Audubon remarks that this form of the common species has “the same sneaking, cowardly, yet ferocious disposition” as other wolves; nevertheless those anecdotes with which he intersperses his descriptions are certainly not calculated to foster the belief that his impression agrees with facts.
There are certain traits and habits belonging to wolves at large which may now be brought together. They are not by any means strictly nocturnal animals, but very commonly prowl by night, and in places where large packs assemble; most of what has with truth been said against them occurred under cover of darkness. By all accounts, it is amidst gloom and storm, while the buran rages over the arctic tundra, that troops of these fierce creatures do their worst among Yakut and Tungoo reindeer herds. Caribou are not herded, and have been but little observed by those who could give any information upon such a point as this. Everywhere, a wolf is destructive, fierce, wary and sagacious. Moreover, it will often become aggressive and audacious in the highest degree, when circumstances contribute to foster the development and facilitate the expression of its natural character. It is the typical wild beast of its family, and if it is not in many instances sanguinary and prone to take the offensive, there is a much better explanation for abstention from violence than that of natural cowardice. Wolves have far too much sense not to know what they can gain with least exposure to loss; and no beast of prey, that is sane, and not driven to desperation, ever proceeds upon any other principle than this. Given the existence of mind, those accidents by which mind is modified, and relative differences in degree among its qualities, must also be admitted. Comparative stupidity, evenness of temper, want of enterprise, tameness and timidity, undoubtedly distinguish wolf and wolf, as they do all carnivores. Still this would not account for the conventional wolf, or explain the anomaly of its imaginary character, or show why, or on what grounds, it is maintained that there should exist so great an incongruity in nature as an animal unadjusted mentally and yet adapted physically to a predatory life; that has at the same time the disposition of a tiger and the harmlessness of a lamb, that lives by violence, yet shrinks from every struggle, that maintains itself by the exercise of powers it must be fully conscious of possessing, and is constantly debarred from the results which it might attain through their exercise by causeless apprehension. This is very nearly what must be meant when a beast of prey is called a coward.
Wolves stalk their prey, ambush it, either alone or in collusion with others that drive the game, and they also run it down. The jaw is very powerful and formidably armed, and in proportion to its bulk this creature is exceedingly strong. A wolf, though structurally carnivorous, will eat anything—fish, flesh, or fowl, fresh or putrid, animal or vegetal. When he has gorged to the limit of his capacity, if anything remains it is commonly dragged to some place of concealment and buried. Then the brute lies down until the apathy induced by surfeit passes away. Wolves hunt both by sight and scent, by day and night. They will certainly interbreed with dogs, producing fertile offspring; and they may be domesticated. But as they grow older the characteristics germane to their savage natures assert themselves. It is said by Godman that “when kept in close confinement, and fed on vegetable matter, the common wolf becomes tame and harmless, ... shy, restless, timid.” If he had said it became ill, the statement would have been more conformable with fact. No such interruption of the normal course of life is possible without an impairment of health, both bodily and mental. Carnivorous animals are not to be turned into vegetarians at will, nor any creature’s energies thwarted and cramped without distortion and atrophy.
Wolves no doubt can swim, but it is certain that a wolf seldom voluntarily takes to water in which he cannot wade. Audubon saw one swimming, and others have witnessed the like. Still all accounts represent these beasts as stopping short in pursuit on the bank of a stream. Naturalists say that the length of life in this species is twenty years, and it has been recorded also that they do not become gray with age. It looks like a purility to repeat what has been gravely reported more than once; namely, that when wolves have plenty to eat they get fat, become lazy, and are not so aggressive as under contrary conditions. On the other hand, nothing is more common than to find writers explaining every act of audacity as due to hunger. Most probably it is; they would hardly go hunting while in a state of repletion. But the question is, how these authorities find out the exact state of their dietaries, and can be certain that they must be starving before they will attack the wild Asiatic ox or American moose; also how much less food is required, to urge them on to assail a party of men.
In seasons of scarcity wolves of the northern plains prey upon prairie-dogs, ground-squirrels, hares, foxes, badgers, etc.; small creatures that offer no resistance, and which it is only difficult to catch. At the same time they hunt the large game of North America, and although, much to the disgust of a certain class of writers, the common wolf, which weighs about a hundred pounds, does not select a buffalo bull in the best fighting trim as an object for attack when a less formidable animal of this species can be found, or meet the moose, that often stands six feet at the withers, or indeed any creature that can kill him, in such a way as to give it the best opportunity for doing so, he often has to fight and frequently comes to grief. But they “give every human being a wide berth,” says Roosevelt, and it would be strange indeed if they did not, since none are apt to be encountered who, according to the wolf’s experience, are unprepared for offensive action, or who do not make it their business in those parts to destroy him. This fact has been completely realized by wolves of the plains, and it is for this reason that in these latitudes they have now become, what Colonel Dodge asserts that they are, “of all carnivorous animals of equal size and strength, the most harmless to beasts, and the least dangerous to man.”
A wolf’s structure is not by any means so well adapted to destructive purposes as that of the larger Felidæ. No species of the genus Canis has either the teeth, claws or muscles which belong to cats. A predatory animal may, and often does, make an error in judgment, but there is one thing that it never does, and that is, to attack deliberately knowing beforehand that it must fight fairly for victory, and that the issue is quite as likely to be fatal to itself as to its destined prey. A single wolf is not a match for those large animals it destroys; and when, in virtue of what Professor Romanes calls the “collective instinct,” odds have been taken against them, they succumb before a combined assault.
Where parties of “wolfers,” as they are called, pass the winter in placing poisoned meat in their way, and in localities in which they abound, destroy them for their skins by hundreds, wolves would need to be much less sagacious than they are, if what was noticed by Lord Milton and his companion was not true as a matter of course. “These animals,” the account says, “are so wary and suspicious that they will not touch a bait lying exposed, or one that has been recently visited.” John Mortimer Murphy (“Sporting Adventures in the Far West”) had seven years’ experience of the way in which wolves were shot, trapped, poisoned and coursed. The conclusion he came to from those observations which he relates so well, was that the wolf in such localities, “large, gaunt, and fierce as it looks, is one of the greatest cowards known.” He omitted to mention—but Godman has rectified the oversight—that wolves carry their natural cowardice to such an extent, and are so exceedingly dubious concerning what man may do, that a few pinches of powder scattered about dead game, or an article of clothing left near it,—in short, any evidence of the presence of a human being will prevent them from approaching it.
There are several ways of writing natural history, and this is one of them. It would seem, nevertheless, that if a plan could be adopted for looking upon the general organization of wild beasts as in a great measure determining their characters, and for considering, if possible, anomalous traits as most probably intimately connected with peculiarities in their situation, we might no longer feel confounded at finding that sentient creatures are not the same under dissimilar circumstances. If brutes could be considered to have some knowledge of themselves, to act like brutes and to feel like them, without reference to any human opinions whatever, forthcoming literature of this kind would be benefited.
In those parts of the world where the wolf comes in contact with people not well prepared to receive him, his attitude towards mankind is aggressive. In Eastern Europe, for example, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and through the Danubian states generally, wolves occupy quite a distinguished position for dangerousness, and the inhabitants regard them with any other feeling than that of contempt. Captain Spencer (“Turkey, Russia, the Black Sea, and Circassia”), while passing through that vast forest which separates the more settled tracts of Moldavia from the Buckowina, was besieged in a half-ruined chalet with his companions, and the pack continued their attack all night, and lost heavily.
The coyote,—Canis latrans,—that thieving creature which is often found intermingled with the gray and other coated wolves on the great plains of North America, has been by some writers—Colonel Dodge, for example—discriminated from the prairie wolf as a separate species. Those differences which exist between them, however, have little classificatory value. Contrasts in size, dissimilarities in color, marking, and the growth of hair, are all seen in the common wolf, of which this is “a distinct but allied species,” with northern and southern varieties.