Sunday OCTOBER 14th from 9.00 pm Eastern until Eleven
WOLVES AND WEREWOLVES (Bite this! ... or not) Hairy heroes, alpha-wolf heroes, heroes with really big... teeth
In celebration of WOLF AWARENESS WEEK we plan to talk about romances with Wolves, Werewolves, Men who howl in the night.
VIP guests:
Cathy Clamp
Joy Nash
Sephera Girón
Liddy Midnight
Conrad V Sucatre
Ruth Glick?
Things to know:
The Passionate Internet Voices Talk Radio Number for my guests is
916-558-7514
Pin 924920#
Here's what my guests need to know:
Have a land line if you can.
Be sure you have fully charged batteries if you use a cordless.
Do not go to the bathroom while on the air.
Do not slurp a drink or eat while on the air.
If we are silent for ten seconds, the program might cut out and inflict a religious program on our listeners on the assumption that we all choked.
When a new person joins the group, it can be a bit like a seance! So, if you call in, please announce yourself, or cough, so we know you are there.
LOL.
Have your urls in front of you in case of brain fade.
Have your blurb and excerpt in front of you, and also in front of a backup reader in case you are unable to read for any reason.
Have the 3 - 5 main points you want to make in front of you.
Cherry Picking
internetvoicesradio.com/Rowena.htm
FOR LISTENERS INSTRUCTIONS FOR DOWNLOADING OR LISTENING IN AT
www.internetvoicesradio.com
734-332-5902 for Lillian
Feel free to comment, make suggestions, add thoughts, urls, website info, lists of titles you would like to discuss.
Thank you!
PS...
Sometimes, these Specials are most fun if my guests turn up in CHARACTER, for instance Liddy co-authored a fabulous book called Rogues, where the heroine is a werewolf.
Seph also has a female werewolf... Imagine girl talk between two wolves!!
Imagine what fun a discussion of the practical difficulties of shape-shifting.
And, do hunks who turn hairy under a blue moon like it doggy style?
_________________
Rowena Cherry
www.rowenacherry.com
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wtm7RPzIYJY
INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL
Winner of the N.O.R. Awards, Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi Romance:
MATING NET
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8SZktskaLYs
Last edited by rowenacherry on Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:23 pm; edited 9 times in total
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rowenacherry
Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Posts: 36
PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 6:01 pm Post subject: Starter questions for CATHY and CIE Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
National Wolf Awareness Week, October 14-20, 2007 is a time to dispel misconceptions about wolves and to teach about the important role these predators play in maintaining healthy ecosystems. It takes place the 3rd week of October every year.
The wolf is a striking symbol of wild nature, yet it has long been shrouded by myth and superstition. Earlier this century, wolves were methodically exterminated from nearly all of their historic range.
National Wolf Awareness Week encourages conservation efforts not only for wolves, but for all wild species. Defenders sponsors events nationwide to celebrate wolves.
Little Red Riding Hood Lied: Myths About Wolves
Myth: Wolves are dangerous to humans.
Fact: You stand a better chance of getting hit by a meteorite than killed by a wolf. Although wolves are large, powerful animals that could kill humans, they do not. According to a 2002 study about wolf conflicts with humans, there is no documented case of a healthy, wild wolf killing a human in the United States. By comparison, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate between 10 to 20 people are killed and 4.7 million attacked each year by man's best friend, the domestic dog.
Myth: Wolves will eliminate or substantially reduce prey species.
Fact: Wolves and large grazing animals lived side-by-side for tens of thousands of years before the first settlers arrived. Recent studies on Yellowstone elk and wolves have found that weather and hunter harvest affect elk declines more than wolf predation. In fact, wolves often enhance prey populations by culling weak and sick animals from the gene pool, leaving only the strongest animals to reproduce. Food availability and weather regulate wolf populations. When their prey is scarce, wolves suffer too. They breed less frequently, have fewer litters, and may even starve to death.
Myth: Local economies in the northern Rockies are based on livestock production, and jobs will be lost if wolves are restored.
Fact: Ranching is a minor part of the economic base of the northern Rockies . For instance, in the counties around Yellowstone National Park , livestock production accounts for less than 4 percent of personal income, while tourism-related industries account for more than 50 percent. Moreover effects on livestock are negligible, so effects on ranching jobs will be virtually nonexistent.
Myth: The Endangered Species Act prevents the control of wolves that prey on livestock.
Fact: In portions of the northern Rockies and Southwest, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) designated wolves as "experimental, nonessential" populations. This special designation gave landowners a limited right to kill wolves caught in the act of preying on livestock on private property and increased the ability of FWS to remove or destroy problem wolves. Since 1978, wolves, listed as threatened in Minnesota, have been managed under a special regulation that controls individuals that kill livestock and pets.
Myth: Wolf recovery on public lands will preclude other land uses, such as logging and mining.
Fact: According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, very few land use restrictions have proven necessary to facilitate wolf recovery in Montana and Minnesota . The service reports that land use restrictions are necessary only if illegal mortality of wolves occurs at high levels.
Myth: Most people in the U.S. oppose wolf restoration.
Fact: Numerous polls taken throughout the United States consistently demonstrate that more people support wolf recovery than oppose it. In fact, a 2002 quantitative summary of human attitudes towards wolves found that 61 percent of the general population samples had positive attitudes towards wolves.
The Basics of Wolf Biology and Taxonomy
The gray wolf (Canis lupus) is the largest member of the canid (dog) family in North America. The table below compares the size and appearance of the gray wolf to the other canid species in the U.S.
Gray Wolf
(Canis lupus) Red Wolf
(Canis rufus) Coyote
(Canis latrans) Fox
(Vulpes or Urocyon)
Size 5-6 feet long from nose to tail 3-4 feet long from nose to tail 3-4 feet long from nose to tail 3-3.5 feet long from nose to tail
Weight 80-120 pounds 40-80 pounds 30-40 pounds 12 pounds
Color gray, tan, brown, black, or white reddish brown, black, or gray reddish brown, tan, or gray red-brown (red fox) grizzled- gray (gray fox)
Eye color Yellow, green, or brownish Yellow, green, or brownish Yellow to green Yellow to brown
Wolves are highly intelligent. Their acute hearing and exceptional sense of smell - up to 100 times more sensitive than that of humans - make them well-adapted to their surroundings and to finding food. Some researchers estimate that a wolf can run as fast as 40 miles an hour. Wolves have been known to travel 120 miles in a day, but they usually travel an average of 10 to 15 miles a day.
Pack Life
Wolves live, travel, and hunt in packs of four to seven animals, consisting of an alpha, or dominant pair, their pups, and several other subordinate or young animals. The alpha female and male are the pack leaders, tracking and hunting prey, choosing den sites, and establishing the pack's territory. The alpha pair mate in January or February and give birth in spring, after a gestation period of about 65 days. Litters can contain from one to nine pups, but usually consist of around six. Pups have blue eyes at birth and weigh about one pound. Their eyes open when they are about two weeks old, and a week later begin to walk and explore the area around the den. Pups romp and playfight with each other from a very young age. Scientists think that even these early encounters establish hierarchies that will help determine which members of the litter will grow up to be pack leaders. Wolf pups grow rapidly, reaching 20 pounds at two months and full size in a year. All adults share parental responsibilities for the pups. They feed the pups by regurgitating food for them from the time the pups are about four weeks old until they learn to hunt with the pack.
A wolf pup is the same size as an adult by the time he or she is about a year old, and is able to mate by about two years of age. Pups remain with their parents for at least the first year of their of their lives, while they learn to hunt. During their second year of life, when the parents are raising a new set of pups, young wolves can remain with the pack, or spend periods of time on their own. Frequently, they return in autumn to spend their second winter with the pack. By the time wolves are two years old, however, they leave the pack for good to find mates and territories of their own.
Not all the pups in a litter live to the age of dispersal, of course. Biologists have determined that only one or two of every five pups born live to the age of 10 months, and only about half of those remaining survive to the time when they would leave the pack and find their own mates. Adult wolves on the other hand, have fairly high rates of survival. A seven year old wolf is considered to be pretty old, and a maximum lifespan is about 16 years.
Communication
Wolves communicate through facial expressions and body postures, scent-marking, growls, barks, whimpers and howls. Howling can mean many things: a greeting, a rallying cry to gather the pack together or to get ready for a hunt, an advertisement of their presence to warn other wolves away from their territory, spontaneous play and bonding. There is no evidence, however, that wolves howl at the moon. Pups begin to howl at one month old. The howl of the wolf can be heard for up to six miles. When wolves in a pack communicate with each other, they use their entire bodies: expressions of the eyes and mouth, set of the ears, tail, head, and hackles, and general body posture combine to express excitement, anxiety, aggression, or acquiescence. Wolves also wrestle, rub cheeks and noses, nip, nuzzle, and lick each other. Wolves also leave "messages" for themselves and each other by urinating, defecating, or scratching the ground to leave scent marks. These marks can set the boundaries of territories, record trails, warn off other wolves, or help lone wolves find unoccupied territory. No one knows how wolves get all this information from smelling scent marks, but it is likely that wolves are very good at distinguishing between many similar odors.
Hunting
Wolves prey mainly on large hoofed mammals (known as ungulates) such as deer, elk, moose, caribou, bison, bighorn sheep and muskoxen. They also eat smaller prey such as snowshoe hare, beaver, rabbits, opossums and rodents. Although some wolves occasionally prey on livestock, wild prey are by far their preferred food source.
Wolves have several different methods of hunting, depending on the size of the prey. For little tidbits such as mice, an individual wolf will listen for the squeaking and rustling under the leaves, and then pounce with her front paws when she pinpoints the direction of the sound. They will also eat birds, especially when the birds are molting their feathers and cannot fly well. Individual wolves will also chase hares or follow beaver trails to try to catch the animal away from the water. When hunting deer, pack members frequently all participate in the locating and stalking of prey. After that, anywhere from one to all of the wolves will engage in the chase. Larger prey animals, such as moose, caribou, and elk, don't always run when they encounter a pack of wolves. If the prey animal stands its ground, the wolves will often approach cautiously or abandon their pursuit after a few moments. When a prey animal does flee, the pack of wolves will chase them. Most healthy ungulates are fast enough to outrun a pack of wolves. In fact, fewer than one out of ten attempts to chase moose actually end in a successful kill. If they start to fall behind, the pack will usually give up the chase. If the chosen prey is injured, weakened, or old, however, the wolves can usually catch up with them and attack. Contrary to many popular accounts, wolves rarely, if ever, engage in "hamstringing," or biting the tendons on the back of the leg. This practice is simply too dangerous for the wolf, because to bite the leg, the wolves risk getting kicked in the face by the animal's sharp hooves. Wolves tend to concentrate on the neck, shoulders, and sides instead.
Wolves' digestive systems operate somewhat differently than ours. They are adapted to process huge amounts of food at a time, then eat nothing for three days or more. Biologist David Mech witnessed a pack of 15 wolves kill a 600- pound moose and eat about half of it in an hour and a half, meat, bones, fur and all. This works out to about 20 pounds of food per wolf! Mech estimated that the wolves he witnessed in this encounter were about 85 pounds each, which means they each ate about 23% of their body weight. They don't do much chewing, mostly just tearing chunks off and swallowing them whole. After eating their fill, wolves will either spend a few hours relaxing and digesting, or return to the den to regurgitate food for the pups and other pack members who did not join in the hunt. A wolf's digestive system can handle a large amount of food quickly and efficiently, processing the meat and fat so thoroughly that only bones and fur are excreted in the scat.
Taxonomy and Evolution of the Gray Wolf
The gray wolf is in: Which includes: And excludes:
Kingdom Animalia All multicellular organisms that lack cell walls and cannot perform photosynthesis Plants, Fungi, Protists,Bacteria
Phylum Chordata All animals that have a backbone or similar internal support Invertebrates (insects, snails, starfish, etc.)
Class Mammalia All chordates that have fur and produce milk Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds
Order Carnivora All mammals that mostly eat meat Rodents, deer, primates, etc.
Family Canidae All carnivores that are dog-like, with 42 teeth, walk on their toes, and have long, bushy tails Lions & tigers, bears, raccoons, weasels, etc.
Genus Canis* Wolves and coyotes Foxes, bush dogs
Species lupus* Gray wolf Canis latrans, the coyote
Canis rufus, the red wolf
Subspecies baileyi*
lycaon* Mexican gray wolf
Eastern timber wolf Gray wolves of other subspecies
*The genus and species form the "scientific name" of the species and are always italicized or underlined. The genus name is capitalized, the species name is not. The subspecies name, when used, is lower case, italicized, and follows the species name, e.g. Canis lupus lycaon. The map on the following page shows the distribution of the two species and various subspecies of wolves in North America.
Scientists are not absolutely certain about the details of how and where the wolf evolved, but by examining fossil bones, especially skulls, of animals that lived millions of years ago, they have been able to form educated hypotheses about the ancestry of wolves and their relationships with other animals. Wolves and other predators probably evolved from a small meat-eating mammal that lived in the early Cenozoic Era, 65 million years ago. Specialized teeth for eating meat appeared about 55 million years ago in an animal called Miacis. It is likely that the dogs, cats, bears, weasels, raccoons and other carnivores all branched off from this line of primitive carnivore. A distinctively doglike mammal a little smaller than a fox, called Cynodictus, arose about 30 million years ago. Over the next 10 million years, this branch of the carnivore lineage developed a larger brain, longer legs, and the dewclaw, or reduced fifth toe that is visible in dogs. Wolves began to take on their distinctively large size about 15 million years ago, and looked like they do today by about 1 million years ago. Every breed of dog that we have today, from poodles to huskies, are descended from a small subspecies of wolf that was domesticated in China about 12,000 to 15,000 years ago.
The above information is taken from the Defenders of Wildlife's Wolf Pack Education Curriculum.
Wolf Fact Sheets
Gray wolf
Red wolf
Mexican wolf
werewolves.monstrous.com/
www.pitt.edu/~dash/werewolf.html
_________________
Rowena Cherry
www.rowenacherry.com
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wtm7RPzIYJY
INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL
Winner of the N.O.R. Awards, Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi Romance:
MATING NET
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8SZktskaLYs
Last edited by rowenacherry on Sun Oct 14, 2007 5:45 pm; edited 2 times in total
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rowenacherry
Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Posts: 36
PostPosted: Sun Oct 07, 2007 3:44 pm Post subject: Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
What happens if a werewolf's daytime persona is Beta?
_________________
Rowena Cherry
www.rowenacherry.com
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wtm7RPzIYJY
INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL
Winner of the N.O.R. Awards, Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi Romance:
WOLVES AND WEREWOLVES (Bite this! ... or not) Hairy heroes, alpha-wolf heroes, heroes with really big... teeth
In celebration of WOLF AWARENESS WEEK we plan to talk about romances with Wolves, Werewolves, Men who howl in the night.
VIP guests:
Cathy Clamp
Joy Nash
Sephera Girón
Liddy Midnight
Conrad V Sucatre
Ruth Glick?
Things to know:
The Passionate Internet Voices Talk Radio Number for my guests is
916-558-7514
Pin 924920#
Here's what my guests need to know:
Have a land line if you can.
Be sure you have fully charged batteries if you use a cordless.
Do not go to the bathroom while on the air.
Do not slurp a drink or eat while on the air.
If we are silent for ten seconds, the program might cut out and inflict a religious program on our listeners on the assumption that we all choked.
When a new person joins the group, it can be a bit like a seance! So, if you call in, please announce yourself, or cough, so we know you are there.
LOL.
Have your urls in front of you in case of brain fade.
Have your blurb and excerpt in front of you, and also in front of a backup reader in case you are unable to read for any reason.
Have the 3 - 5 main points you want to make in front of you.
Cherry Picking
internetvoicesradio.com/Rowena.htm
FOR LISTENERS INSTRUCTIONS FOR DOWNLOADING OR LISTENING IN AT
www.internetvoicesradio.com
734-332-5902 for Lillian
Feel free to comment, make suggestions, add thoughts, urls, website info, lists of titles you would like to discuss.
Thank you!
PS...
Sometimes, these Specials are most fun if my guests turn up in CHARACTER, for instance Liddy co-authored a fabulous book called Rogues, where the heroine is a werewolf.
Seph also has a female werewolf... Imagine girl talk between two wolves!!
Imagine what fun a discussion of the practical difficulties of shape-shifting.
And, do hunks who turn hairy under a blue moon like it doggy style?
_________________
Rowena Cherry
www.rowenacherry.com
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wtm7RPzIYJY
INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL
Winner of the N.O.R. Awards, Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi Romance:
MATING NET
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8SZktskaLYs
Last edited by rowenacherry on Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:23 pm; edited 9 times in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
rowenacherry
Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Posts: 36
PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 6:01 pm Post subject: Starter questions for CATHY and CIE Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
National Wolf Awareness Week, October 14-20, 2007 is a time to dispel misconceptions about wolves and to teach about the important role these predators play in maintaining healthy ecosystems. It takes place the 3rd week of October every year.
The wolf is a striking symbol of wild nature, yet it has long been shrouded by myth and superstition. Earlier this century, wolves were methodically exterminated from nearly all of their historic range.
National Wolf Awareness Week encourages conservation efforts not only for wolves, but for all wild species. Defenders sponsors events nationwide to celebrate wolves.
Little Red Riding Hood Lied: Myths About Wolves
Myth: Wolves are dangerous to humans.
Fact: You stand a better chance of getting hit by a meteorite than killed by a wolf. Although wolves are large, powerful animals that could kill humans, they do not. According to a 2002 study about wolf conflicts with humans, there is no documented case of a healthy, wild wolf killing a human in the United States. By comparison, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate between 10 to 20 people are killed and 4.7 million attacked each year by man's best friend, the domestic dog.
Myth: Wolves will eliminate or substantially reduce prey species.
Fact: Wolves and large grazing animals lived side-by-side for tens of thousands of years before the first settlers arrived. Recent studies on Yellowstone elk and wolves have found that weather and hunter harvest affect elk declines more than wolf predation. In fact, wolves often enhance prey populations by culling weak and sick animals from the gene pool, leaving only the strongest animals to reproduce. Food availability and weather regulate wolf populations. When their prey is scarce, wolves suffer too. They breed less frequently, have fewer litters, and may even starve to death.
Myth: Local economies in the northern Rockies are based on livestock production, and jobs will be lost if wolves are restored.
Fact: Ranching is a minor part of the economic base of the northern Rockies . For instance, in the counties around Yellowstone National Park , livestock production accounts for less than 4 percent of personal income, while tourism-related industries account for more than 50 percent. Moreover effects on livestock are negligible, so effects on ranching jobs will be virtually nonexistent.
Myth: The Endangered Species Act prevents the control of wolves that prey on livestock.
Fact: In portions of the northern Rockies and Southwest, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) designated wolves as "experimental, nonessential" populations. This special designation gave landowners a limited right to kill wolves caught in the act of preying on livestock on private property and increased the ability of FWS to remove or destroy problem wolves. Since 1978, wolves, listed as threatened in Minnesota, have been managed under a special regulation that controls individuals that kill livestock and pets.
Myth: Wolf recovery on public lands will preclude other land uses, such as logging and mining.
Fact: According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, very few land use restrictions have proven necessary to facilitate wolf recovery in Montana and Minnesota . The service reports that land use restrictions are necessary only if illegal mortality of wolves occurs at high levels.
Myth: Most people in the U.S. oppose wolf restoration.
Fact: Numerous polls taken throughout the United States consistently demonstrate that more people support wolf recovery than oppose it. In fact, a 2002 quantitative summary of human attitudes towards wolves found that 61 percent of the general population samples had positive attitudes towards wolves.
The Basics of Wolf Biology and Taxonomy
The gray wolf (Canis lupus) is the largest member of the canid (dog) family in North America. The table below compares the size and appearance of the gray wolf to the other canid species in the U.S.
Gray Wolf
(Canis lupus) Red Wolf
(Canis rufus) Coyote
(Canis latrans) Fox
(Vulpes or Urocyon)
Size 5-6 feet long from nose to tail 3-4 feet long from nose to tail 3-4 feet long from nose to tail 3-3.5 feet long from nose to tail
Weight 80-120 pounds 40-80 pounds 30-40 pounds 12 pounds
Color gray, tan, brown, black, or white reddish brown, black, or gray reddish brown, tan, or gray red-brown (red fox) grizzled- gray (gray fox)
Eye color Yellow, green, or brownish Yellow, green, or brownish Yellow to green Yellow to brown
Wolves are highly intelligent. Their acute hearing and exceptional sense of smell - up to 100 times more sensitive than that of humans - make them well-adapted to their surroundings and to finding food. Some researchers estimate that a wolf can run as fast as 40 miles an hour. Wolves have been known to travel 120 miles in a day, but they usually travel an average of 10 to 15 miles a day.
Pack Life
Wolves live, travel, and hunt in packs of four to seven animals, consisting of an alpha, or dominant pair, their pups, and several other subordinate or young animals. The alpha female and male are the pack leaders, tracking and hunting prey, choosing den sites, and establishing the pack's territory. The alpha pair mate in January or February and give birth in spring, after a gestation period of about 65 days. Litters can contain from one to nine pups, but usually consist of around six. Pups have blue eyes at birth and weigh about one pound. Their eyes open when they are about two weeks old, and a week later begin to walk and explore the area around the den. Pups romp and playfight with each other from a very young age. Scientists think that even these early encounters establish hierarchies that will help determine which members of the litter will grow up to be pack leaders. Wolf pups grow rapidly, reaching 20 pounds at two months and full size in a year. All adults share parental responsibilities for the pups. They feed the pups by regurgitating food for them from the time the pups are about four weeks old until they learn to hunt with the pack.
A wolf pup is the same size as an adult by the time he or she is about a year old, and is able to mate by about two years of age. Pups remain with their parents for at least the first year of their of their lives, while they learn to hunt. During their second year of life, when the parents are raising a new set of pups, young wolves can remain with the pack, or spend periods of time on their own. Frequently, they return in autumn to spend their second winter with the pack. By the time wolves are two years old, however, they leave the pack for good to find mates and territories of their own.
Not all the pups in a litter live to the age of dispersal, of course. Biologists have determined that only one or two of every five pups born live to the age of 10 months, and only about half of those remaining survive to the time when they would leave the pack and find their own mates. Adult wolves on the other hand, have fairly high rates of survival. A seven year old wolf is considered to be pretty old, and a maximum lifespan is about 16 years.
Communication
Wolves communicate through facial expressions and body postures, scent-marking, growls, barks, whimpers and howls. Howling can mean many things: a greeting, a rallying cry to gather the pack together or to get ready for a hunt, an advertisement of their presence to warn other wolves away from their territory, spontaneous play and bonding. There is no evidence, however, that wolves howl at the moon. Pups begin to howl at one month old. The howl of the wolf can be heard for up to six miles. When wolves in a pack communicate with each other, they use their entire bodies: expressions of the eyes and mouth, set of the ears, tail, head, and hackles, and general body posture combine to express excitement, anxiety, aggression, or acquiescence. Wolves also wrestle, rub cheeks and noses, nip, nuzzle, and lick each other. Wolves also leave "messages" for themselves and each other by urinating, defecating, or scratching the ground to leave scent marks. These marks can set the boundaries of territories, record trails, warn off other wolves, or help lone wolves find unoccupied territory. No one knows how wolves get all this information from smelling scent marks, but it is likely that wolves are very good at distinguishing between many similar odors.
Hunting
Wolves prey mainly on large hoofed mammals (known as ungulates) such as deer, elk, moose, caribou, bison, bighorn sheep and muskoxen. They also eat smaller prey such as snowshoe hare, beaver, rabbits, opossums and rodents. Although some wolves occasionally prey on livestock, wild prey are by far their preferred food source.
Wolves have several different methods of hunting, depending on the size of the prey. For little tidbits such as mice, an individual wolf will listen for the squeaking and rustling under the leaves, and then pounce with her front paws when she pinpoints the direction of the sound. They will also eat birds, especially when the birds are molting their feathers and cannot fly well. Individual wolves will also chase hares or follow beaver trails to try to catch the animal away from the water. When hunting deer, pack members frequently all participate in the locating and stalking of prey. After that, anywhere from one to all of the wolves will engage in the chase. Larger prey animals, such as moose, caribou, and elk, don't always run when they encounter a pack of wolves. If the prey animal stands its ground, the wolves will often approach cautiously or abandon their pursuit after a few moments. When a prey animal does flee, the pack of wolves will chase them. Most healthy ungulates are fast enough to outrun a pack of wolves. In fact, fewer than one out of ten attempts to chase moose actually end in a successful kill. If they start to fall behind, the pack will usually give up the chase. If the chosen prey is injured, weakened, or old, however, the wolves can usually catch up with them and attack. Contrary to many popular accounts, wolves rarely, if ever, engage in "hamstringing," or biting the tendons on the back of the leg. This practice is simply too dangerous for the wolf, because to bite the leg, the wolves risk getting kicked in the face by the animal's sharp hooves. Wolves tend to concentrate on the neck, shoulders, and sides instead.
Wolves' digestive systems operate somewhat differently than ours. They are adapted to process huge amounts of food at a time, then eat nothing for three days or more. Biologist David Mech witnessed a pack of 15 wolves kill a 600- pound moose and eat about half of it in an hour and a half, meat, bones, fur and all. This works out to about 20 pounds of food per wolf! Mech estimated that the wolves he witnessed in this encounter were about 85 pounds each, which means they each ate about 23% of their body weight. They don't do much chewing, mostly just tearing chunks off and swallowing them whole. After eating their fill, wolves will either spend a few hours relaxing and digesting, or return to the den to regurgitate food for the pups and other pack members who did not join in the hunt. A wolf's digestive system can handle a large amount of food quickly and efficiently, processing the meat and fat so thoroughly that only bones and fur are excreted in the scat.
Taxonomy and Evolution of the Gray Wolf
The gray wolf is in: Which includes: And excludes:
Kingdom Animalia All multicellular organisms that lack cell walls and cannot perform photosynthesis Plants, Fungi, Protists,Bacteria
Phylum Chordata All animals that have a backbone or similar internal support Invertebrates (insects, snails, starfish, etc.)
Class Mammalia All chordates that have fur and produce milk Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds
Order Carnivora All mammals that mostly eat meat Rodents, deer, primates, etc.
Family Canidae All carnivores that are dog-like, with 42 teeth, walk on their toes, and have long, bushy tails Lions & tigers, bears, raccoons, weasels, etc.
Genus Canis* Wolves and coyotes Foxes, bush dogs
Species lupus* Gray wolf Canis latrans, the coyote
Canis rufus, the red wolf
Subspecies baileyi*
lycaon* Mexican gray wolf
Eastern timber wolf Gray wolves of other subspecies
*The genus and species form the "scientific name" of the species and are always italicized or underlined. The genus name is capitalized, the species name is not. The subspecies name, when used, is lower case, italicized, and follows the species name, e.g. Canis lupus lycaon. The map on the following page shows the distribution of the two species and various subspecies of wolves in North America.
Scientists are not absolutely certain about the details of how and where the wolf evolved, but by examining fossil bones, especially skulls, of animals that lived millions of years ago, they have been able to form educated hypotheses about the ancestry of wolves and their relationships with other animals. Wolves and other predators probably evolved from a small meat-eating mammal that lived in the early Cenozoic Era, 65 million years ago. Specialized teeth for eating meat appeared about 55 million years ago in an animal called Miacis. It is likely that the dogs, cats, bears, weasels, raccoons and other carnivores all branched off from this line of primitive carnivore. A distinctively doglike mammal a little smaller than a fox, called Cynodictus, arose about 30 million years ago. Over the next 10 million years, this branch of the carnivore lineage developed a larger brain, longer legs, and the dewclaw, or reduced fifth toe that is visible in dogs. Wolves began to take on their distinctively large size about 15 million years ago, and looked like they do today by about 1 million years ago. Every breed of dog that we have today, from poodles to huskies, are descended from a small subspecies of wolf that was domesticated in China about 12,000 to 15,000 years ago.
The above information is taken from the Defenders of Wildlife's Wolf Pack Education Curriculum.
Wolf Fact Sheets
Gray wolf
Red wolf
Mexican wolf
werewolves.monstrous.com/
www.pitt.edu/~dash/werewolf.html
_________________
Rowena Cherry
www.rowenacherry.com
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wtm7RPzIYJY
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rowenacherry
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 07, 2007 3:44 pm Post subject: Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
What happens if a werewolf's daytime persona is Beta?
_________________
Rowena Cherry
www.rowenacherry.com
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wtm7RPzIYJY
INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL
Winner of the N.O.R. Awards, Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi Romance:
Rowena Cherry
