Gray wolf

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_wolf

The gray wolf (Canis lupus), commonly known as wolf, practices mutual aid and has a roughly democratic organization, defying popular conceptions of there being a rigid pack hierarchy.

Structure

In the wild, a wolf pack is a family with parents at the lead and offspring following. As early as nine months old, pups leave to start their own packs. Any pup can become an alpha as soon as it breeds, according to the biologist and ecologist L. David Mech, who observed wolves in the field for 13 summers and reviewed scientific literature. Occasionally a pack may adopt an outside pup or a new parent to replace one who has died, but in these cases the pack structure will remain the same. Mech disputes the "alpha" term popularly used to describe the pack's parents: "The point here is not so much the terminology but what the terminology falsely implies: a rigid, force-based dominance hierarchy." According to Mech, research showing wolf hierarchy tends to come not from the field but from wolves in captivity who are forced to stay together longer than they normally would.

The nature writer Barry Lopez claims wild wolves have a hierarchical but consensual structure. He writes,

"But the term alpha - evolved to describe captive animals - is still misleading. Alpha animals do not always lead the hunt, break trail in snow, or eat before the others do. An alpha animal may be alpha only at certain times, and it should be noted, is alpha at the deference of the other wolves in the pack.

The wolf is a social animal; it depends for its survival on cooperation, not strife...The social structure of a wolf pack is dynamic - subject to change, especially during the breeding season - and may be completely reversed during periods of play.

Lopez points out the females make the decisions about where to den and where to hunt. At various points, the alpha male and alpha female wolf display submissive postures to each other. Mech writes, "The practical implications of this postural submissiveness, however, are not apparent." At most times, the alpha female displays a submissive posture toward the alpha male, but the male displays a submissive posture to the female when she is raising young pups who are still in the den.

Furthermore, the breeding male defers posturally when he approaches the breeding

female tending young pups. On 26 June 1990, I observed the breeding male walk toward the female in the den "excitedly wagging his tail and body." Similarly, on 18 May 1990 in Denali Park, Alaska, I observed radio-collared breeding male 251 in the Headquarters Pack (Mech et al. 1998) approach breeding female 307 when she was in a den with pups and begin to "wiggle walk," waving his back end and tail like a subordinate approaching a dominant. The female emerged from the den and the male then regurgitated to her. These were the only times I have ever seen a breeding male act submissively toward any other wolf, and it seems to indicate that the breeding female is temporarily dominant to even the breeding male before the pups emerge from the den.

Psychologists Friederike Range and Zsófia Virányi found that in contrast to dogs, captive wolves cooperate extensively and do not create rigid hierarchies. Range says wolves "are very cooperative with each other, and when they have a disagreement or must make a group decision, they have a lot of communication or ‘talk’ first".

Mutual Aid

From hunting to playing, wolves practice mutual aid extensively.Peter Kropotkin describes their hunt:

It is well known, in fact, that wolves gather in packs for hunting, and Tschudi left an excellent description of how they draw up in a half-circle, surround a cow which is grazing on a mountain slope, and then, suddenly appearing with a loud barking, make it roll in the abyss. Audubon, in the thirties, also saw the Labrador wolves hunting in packs, and one pack following a man to his cabin, and killing the dogs. During severe winters the packs of wolves grow so numerous as to become a danger for human settlements, as was the case in France some five-and-forty years ago. In the Russian Steppes they never attack the horses otherwise than in packs; and yet they have to sustain bitter fights, during which the horses (according to Kohl's testimony) sometimes assume offensive warfare, and in such cases, if the wolves do not retreat promptly, they run the risk of being surrounded by the horses and killed by their hoofs.

Barry Lopez describes how adult wolves play tag and play pranks on each other:

Even as adults, wolves play tag with each other or romp with the pups....They scare each other by pouncing on sleeping wolves and by jumping in fornt of one another from hiding places. They bring things to each other, especially bits of food. They prance and parade with sticks or stones in their mouth.

Neighboring Societies

Wolves are native to North America, Europe, Asia and North Africa.. As Lopez notes, a wolf pack will kill outside wolves who trespass on their territory. It is rare for wolves of the same pack to fight to the death.

Wolves have a playful relationship with ravens, who follow wolf packs in order to eat the remnants of the wolves' food. Mech explains how the two species interact:

The birds would dive at a wolf's head or tail and the wolf would duck and then leap at them. Sometimes the ravens chased the wolves, flying just above their hjeads, and once, a raven waddled to a resting wolf, pecked at its tail, and jumped aside as the wolf snapped at it. When the wolf retaliated by stalking the raven, the bird allowed it within a foot before arising. Then it landed a few feet beyond the wolf, and repeated the prank.

For many thousands of years, the indigenous Crow, Shoshone, Bannock and Nez Pearce peoples coexisted with the wolves in what would become Wyoming, Montana and Idaho of the United States. In establishing Yellowstone National Park, the US government violently cleared indigenous people from much of their traditional land. The government did not ban wolf hunting in Yellowstone, and by 1926 hunters and government-run predator control programs had wiped out Yellowstone's entire wolf population. In 1995, the US re-introduced wolves into Yellowstone. Although the 1973 Endangered Species Act has protected wolves to some degree, the Obama administration decided to allow wolf hunting in the areas surrounding Yellowstone. As a result, 14 of the park's wolves (12 percent of the population) had been subsequently trapped or shot as of of October 2013.

Research by William J. Ripple and Robert L. Beschta indicates that wolves' predation of ungulates (including moose, sheep, antelope, bison, mule and elk) protects Yellowstone's biodiversity. Since the park reintroduced wolves, elk keep within in a smaller area than they did when they had no fear of wolf predation. As a result, the ungulates eat less aspen, cottonwood and willow, allowing for the recovery of wetland diversity and beaver populations.

In 2013, the anarchist/anti-authoritarian group Earth First! published a "Wolf Hunt Sabotage Manual" with instructions for disrupting wolf hunts. Describing themselves as "hunters and proud of it," the anonymous authors wrote, "But we aren’t proud of what passes for hunting these days and especially for what passes as ‘sportsman’ hunting. Somehow, the National Rifle Association, yuppie trophy hunters, cattle barons, and the Obama Administration are in cahoots in an effort that promises to wipe wolves clean off the planet. And in that case, we choose to be saboteurs for the wild."