Ologies with Alie Ward - Lupinology (WOLVES) with Bridgett vonHoldt

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

Wolf howls, wolf packs, wolf pups and more! As the holiday Wolfenoot approaches, lupinologist and Princeton professor Dr. Brigette vonHoldt sits down to talk about her research looking at everything from wolf populations to modern dog behavior, canine family dynamics, Game of Thrones direwolves, Yellowstone wolfies, the ecological impact of predators, if wolves howl at the moon, myths and truths about alphas, the wolf movie she refuses to see, how dog and human genetics are similar, and how you can help our lupine friends. Also: how social media is howling for humans.The vonHoldt Lab: https://vonholdt.princeton.eduBenefunder for Dr. vonHoldtFollow Dr. vonHoldt at www.twitter.com/thebeepzA donation went to: https://redwolves.com/newsite/Sponsor links: thegreatcoursesplus.com/OLOGIES; kiwicodot.com/OLOGIES; TakeCareOf.com (code: OLOGIES); periodbetter.com (code: OLOGIES)More links up at alieward.com/ologies/lupinologyTranscripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extrasBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologiesOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and STIIIICKERS!Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologiesFollow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWardSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh hey, it's your sense of thirst, just wishing that you could distinguish me from hunger. Halliborne. Back with another episode of oligies. Okay, so every morning I wake up and I get punched in the face by a wolf and I call this she-wolf gremlin. She weighs 12 pounds. She looks kind of like a dirty mop possessed by an angel and she does hit me in the face in the morning when she sees my eyes are open.

She tries to gently tap my eyes to say, it's time to watch me make water, old lady. So often I start my day with a claw in my nostril. I love it. She is the result of between 18 to 32,000 years of genetic diversion and selective tinkering and she is a wolf in pootily sheepskin. She is a daughter who will never tell me I suck and then asked to borrow the car. And this week we talk about her and her ancestors, the wolf. But before we do, a little business, so thank you to everyone at patreon.com slash oligies

who contributes as little as 25 cents an episode to submit your questions. I named gremlin after your aunts because I love you all so much. Also thank you to everyone walking around and stuff from oligiesmerch.com. Thanks to everyone who tweets and grams and tic chats, snap talks about oligies for spreading the word that the world can be wonderful and it is always weird if we just stop to understand it. And thanks to everyone who writes and subscribes, most of all who leaves reviews to keep the podcast up in the top 10 science pods out there and also for me to see and make my day

such as more than a little confused. You said, I was just talking to my grandpa and got to amaze him with my knowledge of spideronology. Thanks dad. And he asked me where I heard this. So I told him about oligies and he was curious. So I started giving him examples of some of my favorite episodes, Corbett Thanatology, Mycology, etc.

And mentioned the demonology show to which he said, where could you get these? And I said there was a podcast app on your phone and it's called oligies, moral of the story somewhere in the world an old man may be listening to you talk about demon sex. You're welcome. More than a little confused, boy howdy thank you and to your cool grandpa, hi, welcome to our world. Sorry, I swear so much. Okay, Lupinology, the study of wolves.

Now would a wolf biologist call themselves a lupinologist? No, hell no. They'd be like, hi, I'm a wolf biologist. And here I make the rules and I make the guess where full regalia of their ology. This person is a lupinologist from the Latin lupus meaning wolf. Okay, so what are you doing on November 23rd? I'll tell you, you're celebrating Wolfenut. This is a secular global holiday.

It dates way back to 2018 when a then seven year old New Zealander proclaimed to his mother Jack's goss that November 23rd of every year is when the spirit of the wolf brings and hides small gifts around the house for everyone. And people who have, have had or are kind to dogs get better gifts than anyone else. So you eat roast meat because wolves eat meat and a cake decorated like a full moon. And according to a very helpful frequently asked questions at Wolfenut.com, vegetarians can partake of course, just roast and eat whatever you like. The official model is no hate, only snoot boops.

And the customary greeting is have a howly Wolfenut. So in anticipation of this day, I emailed a well-known lupinologist to ask for an interview and I got a two word response. No thanks, burn. So I reached out to another awesome one and she said, sure, but first requested a list of the questions I'd be asking and I thought, what's with wolf people? Why are they such PR divas? Oh boy, I found out while doing my research that wolf biology is a hotbed of strong opinions,

expert retractions, debate, public controversy and delicious ecological drama. So buckle up. So I sent this amazing, kind and brilliant real life wolf scientist a list of some questions and assured her, I just want to know more about wolves. I'm not out to stir up any trubs. I'm not throwing anyone under any buses. She's like, cool, we set a time. So she got a bachelor's in psychology and then went on to do a master's in biology

at NYU. She got her PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA. She's now a professor. So this past Saturday morning on her day off because she is so kind, we embraced the magic of video conference as her dog was tragically downstairs and out of frame, but as a consolation, her cat was on her lap and we covered a ton of ground as a pack of two, three, I guess with a cat about what a wolf is and wolf DNA and how they hunt and alpha wolves and howling and moons and fur and teeth and hunting and lone wolves and being raised by wolves and

how domestic dogs are like eternal puppies and how they have similar genes to some of us and where coyotes factor in and if she will be celebrating wolf anute on November 23rd. So it invites some friends over, roast something, decorate a full mooncake and hide little gifts to people who are kind, especially wolves and doggos. But first duck into the den and fill your heart with wolf facts with biologist and lupinologist Dr. Bridget Von Holt. So Dr. Wolf, as she does not wish to be called, is now an associate professor at Princeton

University and has been working with wolves and wolf data for nearly 15 years. That is 105 dog years. And I want to be vulnerable and let you know that I went to the trouble of pulling up a calculator app to figure that out. I started working on anything related to canines in 2004. That's when I joined Dr. Robert Wayne's lab at UCLA, Bob, affectionately Bob. From there, everything took off basically. I was able to expand out from just wolf focus.

We were then able to investigate dog and dog evolution and then coyotes and red wolves and anything else. Were you always interested in science? Were you always kind of an outdoor kid or an indoor kid? My dad was in the military. So for what I consider the formable years of exposure, we lived in Florida. So I say we because I have a twin sister and my memories are always wrapped with her in it. So we would play out across the street and in Florida, just across from our house, there

was a little estuary. So it seemed just so mysterious what was in the water, what could live in the water versus sort of in this very unpredictable environment of tide. So that really sparked my interest in biology in general. We were always animal lovers and wanted to protect endangered species and try to save the world. And that just butted into where I started, which was conservation focused research. Are your sister, are you guys identical or fraternal?

We are identical. Do you think that informed any interest you had in genetics at all? This is such a popular question and I really wish that I could say yes. It really didn't enter my scope of thinking until I was much older and already interested in biology and science in general. Yeah, I think for a long time it just seemed like such a special relationship, but nothing that was, I don't know, entirely unique. And the older I get, the more I realize siblings vary quite dramatically in their relationships,

let alone twins, whether they're identical or not. So I do spend a lot of time now thinking about twin-based studies and though we're supposedly sharing nearly every one of our nucleotides and have very similar upbringings in very similar environments, we have our differences. So I do end up thinking about that now more so than when I was a child. Her sister, also a scientist, but works to protect waterways, so she deserves a Wolfenut gift for that. But how did Bridget end up running with wolves?

She said she was never really a dog or a cat person, but after her masters in biology, she happened to be emailing labs, asking if they were hiring for research positions, just putting herself out there, like making cold calls, but by typing. Bob, Bob Wayne, had replied to my interest in looking for a research position by saying, basically, we have hundreds of samples of Yellowstone gray wolves in our freezer and we've been waiting to analyze them, which shocked me that they were just sitting there ready. No one was using them or the story was no one owned them in a research way.

And I said, I would love to do that. And it all was really based in conservation effort, which is exactly where I had started my highest level of enthusiasm. The basis of conservation efforts for the Yellowstone wolf population, it was brand new. No one had done anything. And he hired me essentially over email. And that was the start of the canine work and that focus on conservation was so exciting

for me. And did you have to move to Los Angeles for that, or were you based in LA? No, I had to move to Los Angeles. I had just been living in New York City. I graduated with my master's from NYU and I wanted to do something. So I picked up and drove cross country with my cat and my dad. Dad drove over to help pick up all of my stuff. I mean, I didn't have that much.

I was living in a New York apartment. So we packed everything into a single car and did a two or three day trip. We stopped to visit my sister, of course, in Wisconsin and then completed the way all the way down through Colorado, which is where he was based. My parents were living and then up through Los Angeles. What was it like when you got to Bob's lab and you got to see the freezer with the samples? Were you like, let me add them? Yeah, it was pretty amazing.

I was just shocked that this opportunity lay ripe for someone to come in and just tinker with and put their own spin on things. So it was such an incredible moment. There were hundreds of samples. If I remember anywhere between 400 and 500, I think blood samples and tissue samples. The Yellowstone biologists, park biologists work annually to monitor their wolves. So they not only take blood samples when they color them and look at their overall health, but opportunistically when they run into carcasses or if there happens to be any hunting

permitted over the years, usually they'll get some sort of voucher specimen from the trapping or hunting efforts. So there was just tubes, racks full of tubes in the freezer and it just made for a lot of work in the beginning, a lot of organizing, but it just felt like the perfect thing. I felt so lucky. I was just at the right place at the right time. I honestly think there's so much more of that in people's careers in science than what maybe we acknowledge that you're just thinking about the right thing at the right time with

the right technology or the right people. And so I felt like that was the beginning of my career. But this is a stupid basic question, but what is a wolf? What's the difference between a wolf and a coyote and a big fox and a domestic dog? Genetically speaking. Oh, okay. Genetically. Well, so all of these animals are carnivores, they're in carnivora.

And that means that there's a defining feature to be a carnivore and this is usually talking about skeletal shape and cranial shape and teeth morphology. So to eat meat, you have to have certain physiology, you have to have certain teeth structure to cut and shear that meat. There's usually some olfaction and visual sense in terms of being a predator that eats, has a meat-based diet. Within carnivora, we're going to focus on more of the canine related families and species. Foxes, coyotes, dog-like species, they do have common ancestors.

So they do arise from this ancestral carnivore. The ecology that has shaped each of these lineages, their diet, their social nature, all of this variation is quite incredible. So wolves, broadly speaking, live across much of the northern parts of all of the continents. This is called a whole arctic distribution. We usually find them in temperate or much more higher latitudes. Coyotes are a North American evolved canine species. So you only find coyotes in North America.

Jackals are also the Eurasian version, basically, that we don't have jackals that evolved in North America. They are both a little bit smaller, typically, than a gray wolf. They live in a very different type of ecology. So if we focus on North America, which is the continent I'm a little better at, coyotes and wolves, though they both live on this continent, they do essentially segregate out based on habitat and the presence of the other. Coyotes don't typically live in a pack structure, although they have been known to form packs

over the course of their evolution. But typically coyotes mate as a pair and don't really form any larger groups than that. Coyotes have a much larger group. They will predate on much larger species, and they competitively take larger prey, whereas coyote might come up and then try to steal whatever prey or carcass items are left from a wolf, and that's where conflict will usually happen. And wolves are known to kill coyote. Alternatively, coyotes can gang up and kill wolves, especially if it's injured or malnourished

or young. So there is competition between those two species. And how big is a wolf? What kind of dog size would you compare it to? Well, actually, malamutes can be much larger than wolves. So, yeah, I've seen malamutes well over 120 pounds, and wolves can be very close to that size, but generally you can get them anywhere from 80 pounds upwards to 100 and 120. So dogs can be larger than wolves, but also we've bred them to be incredibly large, and

maybe their diets have something to do with it, whether or not they're larger. But wolves are pretty substantial creatures. Okay, so how many species of wolves are there all over the world? I had no idea. Like 100 species? I don't know. And I thought I'd get a clean answer, but holy moly, is it herky-jerky and murky. So if you like drama, you will freaking love wolves, man.

So I rolled up my yellow sweater sleeves and I dug in to find three. What? On earth? Did you know this? Okay, first, let's just beep, beep, back this puppy up. So the genus Canis includes jackals and coyotes and wolves and doggos and thingos, and even the dire wolf, which has been extinct for roughly 10,000 years. Don't let George R. R. Martin pointy-wool over your eyes.

Dire wolf, two words as a real animal and extinct. Dire wolf, one word, game of thrones, fiction. Okay, so the alive species of wolf on the planet include the African golden wolf, the Ethiopian wolf, and in North America and across Eurasia, Canis lupus. Now America studies have shown, we got one wolf, Canis lupus, the gray wolf, plus a bunch of subspecies. So the timber wolf, that's a gray wolf, arctic wolf, gray wolf, Mexican wolf, this gray wolf, the extinct Oregonian brown wolf, that's a gray wolf, the buffalo wolf, or loafer wolf,

which was hunted to extinction in 1926, it's also Canis lupus, that's a gray wolf. Okay, there's also a red wolf in the Carolinas, and here is where wolf experts throw down. So there is a ton of debate that's gone on for decades and decades about if the smaller ruddy wolf of the American Southeast is its own species and thus protected, or a hybrid of a gray wolf and a coyote, and thus should be vulnerable to more hunting. As it stands in 2019, it's endangered, but it's protected, and is considered its own species, but many scientists are like, ugh, is it though? A lot of DNA says it's a hybrid.

But let's drop it and move on to the flaxen fields and golden snow of Yellowstone. I know that this is a broad topic, but if you had to give a little bit of a history and an update on what is happening with Yellowstone wolves and what's been going on in the last couple decades, like break it down. It's been an incredible journey. I do have to say I feel spoiled in working with the population of animals in Yellowstone and the Rocky Mountains more broadly, as well as the people involved. So not only did I meet these wonderful people, but I was faced with trying to help address

the questions that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had with respect to the recovery and the future of this endangered wolf. So at the time, they were on the endangered list and needing serious recovery efforts. So part of their goal to think about long-term recovery and delisting, one aspect of that was genetic surveys, and the genetic survey was broken down into a series of objectives. Can we validate breeding pairs? Can we validate their reproductive success? How many offspring?

What is the future of those offspring? Do they go and reproduce? Do they disperse? If they disperse, where do they go? Are they traversing the state boundaries for much longer distances? Lupinologists have questions such as who is boning whom and how far do they disperse? So some wolves can travel 10 to 30 miles a day and make it over 500 miles from their home territory and like them and their fluffy paws, their government protections are also

all over the place, depending on the year. Now that outcome kind of changes depending on the political situation, the community support, and the agenda of the recovery program. So the Rocky Mountain Grey wolves originally started off as a federal managed set of populations and over time eventually some of those wolves were handed over to either the Idaho Fish and Game Government or Montana or Wyoming respectively. Yellowstone as a national park always has the protection of the species within the boundaries as these populations are connected and they might exchange individuals and then they might have

seasons where they're allowed to have permits for take and hunting and trapping. And then other years they switch back to protection. It's been kind of a roller coaster in seeing how this science is applied and translated and then even facing public comment, what do people think about it? People that live in the area compared to people who don't live in the area. So it's been a really intense and sometimes very frustrating process. So as you can imagine, the country is very divided on this issue. Some folks are like, get bent wolves, you ate my cow.

And others are like, the wolves were here before us and we shouldn't slaughter them to extinction because of ethics and their important role in ecology. So when I wanted to just tiptoe carefree through the wolf land, I did not realize what a thorny landscape this was. How is the wolf population in Yellowstone right now and compared to what it used to be? So the Rocky Mountains generally have really seen a giant increase in the wolf population since their reintroduction in 1995. Most of the numbers kind of settle off at a plateau,

which reflects what the habitat is willing and capable of supporting as well as the local community of people. When there are fluctuations, sometimes we have a larger population in one year compared to other years where we might reach a low. Much of that can be looked at in terms of if disease is hitting the population. Maybe one year we have something like distemper or parvo or mange, which can impact the survival of the pups of that year. So we'll see these lovely fluctuations that do reflect natural process.

But when we look at that in a larger context of are there permits to hunt and trap wolves? Are there prey, whether it's elk or smaller prey items? Are they available? Are they not? That really gives us a complex ecosystem. So the wolves generally do well if we don't step in and start changing policies from year to year. As we see animals moving across landscapes, though, they start entering into new locations where wolves haven't been for a number of decades. And we can start asking questions about how many are,

is the local community willing to support, which is a different question than what is the ecosystem capable of supporting? Now the reintroduction, how did that work? Now were wolves just like at a zero and then they were raised in captivity and then reintroduced? What was that comeback like? Yes, it's such an incredible story in my opinion. So in North America, gray wolves historically had been found at higher abundance in like Rocky Mountain habitats, temperate forests throughout the lower 48.

So we're just going to focus on the lower 48 instead of Canada. Sorry. And as humans had gone through and converted landscapes and created agricultural farmland, this really changed and altered where wolf habitat was found. And over that amount of time, there was also prosecution of not only gray wolves, but also coyotes and any other canine that basically threatened livelihoods, whether they were viewed as pests, whether they were eating your animals, your hoof stock. So they being canines had been heavily targeted for control management.

Side note, control management means killed for years with bounties. And I did a little digging and according to a Montana.gov website between 1871 and 1875, an estimated 34,000 wolves were killed in Northern Montana and Southern Alberta. The bounty for each one between $1 and $10, 34,000 wolves killed in four years. So yes, wolves were hella shot. Unsurprisingly, they disappeared from large swaths of the lower 48 states, although the populations are still doing well up in Alaska. Wolves were essentially defined as extirpated in the lower 48 in the early 1900s, 1920s, 1930s.

It was really rare to have a sighting of a gray wolf. In the Rocky Mountains, there were a series of years where perhaps there were no sightings of canines and they were deemed locally extirpated at least. There might still have been. And what we suspect now is that there are a handful of animals highly elusive living in the depths of the Rocky Mountain forests. And we possibly have some genetic evidence of that. It's very minimal and it's very rare and it's from decades ago.

Quick aside, what does extirpated mean? So I looked this up for us and it means locally extinct. So the species lives on but not in that area. So some wolfies were maybe hiding out just like, try and shoot my sneaky ass suckers. And then in the era of corvettes and discos and sequined jumpsuits, something else magical happened in America. When we essentially found that there was public support in the mid-1970s and early 1980s

to bring back this predator, this carnivore, that the government then devised this plan on great, what are we going to do? How do we identify wolves from where and bring them down to the central part of the American Rocky Mountains? There were a series of biologists that were capable of identifying and trapping wolves from comparable habitats in Canada, in a couple different provenances of Canada, that they identify two locations, two source populations,

and enough local trappers were aiding out our government agents to trap a number of individuals from the same location. So lupinologists turned their eyes to the great white north, but let's talk family dynamics first. So if we back up, we have this expectation that wolves travel in family groups, or at least groups of relatives, and the success of a particular individual is highly dependent upon having group members with it, so pack members. Most of the livelihood of wolves depends upon multiple individuals coordinated in their social

hunting and also cooperative raising of young and caring for each other. So the goal was to identify some source populations in Canada and capture, live capture, a handful of individuals. So we potentially maintain this pack cohesion where upon release somewhere, these animals still maintain their group structure, still potentially had higher success as a group than you would find if you released one wolf somewhere on its own in the middle of a brand new place. So these two source populations had locals helping out our government agents,

trapping handfuls of individuals, putting ear tags on them, minimizing the time that we could keep them in captivity for transport. And then the goal of the recovery was to release wolves in two locations. One was Yellowstone National Park and the other one was in central Idaho. So half of those animals went to Idaho, half of them came to Yellowstone. The Idaho recovery plan was considered a hard release and it's called that because you essentially transport the crate with the animal and you open its door in its new location and out it goes and you wish it luck and here we released a handful at a time.

Yellowstone implemented a soft release which was to put animals into a one-acre acclimation pen which minimized human interaction but it also allowed what is is hypothesized, this acclimation to a new habitat, perhaps new prey items. So some of the park biologists would periodically, I think it was every month, maybe it was more frequent than that, I don't recall, bring in fresh carcasses and eventually after about a month in the, I think it was a month in the acclimation pen, they would just cut a hole or break open the fence and allow the wolves to leave on their own. So that soft release and hard release, the government wasn't sure which would be most

suitable for pack cohesion and turns out there wasn't really any major difference between the two. Six or one half doesn't matter. And Yellowstone has a long history now of something like 12 or so packs who have come in, been formed and their lineage is now very rich over the 25 years that they've been there. Is it 25? Yeah, something like that. So since reintroduction, the Yellowstone gray wolf population has fluctuated between 2003's high of 174 wolves at once to, as of September 2019, there are 60 wolves in Yellowstone. So that means there are more rockets at Radio City Music Hall than there are wolves

in all 3,500 square miles of Wyoming's protected national park land. And how long do wolves live? Oh, so in captivity, they can live quite a while in this little posh luxury element of being given food and the safety. In Yellowstone, there's usually a mortality rate at about four and a half years that two to four and a half is an average lifespan depending upon again, what's the cause of mortality. There's a lot of interest specific mortality, which means that wolves kill other wolves. So whether it's territorial disputes or some other event, wolves are absolutely known for having battles that end in the mortality of con specifics. PS, some of the finest people on the planet don't know what

con specific means and had to Google it just now. And it means animals or plants belonging to the same species, but they also get that. Yeah, right. They, they are very social creatures. They maintain territories. And even though there is recognition of relatives, there are debates about how do you acquire new territory? Or if you're a disperser and you need to find a mate and you need to have a new home range, because you're going to have a litter, how do you acquire that new space and those resources to support that, especially in a landscape, maybe that's saturated with other wolf populations already. So this battle usually does result in a give and take of boundaries. There's expansion or shrinking of home ranges. And then there's usually conflict,

either around resources or territory usage. There's a lot of wolf drama. What exactly is a pack dynamic like? Is there an alpha? Is there a beta? Do they take care of the elderly wolves if they make it that long? What is that little pod like? Yeah, so it's very complicated. The original description of wolf society and this lovely idea of altruism and cooperation, that is still maintained, but it's not necessarily that cookie cutter that every wolf pack is going to have that size and shape and dynamic. So there are many packs that do enjoy this traditional idea of monogamous breeding pairs that have annual litters of pups and maybe some of their older offspring will maintain membership

in the pack to help care for the next generation of offspring. These packs do exist. There are, however, many other structures of packs where there could be a single male that breeds with as many female as he can. Most of the time, nearly all of the time, they're unrelated to him. So there is this element of avoiding inbreeding and kin recognition. But there are lots of structures and variation to that pack structure. But again, we love to have this idea that wolves are just always going to care exclusively for their pack members. There is a lot of provisioning for everybody else in the pack. But there is still this battle between I want to reproduce, I want to be the dominant individual in the pack. And that battle can be very much shaped by age and resource

availability, body size, maybe just personalities of individuals. There are wolves that might be far more bold and others that are far more shy that will shape how they interact in a pack and what that means for their rank in that system. What the hell was that? What was that? Because don't take away my guess. I have four guests. And if you want to do something at your house, I think I was a mahostess. And I originally said, are you really saying this out loud right now? All right, let's move on to house pups and apartment doggos and domestic pillow snorglers. You mentioned at the top of this that your dog is downstairs. What kind of dog is it? I have an old English sheepdog. She was the the runt of her litter and she's also food

picky. And so she's kind of a miniature English sheepdog. Just for visual reference, an English sheepdog kind of looks like a Swiffer that's dusty gray in some parts and clean and white in the head area. But it's also giant and alive. Some scientists report that an English sheepdog at the front of its face has two orbs that it uses to see. But in most of the photos I've looked at, it just has a smiling mouth and a boopable snoot and heavy banks. Noise. That sounds like the cutest muppet ever in the world. When it comes to domestic dogs and wolves, I feel like everyone has this question. How far down the line are they? How different genetically are they? And how did we get like hairless Chihuahuas out of a wolf? How did we domesticate that? Yeah, dogs and wolves

are really curious. They aren't very different at all. The ability, this is a huge and important question for evolutionary biologists in asking, how do we get such variation when we look at dogs? How do we get that when we have these dog breeds that we know came from this basic cookie cutter of a wolf? Wolves don't vary that much. They might have different colors. They might have slightly shorter fur, maybe thinner fur if they live in an arid desert environment and a thicker coat if they're more arctic. But they're not that different in size and shape as you get in dogs. So a lot of the work that's been done to understand the genetics behind why dogs are so diverse shows that there are a lot of mutations that have happened over the course of their domestication

and it can be very few that happen that disrupt genes very quickly and you get a brand new appearance. So a puppy in a litter might carry a brand new mutation and look totally different from its parents. That puppy might have a very interesting and desirable look. So whatever breeder happens upon this dog will want to, if this is their goal, then they can use that dog and breed that dog further in hopes that that mutation gets passed on, maybe amplified as they're tinkering with who they're breeding with and you get these brand new sizes and shapes. So something like a hairless, hairless anything is usually the result of a simple mutation that impacts the formation of hair. So even in Chihuahuas though, or these Chinese Crestids that are typically hairless, having two

copies of that hairless mutation is lethal. So you won't have animals that carry both copies of that gene. They can only carry one copy to be hairless. And that means every now and then you'll have a dog that has, it's called a powder puff form that a Chinese Crestid is actually then going to be covered in hair and it looks nothing like the hairless form. But that helps maintain a lower level of inviability in the offspring. So you have to have that segregating in the breed in order to keep the hairless actually a phenotype that's present. Is dog breeding interesting for evolutionary biologists because it's like evolution super accelerated? Yes, the domestication process and the presence of new phenotypes

or the origin of new phenotypes has been a pretty rapid history and it's already been done. So I don't have to go into the lab and breed mice or flies or something else to see if I get the mutation and then to investigate it further. I already have these mutations and we know essentially how dog breeds are related to each other. We know how they're related to wolves. And I can go through and do a genetic survey that tells me essentially when and where these mutations occur. And alternatively, we can learn about health and well-being. So much of this is also anchored in understanding cancers and allergies and other syndromes to help us understand health of these animals in relation to their breed origin. But also we can learn about humans

too from that from that perspective. So I'd always heard that part of what makes dogs the best is that they are goofy, floopy doofuses like big hairy babies. So science calls this genetic, suspended childhood innocence and kindness neoteny. I call it the thing that makes me want to wear my dog in a baby peon and give her everything she desires. I asked Bridget what the deal is. Right. So dogs, domestic dogs represent this unique change in development. And a lot of understanding that we still don't understand a lot of that. Let's put it that way. That even my advisor, when he was conducting his post-doc work, he was looking at this retention of juvenile traits in dogs, especially when you see the lack of that in wolves. So wolves mature

into adulthood. They go through all developmental stages at a pace that's expected. In dogs, through domestication and some genetic changes, it seems that dogs retain their juvenile and puppy-like appearance and behavior and vocalizations much longer. In fact, some will argue that some breeds, as adults, don't even really look like adults. They've maintained this baby-like nature for their entire lives. Just a man, baby. So a wolf is not typically interested that long in humans. But a dog has this incredible, most of the time, incredible draw to interact with people, to seek out that attention, and to have an interaction. So what was interesting is throughout some of my research, through my PhD with Bob Wayne

and continued on now in my own group, that we found some genetic changes in genes that we don't know that much about in dogs, but have been described very strongly and extensively in humans. So we found a set of genes. We actually only found a couple of them. The family of genes are known to shape the syndrome in humans called Williams syndrome, or Williams-Beren syndrome. And in humans, this is a syndrome that's caused by a giant deletion of genes. Up to 30 genes can be deleted in a person diagnosed with Williams syndrome. That the deletion of these genes results in a variety of clinical features and characteristics. There's some congenital heart disease. There's some systematic concerns. But for me, my interest lies in the behavioral

characteristics of the syndrome, which is that people with Williams syndrome are often really, really friendly. So Williams syndrome, which is also called Williams-Beren syndrome, is a genetic condition. And it presents with these wide smiles, kind of elfin features, starry patterns in the eyes, some possible cardiac and learning issues. And Bridget says a lack of fear of strangers. And when we think about dogs, potentially, as really amplifying one of these traits of Williams syndrome, it's this lack of stranger danger and this interest in interacting with people, essentially being distracted from a job or a task if there's a person nearby. It's almost like you're spidey sense. Is there a person around? If there is, and you're a dog, you want to interact

with them. I don't care what I'm doing. Dogs, that feeling is mutual. And so what we've really been trying to investigate is how does this actually, does this appear in dogs? How can we quantify it? And does this relate to the same genes? And we're finding that, I'm not saying this is the end of the story, but it does seem like a lot of the same genes involved in human Williams syndrome and the behavioral changes. We see a lot of the same genes altered and modified in dogs. And what we're doing is trying to quantify of the different mutations an individual dog can carry. We already have ways to predict how social they are probably going to be with people. Although this is couched in the idea that you're still shaped by your upbringing and your early experiences in life, we have to

account for that. But if we also just know the genotype, we have some fraction of that prediction that we can make. So it all makes for a very possible story that just needs a lot more effort to unravel. Bridget says that, of course, different individuals of the same breed can have much different personalities, kind of like a golden retriever can be sassy or shy or playful or mellow and there may be genetic markers for those traits. So if you heard the personality psychology episode, thatologist talks about how much genetics influences our personalities versus environment. I honestly think about that episode constantly. So we are who we are. So let's just accept ourselves and each other. No hate, only snoot poops. Will you be celebrating Wolfenut?

I feel like I do that as often as I can anyways. I do believe that you deserve extra little presents for being kind to wolves and dogs though. I would love to have that. That's such a lovely idea. I mean, I think there's always this dichotomy and culture that wolves are amazing presence in our world. And that's contrasted with this idea of big bad wolves and wolves will stalk you and bite you. And I understand the cultural differences between each of those experiences. I find that it feels like a very sad empty world if we don't have wolves in it. They not only hold a very significant place in ecology, but also in interacting with human civilization throughout the course of

our history. This is where dogs come from. Dogs are a domesticated wolf and that bond in human civilizations and their function in helping humans evolve I think has is a really special relationship that very rarely exists with certainly other carnivores. Dogs are the first domestic species and they're this incredible carnivore. So to me every day is Wolfenut. Can I ask you some quick Patreon questions? Okay. Is that cool? Perfect. Okay, but before we get to your amazing and weird and insightful Patreon questions, a few words about sponsors who make it possible each week to donate to a cause of the oligarchs choosing. And this week Bridget shows the Red Wolf Coalition at RedWolves.com which teaches people about the value of Red

Wolves to the ecosystem and to the people living in the restoration area. The Red Wolf Coalition works with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Red Wolf Recovery Program to stay up to date on Red Wolf restoration and management issues and to partner in the effort to maintain healthy populations of wild Red Wolves. And remember this is the type of canine that people keep going back and forth about whether or not they deserve protection if they're not a separate species. And Bridget says, I continue to study Red Wolves and they currently need as much support as they can get from the public. And I'll put a link to the show notes for more about that charity. Now making that possible are a few sponsors of oligies which I may talk about right now.

Okay, back to your Lupine Inquisitions. Becky Woodruff wants to know has anyone ever actually been raised by wolves and any idea where that expression came from? Isn't there the mythology of the brothers of Rome that were raised by the mother she-wolf and she provided nutrition and safety to these two founders? I mean that to me perhaps extended further into our history might explain raised by wolves and either a positive or negative connotation. Yeah, it seems like the founders are roamed it okay. So it seems a bit of a misnomer in terms of an idiom but I'll look into it for sure. Okay, so side note. I looked into this to see if there were other origins and the legend of feral kids raised by wolves is apparently a

long-standing one but in the 1920s a preacher in India claimed to have rescued two young girls from a wolves den. Amala and Kamala as they were known walked on all fours were said to have preferred raw meat and not like people very much and tragically they died really young. Amala from a kidney infection at age three and Kamala from tuberculosis at 17 after a life of people trying to domesticate her. People didn't really buy his story about the wolves but history is peppered with tales of abandoned and so-called feral kids the founders of Rome being of course the poster children and that is very sad. Let's also consider that dogs who some researchers say have been domesticated to be more accepting of animals that are not conspecific will mother

abandon kittens and piglets and ducklings and I just went down a video rabbit hole watching dogs bottle feed lambs and we already suspected that we didn't deserve them but now we know factually. Now speaking of cherubs on leashes Ryan Clark wants to know if all dogs go to heaven does that include wolves? I don't see why it would exclude wolves. Yeah yeah they're doing their best out there. They're doing their best yeah. I like thinking that there's just a heaven that's just all just a bunch of wolves. Just a bunch of wolves. Yeah um bath buddy art in Anakin Geniac both asked about lone wolves are there any theories about why some wolves become loners? There are certainly many times in a wolf's life where they will absolutely choose to venture out

on their own and that could be the random sighting that you're you're kind of catching a wolf in mid dispersal or there's also perhaps this I don't know how commonly it's known but that wolf packs only exist as packs seasonally. No way. So in in winter when prey is usually a little more vigilant so snow is on the ground food for prey species like elk or caribou is harder to find they're usually more vigilant against predators because they're more vulnerable on snow surfaces if it's packed snow and their their long legs get stuck in it they're quite vulnerable so wolves really do well in the winter when they pack up and in the warm months when there's much more food resources they're often not in packs so you might see wolves on their own because they're just

out hanging out doing their wolfy thing they rendezvous with each other periodically but but wolves are often for a good half of the year in temperate zones on their own so lone wolves lone wolves absolutely exist they might be out in pairs hanging out with their favorite buddy or someone but it's often they're not always that close in touch with each other. So stopped using the term lone wolf as a symbol of nefarious and secretive evil wolves deserve better for canines doing their wolfy thing is just introverting kind of getting at a dodge for a bit being independent so the next time you leave a party early maybe don't irish goodbye in shame just interrupt the din of conversations with like a low soulful howl and say doing my wolfy thing i'm out that's power

move and aliyah and isabel b hopper both asked about a meme about the leader of the pack being the last one the closing ranks yeah that meme true or not so i believe that those behaviors exist so i kind of want to counter that with an example that i do know is true so many times it's hard to identify the animals of certain ranks so if you just get a picture and everyone's pointing to the last you know giant animal like that's the leader who's making sure no one falls behind there are packs that probably have that structure absolutely and especially in locations where wolves are watched every day so yellow stone people can visually recognize who is the dominant animal or pair of animals in the pack absolutely they will see that to follow up i do you know an example

coming from yellow stone where hunting is a very dangerous behavior so i would dare say that trekking through some wilderness is not actually the problem it's acquiring food where you're where animals are facing antlers or horns or hooves and kicks from the prey item they're trying to acquire and that's when mortality is actually most risky so in a pack structure however acquiring food has a very specific rank so the youngest animals don't always know what they're doing and the middle-aged animals have the most experience they're probably at their peak of physiology and muscle build and then we have usually the older animals which are running the pack and they're even though they essentially have all this knowledge they aren't always the

first one on the scene so the story goes that those middle kind of prime animals are the ones coming in at the most dangerous points because they know where to bite a prey an elk let's say they know where to bite and how to hold it they're using these moments as training experiences for the younger animals who will eventually assume those peak you know prime hunting roles and then at the last minute oftentimes we'll see the alpha run in once the the major drama has been like under control it's this weird balance of who's the most experienced versus who's actually kind of in control of things and making sure um either everything is done correctly or that they get the last say or that they're going to make sure that everything is done properly so there

are roles and these roles within a pack can change based on the environment and composition of a pack so yes that can be true but I don't I would I would hesitate to say that's exactly how wolf society work is that alpha kind of just being a manager in the background I don't know actually and that seems so political like coming in at the last moment for like press opportunities we got an elk everyone we got this elk everyone's like what you were you weren't even involved but the notion of an alpha male as we think of them in concrete terms like a CEO overseeing a terrified team of subordinates is a myth so canine ethologist David Meach who's studied wolf behavior for decades has disavowed some of his previous notions of alphas because they were based on captive wolf

packs of unrelated wolfies so in the wild most packs are just families of a pop and a ma and their pups and maybe a few other families and their kiddos maybe an unrelated straggler or two Meach did report seeing some dominance behaviors and in his 2010 paper titled prolonged intensive dominance behavior between gray wolves canis lupus he describes a time he witnessed what his team thinks was a dad wolf straddling and harassing what may have been his son kind of like a test before the son took off for his own territory so yes you've been hazed by your own dad oh and your mom when it comes to canine genomics just took a DNA test and she is in fact 100% that bitch a lot of people asked about movies okay okay do you have a favorite wolf movie maren mossman wants to

know does it bother you that when disney needs a threatening animal movies that they tend to pick wolves henna everhart wants to know how bad is teen wolf in regards to actual wolf behavior and anatomy any thoughts on wolves in the media teen teen wolf like yeah the michael j fox teen wolf movie where he turns into a wolf and he's like in high school yeah actually i think um a werewolf in um was it paris a werewolf in paris or london american werewolf american werewolf yeah one of those yeah that's i watched that more recently than other wolf based movies and yeah i mean i think there's always been this there's always this fear the little red riding hood the wolf is going to eat you the wolf is just like blood thirsty and will kill for no reason um yeah there

that is out there people represent wolves and continue to portray them this way and it is upsetting because this is not any different than if any other animal well so i'm not saying that their bloodlust is is true but the defense of where you live and the getting your food we we eat animals we have a whole culture on how we acquire our protein based food that are animal based uh protein it is it does bother me but i also realize it's it's hollywood and movies and people represent lots of things incorrectly for sake of creative license so i try not to watch it there are things i like i cannot watch the uh the alpha movie that talks about like domestic i don't i refuse to even watch that because i'm i'm absolutely sure i'm just going to have to walk out yet i have

it into it though oh please do oh yeah no i'm not i'm not even going to attempt watching it i just watched the trailer for this and it's about the first dog ever domesticated i think and it looks like a beautiful piece of entertainment that would yes infuriate people who study wolves a ton of people i'm going to read their names very quickly kelsey warren sam g dakota herriman anna valery jody kendall batter alshawa andre trisa basanova mandy macomes and sarah greer sarah greer asked my neighbor claims her dog is half wolf and that her dog is the offspring of a domestic canine who mated with a wolf is this biologically possible or is she just trying to make her dog seem more badass both both are probably true okay i mean both are both the first one is certainly

true dogs and wolves can absolutely reproduce no question about it um the the feasibility of her dog or her dog's parent coming across a wolf i don't know if this is a captive environment if someone's breeding dog wolf hybrids which is highly possible or if they live somewhere rural enough where a wolf is running around and decided to reproduce it both are possible but offspring in that cross is absolutely viable it takes effort to to genetically and morphologically tell a hybrid from a purebred animal let alone any cross back crosses like third generation wolf hybrid but it's it's possible there are lots of signals of that and people work at that all the time to try to identify if there's a genetic test or if someone who claims that they're selling hybrids

dog wolf hybrids is it a true hybrid or is it just a wolfy looking dog yeah it's it's possible it's challenging have you seen a rise in that since like game of thrones no i don't know about the hybrids but people were talking about an increase in like husky or malamute purchases and that often i think the saddest or the most challenging part about dog breed purchases is not enough research for what that breed needs so having having a husky maybe in LA is a very hard situation to face with a breed that has very specific needs not only energy needs but temperament needs so i have read that that game of thrones is responsible for husky and spits type dog breed purchases are those more closely related to wolves or no they don't look like them not really they

look like them they there is a possibility that those breeds in their history have a more recent influx of wolf genes through hybridization but we can also make them look like a wolf without them being a wolf got it um a ton of people natalie mastic lauren dean christina weaver andria levinson emilia hines matthew thomas hill john sandsone stefinan malik anna thompson jody kendall lucy keegan and samantha g all had questions do wolves care about the moon do they howl at the moon do they like the moon does the moon affect their behavior what is it with wolves on the moon what's up why in popular culture are wolves so horny for the moon that's um yeah i see why that's a question well wolves howl all the time regardless of what the moon is doing

so i don't know if having the moon out actually so the a full moon will give more light at night and although most wolves are not actually hunting in the middle of the night the dawn and dusk era will have perhaps more light than normal which might make hunting or movement a little more interesting and maybe there's more activity so maybe there's more howling because there's more action but i i this is just me speculating i don't know if anything that ever talks about having to basically control for if there's moonlight or not on understanding a wolf behavior so mystical wolf moon connections are flim flam but wolves communication devices a k a songs sung from their boobable snoots have a range of up to 10 miles and it helps get the pack back

together or intimidate others not in their clique so essentially they're saying i'm lonely or get away from you scare me and i hate you so a howl serves as nature's twitter what about um howling holless wants to know if there are different regional accents to howls i wouldn't say regional most wolf howls have a stereotypical structure um but what what's interesting is that like right now the the debate and the focus on red wolves is one angle of data that people want to start analyzing is looking at the structure of howls between coyotes gray wolves and red wolves and they all differ so that's a very interesting aspect of what happens when you have perhaps different species or different hybrids so a dog wolf hybrid is expected to have a very different

acoustic sound when it howls then a pure gray wolf wolf or um a pure dog i guess for that matter wow i wonder if wolves um howl along with ambulances too or if that's just dogs i don't know about that i suppose i suppose anyone who has a dog wolf hybrid could could talk more about that and also zoos i don't know what they have in zoos i wonder so one youtube user dustin olson posted a video in 2016 titled wolf howls at a fire truck siren exclamation point exclamation point exclamation point and it was taken at the miller park zoo in bloomington illinois

i hereby invite you to google wolf howling at a siren for a wealth of returns and there's another video taken at the chicago zoo by youtube user seabrawly and it features a pack of wolves singing to an air raid siren and the imagery is so chilling these regal beasts in an enclosure sounding a chorus of the wild to the tune of human war alarms the result is beautiful and sweet and scary like a really well-intentioned choir at a nursing home jamie pickles raymond j doige and stefanie malik all ask if you wear any of the wolf pack howling at the moon shirts do you if you have a wolf shirt or a three wolf moon shirt it's not really heavily about buying one um i do i do not i do not have a wolf shirt i have to say my mom

loves to give me wolf items so i have like i have a little jacket with an embroidered wolf on it that i only i only wear when i go to yellowstone because i feel like that's appropriate no wolf gear i do i do have a wolf tattoo you do so it's a wolf skull with really great ornate decorations and it has a gold tooth nice yeah when did you get that years ago maybe six years ago something like that well you were already working on wolves oh yeah oh yeah i expect to be tagged in your wolf tattoo photos kiddos so celebrate wolfinute show me those skin paintings also this next question was asked by patrons chris brewer alison turry jess bencer katelyn brett dianna silver in a valerie justin griggs terry mckney and jennifer tran and a few well several people asked um about

reintroduction of wolves saying yellowstone and why is that important for the ecology what is that doing for the ecology there uh yeah so um there is this tremendous effort to understand what the presence or the absence of a wolf has on the local ecology so it's been framed in terms of a few different aspects one is the um distribution and type of trees in the area which reflect potentially the abundance uh of herbivores so the idea is this connection between trophic levels that if you have too many herbivores grazing and browsing and you overgraze or browse trees then you impact songbirds and mesocarnivores and plant distributions and you shift habitat types by the by a mesocarnivore is an animal that eats 30 to 70 percent meat and the rest of the diet is

plants and fruit and fungus like at a holiday party spread they'd hover around the deli platter but they'd also fuck with the stuff mushrooms and the grapes maybe a celery stick whereas if you have a wolf present to maintain essentially one angle of population control on herbivores even though other predators will so mountain lions and bears and wolverines but they don't quite have the impact of a wolf so having the wolf back in the habitat its action could reduce herbivory which could then result in this recovery of trees and shrubs and grasslands and then passerines and mesocarnivores and ungulates so a lot of folks such as john walker fruit fly susan kennan yana was newski and alison terry had questions about killing wolves what about hunting

wolves in yellowstone why is that necessary or legal or encouraged or permitted hunting of wolves in yellowstone is not permitted because that's national park but but if a wolf leaves the park boundaries and as we all know wolves can read signs that the moment they step outside of a park if they're in wyoming or if they're in montana or if they're in Idaho each of those states might have a permitted season for hunting wolves and um so my personal opinion is you don't need to hunt wolves and they are not necessarily more abundant than what they were x number of years ago and that all depends on your time point are we talking 100 years ago or 3000 years ago those numbers will be different but hunting does also give the community some involvement and input and some financial

contribution to the state so by permitting the hunting and take of maybe 100 wolves in a state means then that the community is involved and they do have a stake in the matter okay so hunting wolves does happen in states that feel that the population in their state can persist even under you know the loss of a hundred animals or whatever they've estimated to be adequate okay um and what about encounter city newman marika shin carry isabel be hopper and a few people asked what should i do if i see a wolf when i'm out hiking or backpacking i would say it's not very different from bear gear i would have bells and whistles on my shoes and backpack and blowing some one of these like survival whistles will just pretty much deter

an animal who already doesn't really want to interact with you okay bye okay um yeah having pepper spray is never a bad thing so i would just you know probably turn and walk the other way or back up they're a little bit different they're not quite like bear so um usually a wolf is already gonna see you much long before you've ever seen it so i would be surprised if you happen to surprise a wolf although i'm sure it can happen it's not anything i've ever worried about i do um in yellow stone wolves know that you're there um especially those that are highly visible on the landscape but most of the time they're gonna avoid you and they will take a really long circuitous route to get as far away from you as possible and yet go the route that they wanted to achieve i would say this

is a rare event that you would happen upon a surprised wolf and a bunch of people wanted to know what can we do to help the wolfies how can we save them especially red wolves dakota haremen asked yeah i think um any well email email your um or send a letter to your congressman or congresswoman your local government i know that there are many agencies that are pro red wolf or pro gray wolf so nrdc or there's a there's red wolf foundations in many locations you can donate money you can donate services so yellowstone will always use their park entrance to also help with their programs and run the run the national park but just be a voice just announce it announcement i would like to help the wolves and then the last two questions i always ask is what sucks the most about your

job what do you hate about your job what do i hate about my job oh i think the most challenging part of my job is that i don't have enough hands and arms and i feel i don't i just there's not enough hours in the day there are so many things that i want to do every day that i don't have enough time i think it's because there's every everything is so interesting and i'm so excited to see what i'll learn from this result and pressing any key on my keyboard to show me the new table or the new figure will lead to another 20 questions that i want to start exploring and i just don't have time i can't do all of that but i'm so excited about it all that's hard it's so hard to prioritize so wolf researchers they need seven times the hours because there are so many things to learn

also bridget mentioned that wolf research grants aren't easy to get and sometimes she funds her own research with money she would use for hobbies so if you'd like to toss her a bone though she has a link to a benefit or page on her website which i'll put in the show notes just in case you'd impress the canine spirits in honor of wolfenut also her site says if you are a dog owner and interested in participating in the behavioral genetic study of canine sociability please visit the project's web page with a link dog goes for science it's the best and what about the best thing about your job what do you love about what you do oh my gosh that i get to do this i can't believe that this is a job i mean i just i it's amazing every so often you know you have those

rough days you're like what else could i do like nothing i would never want to do anything else i can't imagine uh whatever a normal job would look like i get to sit and research something that's invisible right like we can't see dna we can't see evolution tangibly from three million years ago and yet we press some buttons and our computer and some really lovely evolutionary theory and we have we've exposed what our history looks like and we can understand more about something we can never possibly observe and i think that's just so incredible and to use that in forward thinking that's really where i find the biggest challenge it's a it's a positive challenge but kind of moving from hindsight to to future vision and trying to get people to think about

how do we preserve our world even though you've never seen how evolution gave what we see today we now have to think about where it's going forward and that long-term vision is hard when we're not going to be around to see it maybe our great great grandchildren and it's hard to think about those people we don't even know but trying to maintain this planet and its diversity and and all of its beautiful inhabitants and ecology is like we we can't see that but that's like that's the hard part is connecting those two but i think that's a really incredible opportunity that i can help give something like that then it can start with a bunch of frozen wolf blood it does absolutely thank you so much for doing the work you do say hi to the wolves for me

i will thank you for inviting me this is very fun so catch some eye contact of a nearbyologist and ask smart person a stupid question because we're only roaming this landscape for so long what do you have to lose also you can follow dr. Bridget Rownholt on twitter at the beeps beepz not the boobs the beeps there's a link to her princeton website and to the red wolf coalition and to the sponsors of this episode in the show notes and there's always more links up at alleyward.com slash oligies slash lupinology oligies is at oligies on twitter and instagram say hello there i'm ali ward with one l on twitter and instagram thank you henna lipo and erin talbert for admitting the facebook oligies podcast group full of wonderful compassionate

nerds oligiesmerch.com has all of your oligies podcast merch needs t-shirts hats sweatshirts all sorts of things if you post a photo to instagram tag it with oligiesmerch and we'll repost you on monday's thank you shannon faultis and bonnie dutch for helping manage that they're two sisters who have a brand new wonderfully fun podcast called you are that it's out wherever you get podcasts also thank you to emily white and all the oligies transcribers for helping make bleeped episodes and transcripts available for free to anyone who needs and wants them at alleyward.com slash oligies dash extras assistant editing was done by jared sleeper of mindjam media and of the excellent mental health podcast my good bad brain and thank you to a

bright shiny sky moon steven ray morris of the percast and c drassic rite for helping assemble the pieces of the show each and every week and if you stay till the end of the episode you know i tell you a secret and this week's secret is my dog grimy gremlin has been eating this food that has fish oil in it for a good brain and so i guess she could do crossword puzzles faster and a shiny coat and her mouth smells like satan's outhouse it is so stinky and i still kiss her on the cheeks and i ask her why she's so pretty and also sometimes i'll give her a greeny and be like clean that up woman wow wow i just want to snuggle her constantly i'm pretty sure that she's hijacked all of my molecular neurobiology and i'm not bad at it okay so go celebrate wolfenut

make a cake that looks like a full moon celebrate an ancient one-year-old secular non-traditional holiday say hello to the doggos in your life hide some presents around the house and remember no hate only snoot poops okay bye you