#also yes I’m aware of the ‘conflicts’ between wolves and ranchers and all that.

[newtsnaturethings]

infodump me about ecology bestie. Or better yet, wolves😈

don’t have to tell me twice!

Aight. So

One of my favorite things about wolves is their hunting strategy. Most folks are familiar with the concept of wolf family groups (or packs) and that they use teamwork to take down prey much larger than themselves, and group hunting is just objectively super awesome. But! Another thing unique to wolf hunting is that they are essentially endurance athletes, and chase down their prey until it tires out. This is remarkably uncommon in a lot of mammalian predators; scavenging or ambush tend to be observed more frequently. A lot of the prey wolves go after are sprinters, and will have spurts of speed to get away. The wolves opt to run them down until they lose all their steam. Wolves are literally built for this (something something form follows function). Their gait is streamlined and efficient for movement over long distances with variable terrain (it might even be particularly apt for traveling through snow). They pant, which cools their bodies so they don’t overheat. And they really can just. Keep going. (As a fellow distance runner, I just think this is really fucking awesome).

Oh! And wolves on the landscape (at least in North America) has an observable impact on the ecosystem. Honestly there’s so many intricate connections I could go into here. Wolves on the landscape has been correlated to everything from mesocarnivore populations to riparian tree growth rates. One of my personal favorites is how it trends with raven populations. Wolves and ravens are often seen at kill sites together (which makes sense), and raven populations were shown to increase with the presence of wolves. Ravens and other scavengers are critical to the nutrient cycling processes in an ecosystem, so more ravens means more nutrient cycling. (This is a scavenger friendly blog; I love you things that eat dead things)

So yeah. Wolves. I think they’re really neat.

#wolves #wolf #also yes I’m aware of the ‘conflicts’ between wolves and ranchers and all that. #unfortunately they have been labeled as a very ‘controversial’ species