Want to speak wolf? Montana researcher using recordings to understand their language

The hair-shedding cousin of the wolf lounging on your couch may have a wild reason for barking at the postman or howling when an ambulance, fire engine or police car streaks by with its siren blaring.

“My hunch is that your dog’s response is muscle memory from deep time,” said Jeff Reed, co-founder of the Cry Wolf Project. “It’s an old instinct.”

Since 2023, Reed has been working with scientists at the Yellowstone Wolf Project recording sounds of the predators across about 500 square miles of the park’s Northern Range.

The research has several goals: to try to understand wolf communication; to use recording devices as a noninvasive way to assess wolf numbers; and to perhaps someday use recordings of wolf howls to protect livestock from the predators.

Recognizing individuals

So far, Cry Wolf has collected reams of wolf recordings – enough to fill an entire school bus if they were stored on old cassette tapes, Reed joked. From this data the researchers are teasing out findings about wolf communication.

“Like humans, wolves have distinct voices, and researchers have determined that wolves can identify one another by their howls,” Reed told a gathering in Ketchum, Idaho, during a talk sponsored by the nonprofit organization Living with Wolves.

As an example, the one-eyed wolf matriarch 907F was 11 years old when she was recorded calling to her pack a mile away.

“The average Yellowstone wolf howls at a pitch of 350 hertz, or middle F on a piano,” Reed explained. “But the stout 110-pound, 907 carried a deeper voice, a sturdy 320 hertz.”

Based on the recordings, Reed learned to pick 907F’s voice out of a crowd.

“But the harder question was always this, why was she howling?” he queried.

Breaking down patterns

The scientists are using technology from Google DeepMind, Microsoft AI, Colossal Biosciences, CU-Boulder and Reed’s own work to analyze the massive database.

“It’s not a Captain Midnight secret decoder ring for wolf talk,” Reed joked. “It’s just a tool, and it helps us sift through vast amounts of data, finding the wolf howls and, more exciting, spotting patterns that might reveal meaning in their voices.”

In addition to their legendary howls, wolves also bark, yip-yap, and whine.

“The basic meaning of the howl that I prefer is, ‘Here I am,’ ” Reed explained. “It’s kind of like yelling ‘Hey!’ to get someone’s attention. And wolves often do this to stay in contact with their pack mates.”

Wolves also make “woah” sounds, which Reed calls a wolf’s version of “I love you.”

Breaking howls down further, Reed said there are howls of aggression, confusion and distress. There are also chorus howls when a pack all vocalizes at once, “often a signal to other wolf packs that this is their territory,” a way to avoid conflict.

This is important because inside Yellowstone, wolves are the number one killer of other wolves. Outside the park humans are the top predators of wolves.

“So by yelling, like a political rally, you’re keeping your group together, and you’re speaking to the other people, and you’re just letting them know with words, ‘Hey, we’re tougher than you,’ but that’s better than going to war,” Reed said.

Counting wolves

He compared a wolf chorus to a cocktail party, using not only howls but also yip-yaps and woahs.

“When these three different sounds are all combined into a group chorus cocktail party, we’ve learned something else,” Reed said. “Wolves can kind of count.”

He pointed to the research of Yellowstone Wolf Project scientist Kira Cassidy who found that wolves will make decisions based on a pack’s howls

“If they’re outnumbered, they often run for the hills,” Reed said. “If not, they stay put or often approach the rival pack.”

Understanding barks

Wolves also have three different types of barks. The one used for rival wolves is low-pitched and rapid-paced. It’s called a combative bark. For packmates a wolf uses a higher pitch, like the one a dog may use when playing with its owner. The third is a deeper, slower-paced bark that wolves use to announce threats. Reed called it a woof.

“Some dog breeds also have different types of barks,” Reed said. “Terriers and dachshunds, for example – the little lunatics of the hunting world – use four distinct barks depending upon whether they’ve cornered a boar, a fox, a hare or a partridge.”

Reed’s border collie, named Huckleberry, tried to warn him by woofing at a grizzly bear that bluff charged before ambling off.

Wolves also use growls, snarls and whines, whimpers, yelps and moans, often when feeding on a carcass. Growls and snarls are the way dominant wolves make a subservient wolf back off, like words of aggression. Whines and other such sounds are what Reed referred to as “words of appeasement.”

Making wolf sentences

“This is another amazing thing we’re learning,” Reed added. “Wolves sometimes use two different sounds to make a short sentence.”

Whales, birds and primates make similar short sentences, he said.

“You can think of it like combining two different words, cry and baby into crybaby, or cry and wolf into cry wolf, where combined the two words mean something slightly different than each word used in isolation,” Reed explained.

Finally, there’s the howls that puppies make, which are different from adults. It starts high and slides low, not unlike an emergency vehicle’s siren. In fact, the Yellowstone recording devices taped a wolf howling back at the siren from a park ranger’s vehicle, Reed said.

“Elk and deer rush to the high-pitched calls of their young. So do people,” Reed noted.

Using the knowledge

By understanding wolf language, Reed is hoping to use the technology to protect livestock from wolves.

“If you played a large pack chorus howl on a speaker, could you get that other pack to go, ‘Holy cow, we are outnumbered, like 25 to one or five, and so we’re going to kind of avoid this area?’ Reed said. “Wolves are going to keep killing livestock if they get hungry, or if they’re not hazed away, those sorts of things, but if we can help ranchers, that’s what we want to do.

“So what I’ve been arguing is, let’s talk like a wolf.”