LIVING WITH WOLVES. They are creatures of legend,

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1 LIVING WITH WOLVES They are creatures of legend, feared by our ancestors for their cunning, ferocity and supernatural abilities. Wolves are important in the folk tales of most cultures: they howl at the moon; make off with children; change humans into werewolves. Even today, they are hunted down, blamed for taking sheep and other domestic animals. ALL PHOTOS: LOUISE MURRAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

2 Given this reputation as one of man s last animal adversaries, you wouldn t expect to see humans and wolves living in close proximity. Yet, as Louise Murray s photographs show, wolves can be brought up like their domesticated descendant, the dog. This allows researchers to study these unique wild animals in laboratory conditions with fascinating results. The Wolf Science Center is one of the few places in the world where wolves are raised from birth. Here, on 16,000 square metres of a game park in Austria, wolf cubs are handraised alongside dog puppies. Unlike puppies, however, wolf cubs can never be trained or socialised to humans unless they are removed from the mother at a very early stage. Newborn cubs are taken from their mothers at ten days old before their eyes are even opened. Raising the wolf cubs is a full time job. For the first six months of their lives, their trainers are with them 24 hours a day, eating, sleeping and playing together. At six months old, the young animals form packs and live in large enclosures, getting out daily for walks, intelligence tests and experiments, training, and human contact. When the wolves are out for a walk with their trainers, an assistant always walks ahead to check for potential dangers. Small children must be avoided in case the wolves switch into hunting behaviour: Our wolves can see that kids are different from adults - small children have high voices and erratic movements, says Bea Belenyi, a senior animal trainer at the Wolf Science Center. I would never trust a wolf near a small child. We often see the wolves go into hunting mode their legs straighten, ears go back flat, the eyes change the pupils enlarge and they stare at their potential lunch. Where a domestic dog s life is centred on its owner and other human family members, a wolf s most important rela-

3 tionship is with its pack. Wolf packs are usually family groups of related animals led by an alpha female and male who breed, and younger animals who leave the home pack when they grow up, much like a human family. For dogs to be successful in human society, they need to understand human gestures like pointing. Dogs can do this better than all other animal species. It makes sense for dogs to be smart at interpreting human behaviours, as they have been evolving alongside us for thousands of years. Dogs can follow human pointing as pups, but wolves need much longer to develop this skill. They can do this as well as dogs when they become adult. But wolves can point out things to others in the pack by gazing or staring at it they can even pick up on these signals from humans and dogs. Take a trained dog and ask him to stare at one of two containers that has a food reward in it. Allow a wolf to watch and it will follow the dog s gaze and find the food treat. Apes and other primates find it difficult to understand this complex, cooperative message. Wolves are brilliant at this. They have to be to survive in the wild. A wolf can watch another do something just once and will immediately be able to do it themselves. Wolves are better at solving problems on their own. In the same situation a dog will look to its human companion for help. Wolves can be trained but are harder to train than dogs. Dogs will respond to any kind of training including negative training. A command Get off the bed, followed by a whack with a newspaper is negative training. Wolves cannot be trained using negative training. First they would try and avoid the situation, and if they couldn t and were cornered, would probably attack. Only positive training is used with dogs and wolves at the Wolf Science Center. A German scientist, Erik Zimen, once tried to train wolves to pull a sledge like a dog team. The experiment was a total failure because the wolves resisted any punishment, ignored most commands and constantly fought amongst themselves. Wolves always have to have one eye on the environment around them, whatever they are doing. They must look out for danger, and be aware of other animals in the pack. Wolves learn very quickly, but need breaks while dogs can focus continu-

4 ously. Dogs feel safe and secure with a human, so it takes less time to train dogs and is much easier to teach them obedience. Wolves can learn this but make up their own minds whether they want to do what is asked. Working outside with wolves is harder than dogs because the wolves tend to be more distracted by constantly checking out what is going on around them. Both wolves and dogs can be trained to use a touch screen with their noses: We use the screen experiments to get an insight into how the animals think, after all they cannot tell us says Zsofia Viranyi, one of the senior scientists at the Wolf Research Center. Dogs have an innate desire to want to please humans and some really enjoy working at the screen. It s sometimes harder to motivate the wolves to work for long, but they will work for food rewards when they want to. Dogs are capable of basic arithmetic, can count up to four or five and will be puzzled by mistakes like 1+1=3. Wolves can t do this but they have an amazing ability to glance at a screen of two halves with different numbers of dots and select the screen with the most dots on it. A split second glance is all that is needed to sort one half with 38 dots from another with 41 dots. This might be because assessing the numbers in two wolf packs is important in the wild. Is my pack bigger than the enemy? Should we get into a fight or not? Even though the wolves at the Wolf Science Center have been raised to socialise with humans, they will always be animals of the wild. This is very apparent, says photographer Louise Murray, when you are in their company: I was a bit nervous at the prospect of working at very close quarters with the wolves. They are the size of a very large Alsatian that works out regularly. They are large! It is important to be relaxed around the animals. They will pick up on jerky movements and as pack animals are excellent observers of human body language. You have to put your absolute trust in the abilities of the trainers to read the animal s reaction to you. Wolves are so much different from dogs - you are constantly aware that you are in the presence of something wild. They are magnificent animals whose relationship with humans is very much

5 secondary to their relationships within the pack. My best experiences were watching and photographing the wolves just after dawn, when there is a lot of howling as the packs communicate between each other. A wolf howl is an eerie sound - I defy anyone to be unmoved by hearing it. ENDS 1250 WDS SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY 2012