Friday Wolf Facts

Fun Facts About Wolves

1. In order for a new wolf cub to urinate, its mother has to massage its belly with her warm tongue.
2. The Vikings wore wolf skins and drank wolf blood to take on the wolf’s spirit in battle. They also viewed real wolves as battle companions.
3. The earliest drawings of wolves are in caves in southern Europe and date from 20,000 B.C.
4. Wolves do not make good guard dogs because they are naturally afraid of the unfamiliar and will hide from visitors rather than bark at them.
5. The autoimmune disease Systemic Lupus Erythmatosus (SLE), or lupus, literally means wolf redness, because in the eighteenth century, physicians believed the disease was caused by a wolf bite.
6. Wolves are the largest members of the Canidae family, which includes domestic dogs, coyotes, dingoes, African hunting dogs, many types of foxes, and several kinds of jackals.
7. Wolves run on their toes, which helps them to stop and turn quickly and to prevent their paw pads from wearing down.
8. Wolves have about 200 million scent cells. Humans have only about 5 million. Wolves can smell other animals more than one mile (1.6 kilometers) away.
9. A wolf pup’s eyes are blue at birth. Their eyes turn yellow by the time they are eight months old.
10. A male and female that mate usually stay together for life. They are devoted parents and maintain sophisticated family ties.