Ologies with Alie Ward - Smologies #6: WOLVES with Bridgett vonHoldt

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

Wolf howls, wolf packs, wolf history and more! November 23 is the dog appreciation holiday Wolfenoot so we’re dishing up a puppy-sized and kid-friendly Smologies with lupinologist and Princeton professor Dr. Brigette vonHoldt. Learn about wolf populations, canine family dynamics, Game of Thrones direwolves, if wolves howl at the moon, myths and truths about alphas, and how you can help our lupine friends. The full, uncut, NSFW Lupinology episodeMORE Smologies episodesThe vonHoldt LabBenefunder for Dr. vonHoldtA donation went to Red Wolf CoalitionMore episode links & infoSponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Zeke Thomas Rodrigues & Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media and Steven Ray MorrisSmologies theme song by Harold Malcolm

Oh, hi. It's that French fry that fell under the driver's side seat three days ago, and you can't decide if you want to eat it or not. Maybe? I don't know. Alleyward. Back with another episode of Smologies or Small Allergies. Get it? Small Allergies. So this is our six Smologies episode, and if you're looking for any of the previous Smologies, you'll find them in this feed or at alleyward.com slash Smologies. But what is a Smology? This is a great question. So Smologies are quicker, kid and work and in-law and classroom friendly edits of our full Allergies episodes, and they clock in around 20 minutes. So all the good stuff, but with less of a commitment, it's perfect for those of you that are returning to the office

and have a short commute. Maybe you're on a holiday road trip and you need something to keep the whole family occupied. Speaking of holidays, November 23rd, this Tuesday is Wolfenut. What? You have not heard of Wolfenut? You haven't heard it? Really? Then you haven't listened to the longer full version of Lupinology. So I'll summarize. So it's a holiday started by a seven year old to celebrate canines and kindness. It's when the spirit of the wolf brings and hides small gifts around the house for everyone and people who have had or have or are kind to dogs get better gifts than anyone else. You eat roasted meat or vegetables and a cake decorated like a full moon. So in 2019, I had a Wolfenut party and I had gift rep socks around the house. It was lit.

It was the best 10 out of 10. Okay. So today's episode is on Lupinology or the study of wolves. And the word comes from the Latin lupus, meaning wolf. But if you ask a lupinologist what their job title is, they will probably refer to themselves as a wolf biologist. But let's be honest, lupinologists, this sounds way, way cooler, much more regal. So today's lupinologist is an associate professor of evolutionary genomics and epigenetics at Princeton University, where she runs the Von Holt lab of ecology and evolutionary biology. She got her bachelor's degree in psychology from Eckerd University, her master's from NYU in biology and got her PhD, making her a doctor, from the University of California Los Angeles in ecology and evolutionary biology. And she guided

us through the incredible world of wolves, including what makes a wolf a wolf? Wolfie DNA is their connection between wolves and howling at the moon, the realities of pack dynamics, how they hunt, the idea of a lone wolf and how dogs, coyotes, jackals, hyenas, and wolves are all related. So circle November 23rd, dream up a full mooncake and prepare to celebrate Wolfenut as we duck into the wolf's den and welcome wolf biologist and lupinologist Dr. Bridget Von Holt. And yes, that was my dog shaking her collar in the background. Come on, grimy. She loves this episode. 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 share 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. You jackals are also the Eurasian version basically that we don't have jackals that evolved in North America. They're 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 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. Wolves 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. So wolves, coyotes, jackals, foxes, and dogs share a common ancestry, diverging many millions of years ago. But this is lupinology, not jackalology. So back to wolves.

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 but wolves are pretty substantial creatures. Okay, so how many species of wolves are there all over the world? I had no idea, like a hundred 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 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 be back this puppy up. So the genus Canis includes jackals and coyotes and wolves and doggos and dingos, and even the dire wolf, which has been extinct for roughly 10,000 years. Don't let George R. R. Martin pulling 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 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,

is it though? A lot of DNA says it's a hybrid. So there you have it, three and a half ish species of wolves. And in North America, the gray wolf is endemic, meaning it is native here. So now let's move on to how wolves relate to one another. 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. How long do wolves live? Oh, in 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, some other event, wolves are are absolutely known for having battles that end in the mortality of of cons specifics. PS, some of the finest people on the planet don't know what cons 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. Speaking of wolf drama, we have to talk about wolf packs. We have to. From memes, allegedly identifying different roles within the pack, to the often cited alpha males, people are obsessed with wolf pack dynamics. 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. Wolfie family pack drama confirmed

so many possibilities based on any number of factors. Okay, but what about the connection between the canine in the moonlit tundra and the one snoring on your lap? 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 center 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 they are just as similar as we suspected, but domestication has had a huge impact on how dogs look and act and continue to evolve. So maybe in 10,000 years, puppy dogs will have even bigger eyes and fuzzier ears. In my opinion,

don't mess with perfection. They're great the way they are. Okay, we have some questions from listeners like you, but first each week we donate to a cause of theologist choosing and Bridget chose the Red Wolf Coalition at redwolves.com, which teaches people about the value of red wolves to the ecosystem and the people living in the restoration area. And Bridget says, I continue to study red wolves and they currently need as much support as they can get from the public. So making that donation possible are a few sponsors ofologies, which I may talk about right now. On to your Patreon questions. And as always, you brought it. And by it, I mean, great questions. BathBuddyArt 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 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 wolves are often for a good half of the year in temperate zones on their own. So lone wolves, yep, 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. 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 Grey 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 science means always asking new questions and collecting more information and then learning

new things by analyzing it. And the myth of the alpha male is simply that. But let's go back to more of your questions specifically about wolf and dog genetics. Sarah Gray 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 cool? 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. A ton of people, Natalie Mastic, Lauren Dean, Christina Weaver, Andrea Levinson, Amelia Hines, Matthew Thomas Hill, John Sansone, Stephanie Malek, Anna Thompson, Jody Kendall, Lucy Keegan, and Samantha Gee 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? That's, um, yeah, I see why that's a question. Well, wolves howl all the time, regardless of what the moon is doing. Uh, so I don't know of having the moon out actually, so that 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 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 flimflam, but wolves communication devices, aka 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 click. So essentially they're saying,

I'm lonely or get away from me. You scare me and I hate you. And what about encounter? Sadie Newman, Marika Shin, Kerry, Isabel B. 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 bare 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. 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 usually a wolf is already going to 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. Solid advice that I hope you never have to use. Okay, if you love wolves as much as I do, I'm sure you're asking yourself, what can we do to help these delightful, fluffy, loyal, smart creatures? Who do I call? Who do I write? I will protect them at all costs. 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 Harriman asked. Yeah, I think any email, email your 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. Yeah, so there are plenty of really great organizations, some that even work with indigenous folks to protect the gray wolf, which is a sacred animal to many cultures. So maybe look into a local one too. Now, as we round the bend into the home stretch of the episode, you know, I always want to know what makes ourologist get up in the morning. 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 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 on 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. So many cool things about wolves. Lupinology, truly fascinating November 23rd,

Wolfenut, celebrated. So these dog sized icons of the outdoors are so amazing. Their societies are so complex. So to recap what we learned, dogs descended from wolves, that there are only three species of wolves. Canis lupus, the gray wolf, the African golden wolf, and the Ethiopian wolf, but plenty of subspecies that are still being debated, that there isn't a known correlation between the moon and their howl. And that wolves really only travel in packs during the winter. The myth of the alpha male is just that myth. And yes, it's possible that your friend might have a dog wolf hybrid. So to find out more about Dr. Bridget Von Holt, you can check out her website, which is vonholt.prinston.edu, where you can

stay up to date on all of her current research. And if you liked this episode and want to listen to the full oligies episode complete with maybe some saucy language and a side of innuendo, you can find the entire adult friendly oligies catalog at alleyward.com slash oligies, including a full lupinology episode that this was cut from. Thank you to biologist and lupinologist, Dr. Bridget Von Holt, and thank you new Smologites. I'm so glad you're here. New episodes are out every two weeks or so for you. And there's a full list of credits for this episode at alleyward.com slash Smologies, since we like to keep things shortened and small around here. And if you listen to the end of the episode, you know,

I give you a piece of advice. And this week it's that I know making your bed doesn't sound very fun, but when you come home and your bed is made and it looks nice, you're like, oh, this is such a treat for myself. So if you make your bed in the morning, think, I'm doing this for myself later at night. Don't think about doing it for your parents. Think about having a nice made bed when you get home. It's such a treat. Anyway, I've been doing that since I was about 13. I make my bed every day. It's just nice when I get home. I say, hey, thanks me from this morning. Anyway, until next time, Smologites. Bye bye.