Domesticating Wolf Summary

In the article Saving America’s Wolves, by Kristin Lewis, the author uses second person point of view and this choice has an affect on the reader. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a wolf? Today, wolves around the country face many dangers today. Throughout history and folklore, wolves have been depicted as being dangerous predators that come after humans, but that is far from the truth. In fact, humans today are more of a danger to them as they are to us!

Have you ever played outside with your dog for a while and lay back to consider about how your dog evolved into whom he is today and how he turned into "family?" Well, over the centuries, dogs have evolved a lot! In between that time, they turned into what we call pets. Because of this, the relationship between dogs and humans has changed over thousands of years, wolves evolved to dogs and the wolves soon became pets.

It was also common for the Wolves to be bred with dogs, in order to get a breed of dog with the strength of a wolf but the calmness and loyalty of a dog.

During the 1940’s, wolves were exterminated from Colorado and few have come back since. As a result the ecosystem that we have in Colorado is somewhat skewed due to the absence of them. Many people think that wolves are a nuisance and would get in the way of the agricultural style that colorado has. However, wolves are considered a keystone species which means their “presence would reinvigorate the natural order” (clifford). For this reason wolves should be reintroduced into montezuma county. The reintroduction would greatly benefit and restore the balance of our ecosystem.

Nobody knows exactly when dogs were domesticated there is so many different showings of when dogs were domesticated but the latest would be where it says 32,000 years ago. The domestication of cats and dogs or  any animals come from humans and animals living so close to each other in close quarter communities. Genes during domestication overlaps with the genes from humans, the same kind of genes are for digestion, metabolism, neurological process and cancer according to population genetics. So humans and animals both was domesticated from the same genes. Human and animals are a lot alike. “Biologist Raymond Coppinger has another idea, the wolves domesticated themselves he suspects the process would have begun at the end of the last Ice Age approximately 15,000 years ago” (“What Caused The Domestication Of Wolves”). Coppinger believes in “flight distance” which is a behavioral characteristics that transformed the wild dogs to the modern dog

The gray wolf, also known as the timber wolf or western wolf, is a generalist species and can be found in North America, Canada, Europe, and Asia. The gray wolf is a very diverse species, able to withstand different environments. The gray wolf can thrive in forests and woodlands, grasslands, desserts, and even the tundra. In the United States, this species is mainly found in the northern states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Alaska. Other states include Arizona and New Mexico where they were reintroduced to a protected parkland.

Wolves are highly adaptable to most habitat types except tropical rainforests and arid deserts. Wolves can be found in savannas, taiga, tundra, plains, steppes, and all forest habitats. The Grey wolf is a carnivore and is known as a tertiary consumer. This means that they exist in the top level in a food chain. An example of an animal that is beneath the Grey wolf on the food chain would be the caribou, which is one of its most hunted food sources.

Grey wolf Habitats: They are normally found in North America.Today, their range has shifted to Canada, Alaska, the Great Lakes, northern Rockies, Pacific Northwest and Yellowstone park.

The Canadian wolf can look many different ways.They can grow anywhere from 2-3 feet tall. The Wolf has fur and claws. When you think of a wolf, you can compare it to a dog. The teeth are just like a dog’s teeth. The Wolf’s tail is just like the rest of it’s body, fluffy and soft. A wolf is most likely to have blue or brown eyes. A wolf has four short legs, but they can run fast. The male can weigh anywhere from 70 lbs- 200 lbs. The female weighs about 50 lbs- 100 lbs.

Before the 1970s the gray wolf population was constantly declining to a number that was nearing extinction. To help their population, the Department of Fish and Wildlife decided that they should protect the gray wolves by placing them on the endangered species list. After many years of being on the list, the federal government conducted research to determine if the population had increased enough to be removed from the endangered species list. After the government hired scientists to conduct the research they decided that the gray wolf had, in fact, increased to a level that was not be in danger

The gray wolf are a great type of animal with ancestry you wouldnt think they had. The wolves is what made to be the domestic dogs of now. Fish back then being now a ground walking soecies. They were small and evolved to being big.

Gray wolves. To some, these creatures are monsters, harbingers of death and destruction. To others, they are simply misunderstood creatures, protective of their family and their pack. However, what either side does not know is that these creatures play a greater role in their ecosystem than one human alone could understand. Grey wolves are one of thousands of different keystone species- species of organisms that have a large effect on the health and stability of a particular ecosystem. But they are also on the brink of extinction. The over hunting of these creatures in the 1900’s has lead to a severe decline in their population throughout the U.S., creating a ripple effect in the ecosystems in which they reside in. Luckily, reintroduction

Secondary data on the number of successful and unsuccessful wolf reintroduction programs can be gathered from state and federal wildlife management agencies from the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. Collection of the same information from environmental organizations, and other local groups who study predator species is also important to determine if data on wolf reintroduction show similar numbers. If methods of data collection are similar but each has different outcomes, the level of bias should be minimal. Reports on loss of livestock from farmers, ranchers, and hunting groups should also be analyzed and compared with the numbers reported to state and federal agencies. Another piece of secondary data critical to this research

The most likely scenario for wolves beginning to coexist with humans is that a human hunting party came across a very young wolf cub and decided to take it with them. The wolf cub would have been very puppy-like at an early age. The reason that humans would ever take a wolf cub is because the cub would be seen as a valuable resource to humans back then. The wolf cub would become a sort of tool for humans since it is a better tracker,

There are several theories on how the evolution from wolf to dog came about. One theory is that the human environment attracted wolves. Wolves started following people around to take advantage of food scraps that were left behind. Eventually, wolves lost fear of people, and people lost fear of wolves. The benefits of this new relationship were not just one way. Wolves also helped humans by sniffing out prey and helping them hunt. Success likely meant the humans would share their food with wolves. This is a very popular theory, but it has been disputed. Archeological digs show that the early dogs were not eating the same mammoth meat that the humans were eating. Instead, their main diet consisted mostly of less popular human meat such as reindeer. The prehistoric dogs also had many broken teeth and severe facial wounds. Although these injuries could be from fighting with other dogs, many scientists believe the dogs had been beaten with sticks, leading many to assume the relationship between man and prehistoric dog was not as companionable as the theory would suggest.