Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Timber (gray) wolf
Like most children of my generation, I was raised on such stories. One melodramatic tale in par-
ticular imprinted itself on my mind. It involved a huge, slavering pack of wolves relentlessly pursuing
a sleigh and its human occupants across the snowy steppes of Russia. Aboard the sleigh were various
supplies the family was bringing home (the frozen steppes in midwinter seem an odd time and place to
be doing one's shopping, but that doesn't occur to a child).
Just as the wolves were about to attack, a side of bacon was dumped overboard, and the wolves
stopped to devour and fight over it. They quickly resumed the pursuit, however, and soon were about
to attack the horses and people again. Then the process of dumping food was repeated, and so on. Just
after the last morsel of food had been jettisoned, and doom seemed imminent, the horses, with sleigh
and occupants, dashed into their barn, barely ahead of the frenzied wolves!
Whether such sensational chase scenes ever happened in Europe is not known. There is speculation
that European wolves might actually have attacked people for several reasons. Rabies was one, and
starvation was another. Lacking the means to eliminate wolves directly, burgeoning European popu-
lations were constantly clearing more land and usurping wolf habitat. With habitat and natural prey
largely gone, wolves no doubt turned to livestock as a food source—and possibly, under desperate cir-
cumstances, even to humans.
A third possible reason for wolf attacks has also been postulated. During the Middle Ages, bodies
of some humans—executed criminals, outcasts, plague victims, paupers, and similarly unwanted char-
acters—were often unceremoniously dumped without burial outside cities. Although wolves normally
don't feed on carrion, they might conceivably have done so if nearly starved. In this manner, the theory
goes, they might have lost an inherent fear of humans, and then turned to killing live humans.
We'll never know whether wolves actually killed people in Europe in those days, or whether these
are merely monstrous exaggerations stemming from centuries of folklore, but let us dispense with one
myth right away: North American wolves are no threat to human safety. There have been almost no
documented attacks on a human by a non-rabid wolf in North America. Even the handful of attacks
