THINKING LIKE A WOLF

Longtime wolf biologist and former Yellowstone ranger sums up decades of observing Canis lupus.

“Wolves, like humans, are thinking beings that are constantly making choices and decisions,” writes McIntyre. One set of choices and decisions has to do with where and how to live: entering adulthood, wolves must position themselves in the pecking order, challenging the alpha or meekly accepting a role as beta; alternately, they disperse to find a new pack with better chances for advancement, a risky choice given that some wolves will kill an intruder. McIntyre has witnessed all these behaviors, as well as acts that, even recognizing the dangers of anthropomorphism, would have to be classed as heroic. Of one wolf known as 949—biologists do not name the wolves in order to avoid developing too much nonscientific attachment to them—McIntyre writes, he “had distemper, which is highly infectious. In his final days, he stayed away from the pack, stoically enduring his fate.” Another had a broken jaw, likely earned from an elk kick, that must have meant excruciating pain; yet, McIntyre notes, the wolf lived on until dying while protecting his pack, unquestionably noble. Doffing scientific detachment, McIntyre writes with clear admiration of the great qualities and accomplishments of the Yellowstone packs, particularly of numerous elders that have lived several lifetimes beyond the average of three years in the wild. An especially affecting moment comes when he buries blood, taken from the body of an alpha female named 926, at the site where she had played as a pup: “That small amount of blood, her life force, along with moisture and nutrients from the soil, would be carried up through the tree trunk.…That meant a little bit of 926 would abide in that tree.”

Fans of wolves in the wild will learn much from McIntyre’s career-spanning account.