More wolf news from all over!

I've just stumbled across a very interesting blog that tracks the movements of wolves on remote Ellesmere Island.  These are wolves of the high Arctic, and they are usually a bit smaller and shaggier than their mainland conspecifics, and arctic wolves, in general, are usually white or almost all white. The Ellesmere Island wolves are no exception.  They were tracking a wolf called Brutus(he was radio-collared) and it turned out he and the rest of the pack travel far and wide, even to neighboring Axel Heiberg Island, in search of muskoxen and Arctic hares, their staple diet.  It's impossible to track them at this time of year, because the sun doesn't rise there from about the middle of October till the second week or so of February.  Besides which the temperatures and other conditions would make this pretty impossible.  How the wolves manage under such circumstances, I don't know, but they have to eat, like everything else. 

 

The article is accompanied by some pictures.  The first is of the paths followed by Brutus and his pack.  These wolves apparently trotted themselves over the ice pack to Axel Heiberg Island, but they didn't stay by the shore.  They went inland in search of their meals.  The round trip took about a week and covered nearly 100 miles.  And the map also shows all the other places they traveled.  Wolves do a lot of this kind of "traveling", especially in the Arctic, where their territories need to be quite large, for obvious reasons, if you think about it.  Anyway, there's a really nice picture of one pack member(or at least I think it is a pack member; it sure isn't Brutus, because it's a mother with a pup)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoy, she's obviously an Arctic wolf in the Arctic,

Anne G