At the top of the hierarchy are an alpha male and an alpha female, and all the members of a pack are the offspring of these two animals. Wolves thrive in social units with well-defined and highly organized hierarchies. This change in human attitude toward wolves has, however, fueled some rather misguided notions about just how closely wolves and humans should or can coexist safely.įew people understand the intricacies of the social lives of wolves to realize what they might be delving into by bringing a wolf-dog hybrid into their households. Numerous conservation programs and research projects aimed at providing a better understanding of wolves and their behaviors have shifted public perception and have led to increases in wolf populations worldwide. Today, however, we are learning to coexist with wolves. For various reasons, including the threat that they posed to human safety and to herds of grazing farm animals, wolves were hunted to near extinction in North America and Europe. In many parts of the world, humans have long been seized by a strong desire to kill wolves.

To this day, Fenrir remains bound, awaiting the arrival of Ragnarök (Doomsday) to loose himself, at which point he will greedily consume the Sun and destroy the Norse gods. Infamous examples include werewolves, the big bad wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, and Fenrir in Norse mythology, whom the gods, fearing his strength, tied to a rock. Furthermore, the traditional human perception of wolves was shaped by factors such as myths and legends in which wolves were frequently portrayed in a negative light. They are wild animals that have suffered greatly from human misunderstanding and anthropogenic activities, including agriculture and urban sprawl. In contrast to dogs, wolves have shared a complex relationship with humans throughout history. Our ancestors also bred dogs to produce varieties with unique traits, and because excessive inbreeding in purebred lines has made many of these animals highly dependent on humans, they generally are not fit for long-term survival in the wild. Humans relied on dogs for protection and companionship and sometimes as a source of food. Dogs display behavior, developmental patterns, and instincts that are compatible with life in a human-centered environment. Thus, thousands of years of existence in very different environments and survival under very different social conditions has created a significant divide in the behavioral and genetic characteristics of wolves and dogs. The process of taming wolves took place in multiple locations around the world at about the same time and ultimately resulted in the emergence of the domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris, which is a subspecies of wolf, Canis lupus. The dog lineage is believed to have split from that of the gray wolf about 12,000 to 14,000 years ago, when populations of gray wolves underwent domestication by humans. Domestic dogs and wolves share as a common ancestor the gray wolf.

Wolf dog hybrid