Eastern Timber Wolf Canis lupus By: Maja Classification Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Carnivora Family: Canideo Genus: Canis Species: lupus Sub-species: lycaon

Natural History

The Eastern timber wolf is the largest and most common type of wolf. They are mammals and warm-blooded, which means they have a constant body temperature.

Wolves have changed and adapted a lot over the past thirty million years. It all started with the animal Cynadictis. The Cynadictis is an ancient ancestor of the wolf. It has the same number of teeth as the wolf, but the Cynadictis was much smaller and more flexible, like a weasel. The Cynadictis bred with the animal Cynodesmus. The animal that was made become more solid and its legs became longer. It then started looking something like a wolf and fox.

Then in a couple of million years the creature that was made from the Cynadictis and Cynodesmus bred with the animal Tomarctus. From that animal the creature looked more like a wolf than a fox because it grew bigger and bigger.

People started taming them about 12,000 years ago, like dogs. The Eastern timber wolf one of the thirty different species of the Gray Wolf (Canis lupus). It was first found in North America in 1775.

Wolves have been feared by humans for centuries and because of that people made up folklore and fables about them. Most of what people know about wolves comes from fiction, from bedtime stories. Some folklores and fables that feature a wolf as the villain are The Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs. All the fables and folklore have given the wolves a bad reputation. There is an, old saying that the wolf is a symbol of evil and badness. For example, “To keep the wolf from the door” means to prevent hunger and poverty and “A wolf in sheep's clothing” describes a person who acts friendly, but is evil inside. Fables make people think wolves attack people, even though there has never been a documented report of a wolf attacking a human in the US.

Habitat

Eastern timber wolves are social animals, so they live in family groups or packs. In each pack or family group there is one male and female, the breeding pair, and their pups. Each family group or pack has their own territory of about 20 to 120 square miles.

Eastern timber wolves habitats are in forests, Arctic tundra, plains, and mountains. They are not found in tropical forests, arid deserts, or the highest mountains because it’s too hot or too cold for them to survive in, and their prey can’t be found in tropical forests and arid deserts. Eastern timber wolves only live in the northern latitudes of the world.

Eastern timber wolves once ranged from eastern and northern US. and throughout Canada to the Hudson Bay. They also ranged over most of Europe and some of Asia. Now they are only found in northeastern US, Southern Canada, eastern Europe and a little in Asia. They are now found in about five states of the United States.

Present Status

Eastern timber wolves are extirpated in Maine.

Physical Description

The Eastern timber wolf is the largest wild member of the Canid family. They look like German shepherd dogs, but they have longer legs, bigger feet, and wider heads. The height, at the shoulders, is 26-36 inches. Females weigh about 65-85 lbs. and males weigh 80-95 lbs. The males are bigger than the females. The length of a female, from the nose to the tip of the tail, is 5-6 feet and 5.5-6.5 feet for the males. Their tracks are 3.5-4 inches wide and 4.5-5 inches long. Their tails are very bushy and they’re about 15-19 inches long.

The Eastern timber wolf has short, small, triangular ears. They have shorter ears than domestic dogs and they have more rounded ears than coyotes. They have long, slender legs. Eastern timber wolves can be any color from white to black with varying shades of gray and tan. In the winter, its neck, shoulders, and rump become darker.

Diet and Feeding Habits

All wolves have excellent senses of vision, smelling, and hearing. Because of that, they are deadly predators. An Eastern timber wolf can see, smell, and hear a deer more than a mile away. When they hunt, they kill animals that are the easiest to capture, like the young, old, and diseased.

All wolves are carnivores, which means they eat mostly meat and they are consumers, which means that they eat other living organisms for food. An eastern timber wolf mostly eats deer, bison, elk, mice, rabbits, and rodents. Sometimes, they eat moose and caribou, when they’re able to hunt one. It can eat up to 20 pounds of meat in one meal and it usually eats all parts of its prey. An Eastern timber wolf also eats livestock or garbage when their preferred prey is unavailable. After it eats, it can go without food for about two weeks and sometimes even longer.

The Eastern timber wolf’s food diet changes as the seasons change. In the winter, it eats a lot of deer and hares. In the spring and fall, it eats a lot of beavers because there are a lot of them around at that time of the year. In the summer, it eats mostly small mammals, like rabbits and rodents.

Threats and Causes of Endangerment

Wolves have lots of threats in Maine, especially people. Wolves have always been seen as a threat. People have hunted them down for centuries because people didn't like wolves. Before a law was passed to protect the wolves, bounties were offered to hunters to kill them for money.

Wolves have an important niche in their habitat. When people hunted down elk, bison, and deer, the wolves didn't have as much wild game to eat in the winter. Then the wolves started to eat the farmer’s livestock. The farmers got mad and shot or poisoned the wolves. Then people transformed wolves' habitat into farmland, towns, and oil fields, so that messed up their habitat.

Wolves are much rarer now and their population now occupies only 1% of the range they used to live on. In the last half of the 19-century an estimated two million Eastern timber wolves were shot, trapped, and poisoned. The last reported Eastern timber wolf, in Maine, was shot in 1996. Ever since, no one has ever seen one in Maine.

There are a few reintroduction programs in the United States to save the wolves from being totally extinct. There are reintroduction programs in Yellowstone National Park.

Personal Essay

Q: What is the value of wilderness to modern society?

A: This expedition has made me think about important issues in Maine that I never really thought about. People should take the time to think about the environment and how it’s being destroyed. Then someone should actually do something to help stop it from being destroyed and help all the animals that are getting endangered.

Wilderness should be very important to people and they should value it very much. I can’t imagine living in a world that didn’t have wilderness. I don’t really think it would be very possible for humans to survive in a world without wilderness for a very long time. If there wasn’t wilderness in the world everything and every living organism would be effected.

We are affected by wilderness in many ways. If there weren’t any rivers, lakes, and oceans then we wouldn’t have any water to drink. If there weren’t any trees, then we wouldn’t fresh air to breathe. If there weren’t any animals and plants, no one wouldn’t have anything to eat and there wouldn’t be a foodchain. Wilderness gives a lot back to people.

Other than the beauty it gives to us, it helps us survive and it provides us money. In Maine there is a lot of wilderness; that's why people come here for vacation, to enjoy it. Because tourists come here, we get money for it. We also produce millions and billions of trees. From those trees we sell lumber and make lots of money from it too. But I also think, the money shouldn’t be as important as the beauty of wilderness so, we shouldn’t get too carried away and cut too many all at once.

My animal, the Eastern timber wolf, is very important to the wilderness. It’s important to the wilderness because the wilderness provides food for it, like deer and elk. Even though my wolf isn’t a prey to any animal, it is still very important to the food chain. If there weren’t any wolves then there would be a over population of deer and elk. Another reason wilderness is important to wolves is because my animal lives in forests, plains, and mountains and if there wasn’t any of those habitats then my animal wouldn’t survive.


Bibliography:

1. Barden, Benardo. “Wolves.” Endangered Wildlife and Plants of the World. 2001.

2. Green, Jen. Wolves. Connecticut: Grolier Educational. 2001.

3. Reid, Mary E. Wolves and Other Wild Dogs. Chicago: World Book, Inc. 2002.

4. Canis lupus lycaon. 3-10-03. http://www.tigress.com/rif/mamals/wolves/lupus.html. (3-10-03).

5. Eastern Timber Wolf. 9/11/01. http://www.kerwoodwolf.com/Timber.htm. (2-27-03)