At 6 to 8 months, the pups begin to travel with the pack and join in hunts. As pups begin eating more solids, they are moved to one or more “rendezvous sites,” where they spend the remainder of the summer learning proper pack behavior and etiquette. Wolf pups are weaned at about 8 weeks of age once they have begun eating semi-solid food, regurgitated by the mother or others members of the pack. The mother usually stays with her young in the den, eating food brought to her by other members of the pack. During the first 3 weeks, pups nurse every 4 to 6 hours and need help regulating their body temperatures. Wolf pups are born blind and deaf in an underground den after a 63-day gestation period. Dispersing wolves roam 40 to 70 miles on average, and sometimes more than 100 miles, depending on gender, available habitat, and presence of other packs. Once sexually mature, most wolves leave their birth pack to search for a new territory or to join an existing pack. Wolves begin breeding between 2 and 3 years of age and are believed to mate for life. Mating typically occurs between January and March. Wolf packs typically have one litter of pups per year. For highly cursorial and very mobile wolves, this is “next-door.” Recent satellite-collar tracking data, however has shown that some offspring and individual wolves have dispersed more than a thousand miles in three or four months!Īlmost always, only the male and female alphas of the pack will mate. For packs studied in the Northern Rocky Mountain region, the average dispersal distance and subsequent new pack formation is about 65 miles. The pair’s offspring normally disperse into adjacent or available territories at 2 to 3 years of age. The alpha wolves decide when the pack will travel and hunt, and normally are the first to eat at a kill. A pack is an extended family group comprised of a the breeding, or “alpha” male and female pair and some of their subordinate offspring and current pups from one or more years. Wolves are highly social animals that live in packs. Gray Wolf Reproduction Biology and Maturation Deer and elk can overgraze their habitat when populations outgrow the carrying capacity of an ecosystem. Overgrazing destroys the plant base, making the habitat less suitable for other species. When gray wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in1995 after a 70-year absence, they began to restore ecosystems that had been degraded in their absence.

Researchers have documented wolf kills benefiting coyotes, bald eagles, golden eagles, grizzly bears, black bears, ravens, magpies, red foxes and at least 20 other species.īy preventing large herbivores, such as deer and elk, from becoming overpopulated wolves help maintain native biodiversity. Wolf kills create an abundant and dependable food source for many other species. Large predators like wolves and cougar play an important role in maintaining the health of natural ecosystems. Wolves prey primarily on animals that are young or elderly, sick or injured, and weak or unfit, thus keep prey populations healthy.

Arctic wolf adaptations