the.com/wolf
the social genius wearing fangs, who taught dogs everything they pretend they invented
means A large wild carnivore of the dog family that lives and hunts in cooperative packs across the northern hemisphere.
from From Old English 'wulf,' tracing back through Proto-Germanic '*wulfaz' (also the source of German 'Wolf' and Norse 'úlfr') to the Proto-Indo-European root '*wlkwos.' That ancient root scattered the animal across half the world's languages — it's a cousin of Latin 'lupus' and Greek 'lykos' (giving us 'lupine' and 'lycanthrope'). So old and so feared a creature that it haunted personal names — Old English 'Wulf-' prefixes like Wulfric and Beowulf — long before it haunted fairy tales.
- hierarchy myth
- alpha wolf theory came from captive packs, not wild ones
- family unit
- wild packs are just parents and their pups
- ecosystem engineer
- reintroduction reshaped Yellowstone's rivers and forests
- vocal range
- howls carry over ten miles in open terrain
- lone ranger
- lone wolves leave to find mates, not glory
gray wolf — canis lupus, apex predator across northern hemisphere with ~200,000 individuals remaining
red wolf — canis rufus, critically endangered with only ~300-500 in wild, southeastern united states
arctic wolf — canis lupus arctos, subspecies in canadian arctic archipelago adapted to extreme cold