From the Telegraph.
Apparently, this young wolf found himself without a pack, so he hooked up with the local dogs.
Events like this had to be much more common in the past. After all, wolves and dogs have been living in the same areas for thousands of years.
There had to been a gene flow between the populations, especially when wolves had little reason to fear people. It was only when we began to keep livestock that the wolf began to be persecuted.
Romeo is a good example of why we can’t make broad assumptions about dogs or wolves. In general, wolves are rather intolerant of domestic dogs, but sometimes wolves and dogs become friends.
Because Romeo needed companionship at that early age, he developed an entirely different response toward domestic dogs than one might expect from a wolf. Perhaps this suggests that the hyper-territoriality that we see in wild wolf populations is at least partially “culturally” driven.
Of course this was common in the past, when there were more wolves and more free-ranging dogs. People who want to believe in the image of wolves and dogs being bitter enemies in all situations are not taking the extreme individuality of wolves, dogs, and different circumstances into account. An established, territorial pack of wolves ARE deadly to any dogs they encounter on their turf; they are also just as antagonistic to other wolves not members of their pack(USUALLY–there are certainly exceptions to this as well). Wolves who are driven out or devoid of a pack for other reasons quite readily take up with dogs, including mating with them. They obviously see dogs as fellow beings, whether to compete with or seek the company of. Some of the old “last of the loners” famous outlaw wolves from the predator extermination campaigns in the Western U. S. at the turn of the 19th century took up with dogs and bred with them when there were no other wolves left to mate with. This is only a “rare” occurence nowadays because there are few places left where wolves and dogs get a chance to interact freely on their own. But there are plenty of accounts of such interactions throughout history, for anyone who looks for it. And with wolves returning to human populated areas with free-ranging dogs, there will be more such incidents for sure…..L.B.
[…] Romeo was a black wolf that lived near Juneau who loved to play with dogs. (I have written about him here.) […]
[…] have seen something similar in the story of Romeo, a black wolf that lived near Juneau, who found himself without a pack. He spent most of his life […]