I must say that Marty Stouffer was my hero when I was growing up.
I used to get so excited when Wild America came PBS that I literally bounced off the walls.
Marty always used very elevated diction on this show, and I think this sort of rubbed off on me. I like big words.
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I am not sure exactly what a red wolf is, but it is a primitive form of wolf that has experienced significant hybridization with the coyote. Whether that primitive wolf is Canis edwardii or a derivative of some early form of Canis lupus I cannot say. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the red wolf looks a lot like an Indian wolf, which is considered the oldest extant subspecies of Canis lupus.
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The red wolf is not the smallest wolf in the world. That title goes to the Arabian wolf.
But once there was an even smaller wolf. The Honshu wolf or Yamainu stood only about a foot at the shoulder and often weighed less than 20 pounds.
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Red wolves have been reintroduced to the wild. In fact, the closest wild wolves to my present location are red wolves, which are running free at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern North Carolina.
These wolves are free, but they are heavily managed. The big problem is that coyotes have shown up in that part of North Carolina, and the wolves and coyotes continue to interbreed. We spend a lot of time and money keeping coyotes out of that range.
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I disagree with the Fish and Wildlife Service on some issues with the red wolf. I don’t think the native wolf to my location is the red wolf. It is more likely Canis lupus lycaon, which is another primitive wolf of some sort that has a significant amount of hybridization with the coyote.
The red wolf is strictly subtropical subspecies (or species).
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The date for dog domestication is still up in the air. 15,000 years is the average estimate of when the dog phenotype began to take over the camp wolf population.
But it is likely that camp wolves were joining hunter-gatherer bands at least 40,000 years ago.
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And that dominance stuff at the end:
Just enjoy it for what it is!
>> And that dominance stuff at the end:
Just enjoy it for what it is! <
U mean “historical flavor”? ::roll-eyes::
or perhaps “hysterically funny”? ;-)
With respect to your childhood memories, Retrieverman, I still MUST point out several things in this video that people should know who watch it. One reason I am not fond of Marty Stouffer is the fakery and B. S. he spoonfeeds his audience. On this video, his Red Wolves WERE NOT Red Wolves, but coyotes(I’m sure he was hoping no one would know enough to tell the difference) in a fenced compound with a man-made den(how many coyote dens are just a pile of brush with a hollow place underneath? Coyotes are better den diggers than that! But that makes it easier for the film maker to film the pups, of course!). The “Red Wolf” howling is dubbed–Red Wolves sound more like coyotes when they howl than Gray Wolves(I am a zookeeper who takes care of Red Wolves and hears them daily….). I really despise his predatory shots–the deer you see the wolves pulling down is also in a fenced enclosure with incompetent young captive wolves who obviously don’t know what they are doing, much to the extended suffering of the wretched deer, And Marty won an award for his Wolf/Whitetail film–before anyone knew he was faking his shots with captive animals in fenced enclosures. A lot of animal documentaries did this, but at least they admitted it and didn’t lie about it(remember the “Wild Kingdom” prelude; “All scenes, whether actual or created depict authenticated facts”) and accept awards for blatant fakery. And yes, wolves and dogs DO have dominance hierarchies, and dogs do submit to humans readily–I agree with that at least! If there are those out there that do not agree, then they are not very observant of wolf/dog behaviour. If you encounter a very dominant dog that does NOT submit, then you might see the difference, very quickly! Live with any pack(PACK–not a single dog, or dogs kept mostly seperate from one another!), or watch wolves for any length of time, and you have to be blind not to see such behaviour! It is really silly how this new anti-dominance/submissive politically correct human sentimentality is warping the view of canine(yea, primates and virtually all other social animals) behaviour. Are hierarchies more flexible and interchanging than some previously thought? Sure, but they are still hierarchies, with dominant and submissive behaviour……
Actually, I debated about whether to bring up the controversies.
When I did a post on him a while ago, I just said, well, yeah he’s controversial. There’s fakery and an animal cruelty charge in there somewhere.
That said, the films were often very correct and artfully done.
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I think dominance hierarchies are mostly in our heads.
We have them, so we look for the in other animals.
A wolf pack is nothing more than a mated pair and their offspring of various ages.
Now if you put a bunch of wolves in a cage together and don’t allow dispersal, they will form hierarchies.
But wolves and dogs are much more fluid in their relations that “I’m the boss and you’re not.” They do nuance that we don’t.
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Stouffer didn’t film the red wolves. This was footage from a long time ago that he added.
I don’t waste five seconds on dominance hierarchies anymore.
Although I think I just did.
http://books.google.com/books?id=4w0mcCMQfFoC&lpg=PA162&dq=merle's%20door%20dominance%20hierarchies&pg=PA253#v=onepage&q=dominance&f=false
i knew the coyote had dubbed vocals –
that was as blatantly obvious as the dubbing in Japanese monster movies. nobody over 8 or 9-YO could be fooled by that – or at least, i don’t think so.
i’ve heard coyote in group-sings and they sound NOTHING like the sonorous, deep baying howl of a wolf – or wolves. there’s a choppy series of sharp yipping barks, followed by a wild high-pitched quavering tremolo that drops in pitch.
they don’t have the same skill at harmonics that wolves do, either. ;–)
i wondered about that ‘prey’ scene –
the deer took off, but they were right beside the wolves when they fled, who seemed quite unhurried about pursuing them…
they were quite la-de-da about getting out of the creek bed and up on the bank.
then the fawn comes squealing in, and one of them grabs the baby by the tail, but neither of the other 2 seem to know what the H*** to do with the front-end –
the rear has muscle exposed before anybody has even jumped for the neck or nose.
for 3 adults with a half-grown baby, they flubbed it badly; i’ve seen elderly GSDs do better with a goat or a calf in a pasture.
Marty SAID it was filmed(the “Red Wolves”) before they became extinct in the wild–he also said they were red wolves, which they were not. It had all the earmarks of a captive animal, manmade scenario. He also presented a lot of film footage as actual happenings in the wild, which he set up artificially, lied about, and accepted awards for. I think one of the worst was the bighorn ewe that had its leg broken to allow for a good shot of a cougar taking it down. This kind of “wildlife documentary” is simply blatantly selfish human cruelty, and, to me, is inexcusable. Most hunters are way more considerate of their victims than that! Of course LOTS of Hollywood use of animals is every bit as terrible: Marty was doing nothing different than many of them do for movies or T. V. But that don’t make it right! Luckily, it is harder and harder for filmmakers to get away with this kind of thing. That’s the problem once you lose credibility, though, people don’t know what to believe, and so end up doubting most everything you say–which IS a shame, because no doubt this guy has had a lot of experiences with wildlife, and does REALLY know some stuff….leashed-for-life–if you ever see the whole sequence of this whitetail deer “hunt” by wolves, you will be even more disgusted–that poor deer runs around and around and around in the same little area(obviously a fenced enclosure), and those inexperienced wolves just fumble it again and again! No telling how much got edited out, either! I can see allowing such to go on IF you were trying to reestablish captive predators in the wild, and they HAD to learn to hunt to survive–unfortunetely learning to hunt is a cruel business–no getting around that. But to fake a film, represent it as natural behaviour for your own selfish benefit? I can’t agree with that…..
Lane,
He got in trouble for a lot of that (as in legal trouble).
I believe he got in a lot of trouble for tying a rabbit to stake and letting a raccoon kill it.
Do you have an opinion on the Dutchers?
I saw both the Dutcher wolf and cougar documentaries. They made no pretense that it was other than a captive situation, which I applaud–you certainly can learn things in captive situations that you are unlikely to in the wild, and those animals had great facilities and as natural a life as is possible in captivity. I don’t remember if they released critters in the enclosure for them to kill? Seems like some ducks got nailed by the cougar, but they flew into the compound of their own accord–our cougars at the N. C. zoo regularly nail birds, squirrels, ‘possums, snakes, frogs, and lizards that get in their enclosure–as most zoo predators do likewise on occaision. I haven’t heard a lot about any controversy involved with these projects, but one thing that irks me is that they are viewed as PROJECTS, and then the filmmakers “move on” to something else. What about those animals? What about those “special bonds” that are formed during the process that are so sentimentally discussed? How can you do that and then just walk away from those animals–even if you do find them suitable homes? I have been severely criticized by many for having kept a pack of wolf hybrids years ago–but all of them would likely have had no life at all had I not taken them on, and it never occurred to me to dump them when they became troublesome or inconvienant–I turned down lots of primo job opportunities, and lived a very isolated and materially impoverished life to see to it my animals had the best possible life I could give them, for their whole long(most 14+ years) natural lives–and you know, looking back, I wouldn’t trade the experiences with them for ANY material wealth or position, if I had it all to do over again! Just something very very special about the bonds you can forge with such “dangerous” animals–they were way more faithful and dependable than most humans have been in my life. So I can’t help but shake my head sadly when I see such a special relationship like that abandoned by the humans who just want to move on to other things–to me, such a “project” should ethically last the life of the animal(s), or you shouldn’t get involved at all. But then, I am considered very “unrealistic” by most people. Yet I will never regret that I did MY BEST to remain as faithful to my animals as they were to me, all those years…..