Pushing Beyond Wolf Myth, Mystery

The minus-20-degree temperature easily penetrated our down coats and wool mittens, but the wolf standing 15 feet before us seemed untouched.

In the deep boreal forest of northern Wisconsin, animals either adapt to severe winters or die.

Physically, the wolf is designed to endure cold. It doesn’t fare as well when pitted against modern-day development and ancient myths.

That’s why a wolf biologist and I were studying the Moose Lake Pack that day 10 years ago. We needed to know why the once large pack had dwindled to a few animals. Was it disease? Had their range become too fragmented? Were the wolves poisoned?

It is a fascinating aspect of human nature that we interpret the wolf in such extreme ways - either as the devil incarnated or a new age deity. Rarely are we ambivalent.

We seem uncomfortable with all predators, but with the wolf we are particularly harsh. Rather ironic, since the wolf is most likely the ancestor of the dog, the only animal entire cultures have collectively declared their “best friend.”

Some writers and researchers say it is because we created the dog from the wolf and value the dog’s domesticated traits that we despise wolves for their wildness. But did we initiate the evolution of wolf to dog? Or did the wolf?

It’s still uncertain, according to Stanley Olsen, who was zooarchaeologist at the Arizona State Museum when he wrote “Origins of the Domestic Dog.”

“It is possible,” Olsen wrote in 1985, “that hungry wolves were enticed (not necessarily by human design) to come closer to a camp fire, where meat was being cooked and the refuse discarded in the immediate vicinity of the camp. Perhaps wolves that had attached themselves loosely to human habitation areas would consider such camps as their home territory, and their warning growls toward intruders would also warn the human habitants of the approach of such outsiders. If such an association occurred, it is not unreasonable to assume that these events would bring about firmer ties between wolves and humans to their mutual advantage. Unfortunately, evidence of the sort needed to prove or disprove this speculation is not explicitly preserved in the archaeological record.”

However, Olsen said there is archaeological evidence that wolves and humans were contemporary animals at a very early stage in each of their development.

Wolf packs and early human hunter-gatherer societies shared several key traits: They were composed of small social units, pursued large game over open and wooded areas and hunted in packs or teams.

What scholars are still trying to prove, according to Olsen, is where the dog was first domesticated and if wolves were its ancestor.

Some of the oldest remains of what archaeologists believe to be domesticated dogs were found in both Alaska and across the Bering Strait in Eurasia, but early remains have been found around the world.

And some researchers have proposed the coyote or the jackal may be the ancestor of the domestic dog, although evidence seems to point to the wolf.

My next two columns will try to put the origin of the dog into modern-day perspective.

In April, you’ll read what experts are saying about dog behavior and training. There are numerous theories about both, many based on wolf behavior. In May, you’ll read what experts are saying about the breeding controversy and the evolution of canine genetics.

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