtube reads:
An adult male wolf we radio-collared in the arctic near Eureka, Nunavut, Canada in July 2009 displayed continued dominance aggression on a younger male wolf, believed to be one of his offspring from a previous year. We suspect the behavior of the collared wolf represents domination on the part of a parent toward a maturing offspring that will eventually lead to the dispersal of that offspring. Filmed by Dean Cluff, in collaboration with Dave Mech.
You will note that this is the same David Mech who wrote a paper that the Cesar Millan-bashers are only too happy to routinely misrepresent. In fact, Mech has always been clear that dominance does occur in wolf packs. In fact, dominance creates and shapes wolf packs, from beginning to end, as older dominant males drive out younger males at age one or two.
Leopards, jaguars, mountain lions, and bobcats also eat surprising amounts of grass. A sample of 215 leopard scats collected in the Tai National Forest of the Ivory Coast, for example, found 17% had a considerable amount of grassy vegetable matter.
Bears too eat a lot of plant material. Though classified as the largest carnivores in the world, bears eat more vegetable matter in their diet than flesh, and grass is a major food source.
So why do "carnivores" so often eat grass?
For the same reason you and I eat most of the foods we eat; it tastes good.
Of course the other answer is that it is maladaptive for them not to do so.
Let's explore that idea a bit more.
Specialization in food sources is a terrific idea so long as the world stays exactly the same, day in and day out, season after season, year in and year out.
But, the world is both temperamental and unreliable.
Crippling winters, blistering summers, and poorly timed rains can decimate populations of prey species.
Disease can wipe out herds, migration routes can change without warming, and new species can invade.
Water holes may dry up, salt licks may disappear, and predators can injure themselves in the chase.
And yet every few days, a predator must eat.
And that's the problem: The chain of life is so easily snapped.
For a meat-eating predator, the weakest link is the absence of ready prey, easily caught, day in and day out, in good health and bad, dry season and wet, winter and summer, year after year.
And so wolves, coyotes, dingoes, bears, lions, bobcats and jaguars have all evolved to eat plants, as well as flesh -- a way of "hedging the bet" for a few days against the vicissitudes of life.
Yes these animals will try to bring down a deer- or rabbit-sized meal if they can. But if they cannot, then they will try to catch a few rats or mice, a lizard or a snake, a frog or a turtle.
And if push comes to shove, there's always grasshoppers, crickets, and verdant grass along the creek. And it does not hurt at all that some of that grass actually tastes pretty good! .
Mark Johnson, DVM, is Executive Director of Global Wildlife Resources, Inc. and the senior wildlife veterinarian for the Yellowstone Wolf Recovery Project.
I am seeing a lot of blogs about how how horrible dominance is and how there is no need for dominance when working with domestic dogs. They say the use of dominance is now considered ineffective and, worse, it is unethical and inhumane. Those critical of using any forms of dominance are describing what wolves and feral dogs do and do not do and I am seeing so many incorrect statements.
I work with wild and captive wolves, and have handled over 2,000 feral dogs. I was also the Project Veterinarian for the 1995-96 Yellowstone Wolf Reintroduction program and had the privilege of working with Dr. Dave Mech, one of the founders of wolf research, when we captured wolves in Canada and brought them into the US. Many people condemning dominance are referring to Dave’s comments.
This discussion of dominance relates to my work, not only because I work with wolves and feral dogs, but also because I am dedicated to teach animal control officers and disaster responders how to handle frightened dogs without creating a fight with the animal. That is why I write in this blog and website about the Energy of Conflict.
I would prefer to set aside the claims of wolf and feral dog behavior and explore more deeply the concept of “dominance”. But the statements about wolves and feral dogs have been so inherently wrong that I have to offer my viewpoint and then below I will explore what is driving these discussions which is our concept of “dominance.”
Dr. Johnson then goes on to note that
Over and over again there is a deeply seated concept of dominance that is really limiting our ability to objectively study what animal handlers are doing and is, at times, limiting our ability to create a harmonious relationship with the dogs. Many people want to rid themselves of dominance so much that scientific studies are being interpreted to support their beliefs (which is always the weakness of science) and people are coming up with new interpretations of what wolves have always been doing. Any mention of dominance is taboo in these circles.
.... Punishing a dog into submission is obviously an unhealthy relationship. Strictly giving a dog rewards addresses our warm fuzzy desires, but does not always build the healthiest relationship either. The middle ground can still be compassionate and loving.
.... But dominance does not have to be mean and is an integral part of the social hierarchy of many animals including dogs, wolves and horses. Listen carefully to Dave Mech’s video. He says wolves do not fight to get to the top of the pack, but they still get “there”. I agree. Wolves do not continuously fight to get to the top of the pack, there is no argument. Fighting is not in their best interests. But everyone who knows wolves knows there is posturing, tail position, facial expressions, and ear positioning to create that hierarchy without fighting. It is a healthy form of dominance. I once watched a pair of wolves in Yellowstone Park kill an elk calf and one wolf asked for permission from the other wolf before it could feed. It is a reflex for the wolf to define where it is in that hierarchy. But there does not have to be violence to create the hierarchy. It is not demeaning or punitive and they flourish in the pack knowing how they relate to their pack mates.
Needless to say, read the whole thing. Dr. Johnson goes on to talk about feral dogs too -- apparently feral dog packs exist (who knew!?)
Read also L. David Mech's comments to the post cited above -- he agrees with it!
Of particular interest to some readers of this blog will be Dr. Johnson's notes on the use of the Y pole which works, in large part, because dogs recognize dominance and readily submit to it.
It is the nature of canids to submit to this gentle restraint device when properly used. Proper use requires a combination of dominance with kind and calm movements. The dominance motivates the dog to submit. Kindness and compassion will make the animal feel safer and more will to do what you request. The Y pole will not work with physical force alone.
The Druids were one of the most frequently photographed wolf packs in the Lamar Valley of the Yellowstone.
What happened to the Druids?
Life.
Life has a way of stepping in pretty frequently in the world of wolves, and in that tale lies a couple of lessons about dogs -- lessons about inbreeding and (yes) about dominance.
First, who were the wolves of the Druid Pack?
Like all wolf packs, the Druid pack was made up of a single dominant male, a single dominate female, and several satellite females, generally from previous whelps.
This architecture is not unique to wolves. Study red fox and African lions, and you will see the same thing -- a solitary mature male with one or more females, and only very young or adolescent males in attendance.
What happens to all the male wolves, fox, and lions that are born?
Simple: they are driven out.
In the case of a fox this usually occurs at around seven to nine months of age, and with a wolf anywhere from nine to 18 months of age, depending on the amount of food in the the area and the tolerance of the alpha male and the submissiveness of his get.
By then, the young males of these respective species are big enough to hunt on their own and yet they are also beginning to become potential rivals for females. The top male cannot have that.
Is the request to leave a good-natured "get along now?"
No.
Plain and simple, it is anything from harassing growlsand small bites to a full-scale ass-whipping by the big male.
However, it goes, in the end there will only be one mature male in the pack. Either the younger male will be driven off, or the old male will be dead or driven off himself.
You have heard of a "lone wolf"?
A lone wolf is almost always a young male driven out of his pack and traveling some distance to establish his own territory, and perhaps pick up a loose female or two along the way.
The same thing happens with fox and African lions, of course.
American Mountain Lions do not establish packs or prides like their African counterparts, but here too we find young males driven out to find their own territories in a distant country. When a mountain lion shows up in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, or Iowa, it is almost certain to be a young male driven out his natal home range to find a place for himself.
Now to be clear, what is going on here is dominance.
Anyone who says wolf packs are not governed by dominance has no idea what they are talking about.
Dominance creates wolf packs and dominance maintains wolf packs. The driving out of adolescent males is at the core of how wolf packs are created and maintained. This is dominance. And it is Wolf Pack 101.
What about females?
The female wolves in a wolf pack also have their dominance issues. You see with wolves, there may be many mature females in the pack, but there will almost always be only one female who will come into estrus, be mated, and whelp.
How is that "top female" determined?
Well, the male picks her, of course (or vice versa if the pack has lost its alpha male)
That said the individual picked is generally the healthiest and strongest female in the group - the one that all the other females are submissive to.
This is what Darwin was talking about when he refered to "survival of the fittest." The weakest genes are not just culled out of the gene pool due to disease, defect and predation. They are also selected out.
Why does Mother Nature drive all the young males out of the pack?
The answer is that Mother Nature demands a regular reshuffling of the genetic deck. The way that is done is by driving out the males to discourage inbreeding with sisters.
The sisters, of course, stick around to help bring down larger game and feed the alpha female's young. But the young males? They have to hit the road.
A strong and lucky male may hold a top slot for as long as a decade, but more often that not the top male will die from injuries or disease long before that. And with that male's death, a new male, from outside the pack, will be recruited and a complete outcross achieved.
Injuries? How do wolves get injured?
Wolves get injured all the time. A lone male wolf from another pack may show up and stand at the edge of a territory and try to "call off" a female or two in order to start his own pack. That may, in turn, be met with a challenge by the dominant male who wants to hold on to what he has. Injuries can occur!
The pick up artist.
More often injury and death will come from a jaw-shattering kickfrom an elk or deer, a trap, vehicle impact, a hunter or rancher's bullet, intentional or unintentional poisoning, a ripped ligament, an infected wound, or disease.
The hunt.
Disease is no small issue. Distemper routinely knocks down wild canid populations, and so too does rabies and mange. Add in worms and infections, and the bottom line is simple: Most male wolves do not live too far past age 7.
But, of course, the vagaries and savageries of life in the wild can befall the top female wolf in the pack, as well as the top male wolf. The hand of God shuffles red cards, same as black.
And so, in the real world, we tend to have a turnover every few years as either the alpha male or the alpha female rotates out of their respective top slots.
And with every turnover at the top, new dominance and submission issues are front and center.
No, there is not a constant battle in a wolf pack, but Mother Nature does abhor a power vacuum, and yes individuals do rush in to fill a power vacuum.
And yes, life-ending battles do occur in every Yellowstone pack every year.
In the video clip, at the very top of this post, cinematographer and wolf expert Bob Landis talks about conflicts he has seen between and within wolf packs, and he talks about Wolf 21, the Alpha male in the Druid pack.
How did 21 become the Alpha male?
It seems that in late December of 1998, the top male wolf in the Druid Pack was Wolf 38. The pack left the boundaries of Yellowstone Park to follow the elk, however, and just outside the park's boundaries, Wolf 38 was killed by a poacher.
With their alpha male dead the Druid Pack re-entered Yellowstone National Park where Wolf 21, a single "lone wolf" refugee expelled from the Rose Creek Pack, happened to be waiting.
If the old alpha male, Wolf 38, had still been alive, Wolf 21 would have been drive out or killed (as three other displaced Rose Creek Wolves had met their fate before 21's arrival). But with Wolf 38 now dead, Wolf 21 now had an unexpected opportunity to impress.
The Alpha Female of the pack, Wolf 40, realized she needed a mate, but 21 still had to spend 6 hours, bowing, flexing, strutting, sniffing, and facing down all the females in the Druid Pack before he was deemed to be big enough, strong enough, friendly enough, and smart enough to be the leader. Yes, this 21 wolf had skills! And in the end, the older, but still fertile, Wolf 40, was won over and gave 21 his slot in the pack as her new mate, the alpha male. with the task of fighting off all interlopers, as Wolf 38 had done before him.
I tell this story, because it's important to realize Landis does not just make stuff up. He films it all, and he gets lucky" because he spends 300 days a year in the field in heat and snow, bugs and rain, watching the wolves.
Only two months ago, there were 11 wolves in the pack. But after the alpha female was killed by another pack, the old alpha male wandered off rather than breed with one of the other female wolves that were his offspring. He also suffered from a bad case of mange. Mange is a skin infection caused by a mite, which leads to hair loss. In animals with weakened immune systems, it can be fatal. Seven other females in the pack also had mange, and all but one have died either from mange or been killed by other packs.
"They're down to one and that one probably won't make it through the winter," Smith said.
Killed by other packs? But I thought wolves were gentle!
You think a wolf killing a wolf might have something to do with dominance?
"This space is my space," "this food is my food," "this female is my female"?
Nah! No doubt they died in a religious war!
The Casper Wyoming Star Tribune article goes on to note that at one point the Druid pack had 37 members, making it the largest known wild wolf pack in the world.
In 2000, however, "an alliance of three subordinate females in the Druid pack is believed to have killed the pack's alpha female, the first such intra-pack kill documented in the park."
WHAT? Three other wolves ganged up to kill their mother or sister? And she was the alpha? Whoa! That's right out of Shakespeare! No aggression or dominance issues there! And she is the second alpha female to bite the dust in this one article?! Whoa! There are clearly no aggression, dominance, or pack pecking orders in a wolf pack! All sweetness and familial light.
Bob Landis and the Yellowstone wolf team, of course, have spent more time, watching wolves in the wild than anyone in the world, living or dead. And yes they have it all on video tape.
But you won't hear his name mentioned by the pure click and treat crowd who want to negate all hierarchies, all dominance, and all submission in wolf packs.
You see if the facts do not fit the frame, you throw out the facts!
And so they quote people like Tamar Geller, who says wolves and dogs are just like each other and she knows because she watched a few wolves for a month at a feeding station in the deserts of Israel.
Ms. Geller says wolves do not have pack hierarchies, have no aggression, and dominance is never an issue. With wolves, it's just play, play, play.
Or else they quote Ian Dunbar who, to the best of my knowledge has never had anything to do with wolves.
Or else they make extraordinary claims, such as that "there are no such things as packs of wild dogs."
Really? No packs of wild dogs?? How about the fellow that was killed and eaten by a pack of wild dogs right here in the U.S. just a few months back? That did not happen? No rural farmer has ever seen a pack of feral dogs hunting deer in the woods? Really? Who knew!?
To be clear, this paper is NOT the ground-breaking study, some have made it out to be.
In fact, is it a very weak and not too well written paper that simply says wolf packs are an extended family unit. No news there!
And what does Mr. Mech say about dominance?
Well actually, he says there is quite a LOT of it! For example, he writes:
We noted each time a wolf submitted posturally to another wolf. Usually this deference was characterized by "licking up" to the mouth of the dominant animal in the "active submission" posture similar to that described by Darwin (1877) for domestic dogs. Often this behavior took place as an animal returned to the den area after foraging, and sometimes the returning individual disgorged food to the soliciting wolf (Mech 1988; Mech et al. 1999). Other behavior noted included "pinning," or passive submission (Schenkel 1967), in which the dominant wolf threatened another, which then groveled, and "standing over," in which one wolf stands over another, which often lies nonchalantly but in a few cases sniffs the genitals of the other. I did not consider "standing over" a dominance behavior.
Eh? Mech does not consider one dog standing over another an act of dominance?
Oooooo-kaaaaaay. Let's not count those then.
But if it's not dominance, pray tell what is it?
Well actually, he does not say.
Like I said, the paper is not too well written !
Consider this paragraph:
The only consistent demonstration of rank in natural packs is the animals' postures during social interaction. Dominant wolves assume the classic canid standing posture with tail up at least horizontally, and subordinate or submissive individuals lower themselves and "cringe" (Darwin 1877). In fact, submission itself may be as important as dominance in terms of promoting friendly relations or reducing social distance.
WHAT??? Now one wolf standing over another IS dominance?
But just a few paragraphs earlier, Mech said it was not.
Pick a point of view and stick with it why don't cha?
Of course, that's the problem a lot of folks have in these wolf and dog debates.
One person says dogs are not wolves and then five minutes later they say they are great admirers of Tamara Geller who thinks dogs ARE wolves and that wolves are all about play, play, play.
Eh? Pick one.
Of course the same people claim Cesar Millan says dogs are wolves, but when challenged to cite a page, paragraph or episode where that claim is made, there is (so far) a failure to deliver.
We are similarly told that Cesar Millan says everything about dogs is related to dominance.
He does? I missed that! Citation please!
In fact, what Millan actually says is that everything is about loving your dog, exercising your dog, and not treating your dog like it's your child.
And he says, at the top of every show, what he actually does.
He does not train dogs.
He rehabilitates dogs. He trains people.
What he is saying here is pretty clear: Cesar Millan is NOT the person you go to if your goal is to get your dog to learn a decent "sit-stay" or agility routine.
Ian Dunbar or any of the college girls down at PetSmart can help you with that, and they prove it every week.
But if you have a dog that is phobic, or is routinely ripping into another dog (or your child or wife) then the girls at PetSmart might not be the right wrench for that nut.
Cesar Millan is, and he proves it every week.
The funny part of all this is that I have written many times that dogs are not wolves. Dogs are dogs.
So far as I can tell, Cesar Millan has never said dogs are wolves. Please give me a citation if you find him saying otherwise.
And, to put a point on it, I have never said a bad word about clicker training. Quite the opposite. It works well for training puppies, young dogs, and dogs with no serious issues.
So far as I can tell, Cesar Millan has never said a bad thing about clicker training either. Again, please give me a citation if you can find him saying otherwise.
So who is raising up all the wolf stuff?
Well, actually, it's the people who are opposed to any kind of aversives (no matter how mild) in any kind of situation.
They are not arguing that clicker training works (there is no opposing argument on the matter); they are arguing it is the ONLY solution to EVERY dog problem, and that NO other system works.
Yes, that's right, a clicker is a "one size fit all" wrench for every problem under the sun.
But instead of proving that by actually going on TV to "cure" a psychotic pit bull that lives to kill cats, they have decided to go off into the weeds to talk about wolves.
Wolves? I thought we were talking about training dogs?
But no, they want to talk about wolves.
Which would be fine, I suppose, but what they have to tell us about wolves is, in fact, contradicted by the very studies they cite!
But of course, if the facts do not fit the frame, then throw out the frame, right?
And what about the video tape?
Yeah, throw that out too. Especially the clip below, and the next one and the next one. Who cares if this is a story about dominance as riveting as anything penned By Shakespeare? This does not fit the frame, so out it must go.
The omega female is driven out by the alpha female.
If you were stationed in Kyrgyzstan, what might you see if you got outside the base?
The short story is that this is a country where most people travel on horses, and the culture seems to be stuck 250 years in the past.
The national sport, to give you some small idea, is centered around playing keep-away with a dead goat, with both teams fully mounted and galloping around at full tilt. How come we don't have fun sports like this in the U.S.?
In any case, The Boston Globehas put up a few pictures showing life in Kyrgyzstan, and I sample a few below. Click to make bigger and got to the link to see the full set. You will note that a fair number of pictures are of ethnic Kazakhs. Most folks in Kyrgyzstan, of course, are Kyrgyz.
Wolf-bating with a chained wolf. Action gets ...
Reaction.
Sheep herding in a land of wolves and horses.
A Kazakh hunter flies his golden eagle.
Kazakh hunters in full dress with golden eagles. .
April 13, 2009 photo, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Two wolves standing over 2 dead sheep, previously killed by these same wolves in Baker County, Oregon
I have not been shy about the stupidity of shooting wolves on National Forest lands in order to protect sheep grazing allotments on those lands. It is stupid, stupid, stupid.
Sheep on National Forest land costs U.S. taxpayers more money than they bring in, and if there is one place in the world where wolves should be allowed to run free, it's in our National Forests, on BLM lands, and in our National Parks.
That said, there is a place to shoot wolves, and that is when they venture on to private property and begin a campaign of systematic stock predation.
I have always said so, and I say it again now.
Oregon has had wolves for over a decade, and there has never been any stock lost -- until now.
