The snow is gone and life is regenerating in Denali as a new biological year is underway. Adults of many kinds are attending young born in May, including wolf pups only three weeks out of the den.   The wolf courtship and mating activities of late February and early March (April 8 blog entry) have borne fruit again and lead to another cooperative effort from the adults and older offspring in raising the new pups.  

 

Fifteen minutes later, two of the above pups have wandered out of the photo to two adults resting nearby.  Two other pups are fading into a nap as the fifth continues suckling.  

 

          

 

The older wolves eagerly await the first emergence of the pups from deep inside the den, typically sometime during the last few days of May or first few days of June.  Up to that point, usually only their mother and perhaps a cooperatively nursing female have interacted with them.  When the pups finally come out, the other adults and older siblings dote over them with obvious affection, cuddling and cleaning them and letting them crawl all over their heads and bodies while laying with them.  This begins to wear off in a few weeks as the pups grow big enough to tug and chew a little too much and become too insistent with wolves that have just returned from a hunt and want some sleep.  The affection still shows but is more controlled and comes with some reprimands.

 

 

    

 

 

Yearlings develop among the closest bonds with the new pups and spend long periods attending and playing with them.  I’ve always felt it was easier for pups of this age to relate to and learn from brothers and sisters only a year removed from the den themselves and that this is an important benefit in addition to the care and protection they provide.  I’ve seen yearlings temporarily regress to pup-like behavior while romping with pups, in one case even attempting to nurse with them.

 

 

 

 

 

It always impresses me how fast wolf pups learn during their first few weeks outside the den.  I’ve watched numerous litters develop, via ground observation at dens and rendezvous sites.  The pups begin solving problems on their own during this early period, such as in negotiating their way through complex terrain features near the burrow areas at certain dens.  They do so in surprisingly creative ways, and learn quickly from their mistakes.  They are clearly much better learners and much smarter overall than dog pups of the same age.

 

The most important learning for the pups comes later, beginning in the fall when they no longer need to be provisioned at homesites and can travel continuously with the older wolves.  Over the next couple of years non-dispersing young wolves learn important hunting skills, details of the established territory (homesites, good hunting areas, travel routes, etc.), and other behavior from the older wolves, especially in groups like Toklat that rely heavily on the most challenging prey (e.g., moose and sheep).  Much of this amounts to traditions that are refined over time, behavior that helps adapt the group to the specific resources and other conditions of its area.  

 

Prolonged dependency of the young, a hallmark of advanced societies, facilitates the transfer of large amounts of learned information across generations.  With a period of dependency equaling 20-25 percent or more of their normal lifespan, wolves that hunt the most challenging prey rival or exceed the dependency that is typical in human societies.

 

In other words, each new biological year brings much more than just a regeneration of numbers.  The pups represent another opportunity for families to extend and refine sophisticated behavior that not only contributes importantly to their success but also sets the species apart from many others and makes it so interesting.  

 

 

 

Two young great horned owls in the nest but about to fledge, mid June 2008.