Wolf

The wolf (Canis lupus; plural: wolves), also called the grey wolf or gray wolf, is a canine from Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of Canis lupus have been recognized, including the dog and dingo. When most people say "grey wolf," they mean only the wild subspecies that occur naturally. The wolf is the largest wild extant member of the family Canidae. It has less pointed ears and muzzle than other Canis animals, a shorter body, and a longer tail. It is still closely related to smaller Canis animals, such as the coyote and the golden jackal. Wolves can even have young with them, and those young can have young of their own (hybrids). Wolf fur is usually a mix of white, brown, grey, and black. Wolves in the Arctic may be almost all white.

Of all the members of the genus Canis, the wolf is the most specialized for cooperative game hunting. Its body is built for catching large animals. Wolves are very social, and they communicate in many ways, including howling alone or in groups. Wolves live in nuclear families, which are a mated pair with their young. When young wolves grow up, they may leave to start their own packs, or they may leave when they need to compete with others for food. Wolves also territorial, and fights over territory are among the main causes of death for wolves. As a carnivore and an apex predator, the wolf eats large wild hooved mammals, smaller animals, livestock, carrion, and garbage. A single wolf or a mated pair usually hunts more successfully than a large pack. Wolves can be infected by pathogens and parasites, especially the rabies virus.

The wild grey wolf population worldwide is estimated to be between 200,000 and 250,000 animals as of 2026. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has rated the wolf as Least Concern. This means it is not considered to be at high risk of disappearing. Wolves have a long history with people. In most pastoral communities, people disliked wolves and hunted them because they attacked livestock. In some agrarian and hunter-gatherer societies, however, wolves were respected. Many people fear wolves, but most reported attacks on people have been blamed on animals that had rabies. Wolf attacks on humans are rare. Wolves are relatively few in number and live away from people. They have also learned to fear humans from their experiences with hunters, farmers, ranchers, and shepherds.

These names are also used for other things. For other uses, see Grey Wolf (disambiguation) and Wolf (disambiguation)). For the football club, see Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C..

See also: Wolf (name)

The English word "wolf" comes from the Old English wulf, which comes from the Proto-Germanic *wulfaz. The Proto-Indo-European root wĺ̥kʷos is also the source of the Latin word for the animal, lupus (from Proto-Italic *lúkʷos). The name "grey wolf" refers to the greyish colour of the species.

Since before Christian times, Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons used wulf as a prefix or suffix in their names. Examples include Wulfhere ("Wolf Army"), Cynewulf ("Royal Wolf"), Wulfstān ("Wolf Stone"), Wolfgang ("Wolf Gait") and Wolfdregil ("Wolf Runner").

Taxonomy

Main article: Subspecies of Canis lupus

Further information: Pleistocene wolf

Main article: Evolution of the wolf

Further information: Domestication of the dog

Main article: Canid hybrid

In 1758, the Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus wrote about living things in his book Systema Naturae. In it, he introduced the binomial nomenclature, a way of naming animals with two Latin names. Canis is the Latin word for "dog." Under this genus, he grouped doglike meat-eaters, including dogs, wolves, and jackals. He thought the dog was a different species from the wolf because of its upturned tail, which no other canid has. In 2005, the third edition of Mammal Species of the World was published. The mammalogist W. Christopher Wozencraft listed 36 wild subspecies of wolf and suggested two more. Studies of ancient DNA show that the modern wolf and the dog are sister taxa, which means they are closely related. Modern wolves are not closely related to the wolves that were first domesticated.

Scientists widely agree that the modern wolf came from an earlier wolf-like species, C. mosbachensis. One of the oldest fossils of the modern grey wolf was found in Ponte Galeria, Italy. It is about 406,500 years old. Many wolves from the Late Pleistocene had stronger skulls and teeth than modern wolves. Genetic studies suggest that modern wolves and dogs come from a common ancestor. Wolves and dogs have also mixed with other canids over time. Some wolves in Africa, for example, have ancestry from golden jackals. Some coyotes and wolves in North America also carry traces of past mixing.

In 2021, a genetic study found that dogs look similar to grey wolves because dogs mixed into wolf populations. There was little evidence of the reverse.

Description

The wolf is the largest living member of the family Canidae. It has a slim but strong body, with a large, deep rib cage, a sloping back, and a thick neck. Its legs are a little longer than those of other canids, which helps it run fast and walk through deep snow. Its head is big and heavy, with strong jaws and a long, blunt muzzle. Its teeth are large and heavy, good for crushing bone, though not as special as those of hyenas. Its molars have flat surfaces for chewing. Females usually have narrower muzzles, thinner necks, and smaller shoulders than males.

Adult wolves are 105 to 160 cm (41 to 63 in) long. They weigh about 40 kg (88 lb) on average, but their weight can range from 12 kg (26 lb) to 79.4 kg (175 lb). Wolves in colder places tend to be larger, following Bergmann's rule. Indian and Arabian wolves average 25 kg (55 lb). Their thick winter fur has a short undercoat and long, rough guard hairs. This fur keeps them warm, even at −40 °C (−40 °F). Coat colours vary by place. In the Canadian Arctic, wolves are white. In southern Canada, the United States, and Mexico, they are mostly grey, following Gloger's rule. In parts of the Rocky Mountains of Alberta and British Columbia, most wolves have black coats. Some black wolves in North America got their colour from mixing with dogs. Dogs first arrived across the Bering Strait 12,000 to 14,000 years ago.

Ecology

Distribution and habitat

Wolves live across Eurasia and North America. People have hunted them because wolves kill farm animals and because people are afraid of them. Because of this, wolves now live in only about one-third of the land they once used. They are now extirpated (locally extinct) in much of Western Europe, the United States and Mexico, and completely gone from the British Isles and Japan. Today, wolves mostly live in wild and quiet places, from sea level up to 3,000 m (9,800 ft). They live in forests, wetlands, shrublands, grasslands (including Arctic tundra), pastures, deserts, and rocky mountain peaks. Where wolves live depends on how much prey there is, how much snow falls, how many farm animals there are, roads, how many people live nearby, and the topography.

Diet

Like other land animals that hunt in pack hunters groups, wolves mostly eat ungulates, which are hoofed animals. These include large animals weighing 240–650 kg (530–1,430 lb) and medium animals weighing 23–130 kg (51–287 lb). A wolf pack often hunts prey about as heavy as all its members together. Wolves tend to go after the weaker animals in large groups of prey. A pack of 15 wolves can bring down an adult moose. What wolves eat depends on where they live. It depends on which hoofed animals are there and what smaller or farm animals are available.

In North America, wolves mostly eat wild large hoofed animals and medium-sized mammals. In Asia and Europe, they mostly eat wild medium-sized hoofed animals and farm animals. Across Eurasia, wolves mostly hunt moose, red deer, roe deer and wild boar. In North America, common prey include elk, moose, caribou, white-tailed deer and mule deer. Before wolves disappeared from North America, wild horses were one of their most common foods there. Wolves can digest a meal in a few hours and can eat several times a day, so they use up large amounts of meat quickly. A well-fed wolf stores fat under its skin and around its heart, intestines, kidneys and bone marrow, especially in autumn and winter.

Wolves do not only eat large animals. Smaller animals that add to their diet include rodents, hares, insectivores and smaller meat-eating animals. They often eat waterfowl and their eggs. When food is scarce, they hunt lizards, snakes, and frogs when they can find them, and they have even been known to eat grasshoppers. In some areas, wolves may eat fish and even sea animals. Wolves also eat some plants. In Europe, they eat apples, pears, figs, melons, berries and cherries. In North America, they eat blueberries and raspberries. They also eat grass. It may give them some vitamins, but it is most likely eaten to make them vomit, which helps get rid of intestinal parasites or long guard hairs. Wolves are also known to eat the berries of mountain-ash, lily of the valley, bilberries, cowberries, European black nightshade, grain crops, and the shoots of reeds.

When food is scarce, wolves will readily eat carrion, which is meat from animals that have already died. In parts of Eurasia with many people, many wolves must live mostly on farm animals and garbage. In North America, where prey live in places with few people, wolves eat farm animals and garbage only in very hard times. Cannibalism, where animals eat others of their own kind, is not rare in wolves during harsh winters.

Interactions with other predators

Wolves usually dominate other canid species where they live together. In North America, wolves often kill coyotes, especially in winter, when coyotes feed on wolf kills. Wolves may attack coyote dens, though they rarely eat the young. No records show coyotes killing wolves, though coyotes may chase wolves if they outnumber them. According to a 1921 press release from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the famous Custer Wolf relied on coyotes to walk with him and warn him of danger. The coyotes fed from his kills, but he never let them come close to him. In Eurasia, wolves and golden jackals have been seen interacting. Golden jackals are much less common where wolves are numerous. Wolves also kill red, Arctic and corsac foxes, usually in fights over food, and sometimes they eat them.

Brown bears usually dominate wolf packs in fights over carcasses. Wolf packs mostly win against bears when defending their dens. Both species sometimes harm each other's young. Wolves eat the brown bears they kill, while brown bears seem to eat only young wolves. Wolves and American black bears meet much less often because they prefer different habitats. Wolves have often been recorded seeking out American black bears in their dens, though they do not eat them. Unlike brown bears, American black bears often lose to wolves in fights over food. Wolves also dominate and sometimes kill wolverines, and they chase away wolverines that try to take food from their kills. Wolverines escape by hiding in caves or climbing trees.

Wolves may meet and compete with felids, such as the Eurasian lynx. Lynx may eat smaller prey where wolves are present, and large wolf populations may hold them back. Wolves meet cougars along parts of the Rocky Mountains and nearby mountain ranges. Wolves and cougars usually avoid each other by hunting at different heights for different prey (niche partitioning). This is harder in winter. Wolf packs usually dominate cougars and can steal their kills or even harm them. One-on-one meetings tend to be won by the cat, which can also kill wolves. Wolves affect cougar numbers and where they live by controlling territory and prey and by disturbing the cat's behaviour. Interactions between wolves and Siberian tigers are well documented in the Russian Far East, where tigers greatly reduce wolf numbers, sometimes to the point of localized extinction. In Israel, Palestine, Central Asia and India, wolves may meet striped hyenas, usually in fights over carcasses. Striped hyenas often feed on carcasses that wolves have killed where the two species meet. One-on-one, hyenas dominate wolves and may hunt them, but wolf packs can drive off single or outnumbered hyenas. In Israel, at least one case has been recorded of a hyena living and working together with a wolf pack.

Infections

Main article: Parasites and pathogens of wolves

Viral diseases carried by wolves include rabies, canine distemper, canine parvovirus, infectious canine hepatitis, papillomatosis, and canine coronavirus. In wolves, the incubation period for rabies is eight to 21 days. The illness makes the animal restless, causes it to leave its pack, and makes it travel long distances each day, which increases the risk of spreading it to other wolves. Canine distemper is very dangerous for dogs, but it has only been recorded to kill wolves in Canada and Alaska. Canine parvovirus can cause death through dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, and endotoxic shock or sepsis. Most wolves survive it, but it can be deadly for pups. Bacterial diseases carried by wolves include brucellosis, Lyme disease, leptospirosis, tularemia, bovine tuberculosis, listeriosis and anthrax. Lyme disease can weaken individual wolves but does not seem to greatly affect wolf populations. Leptospirosis can spread through contact with infected prey or urine. It can cause fever, anorexia, vomiting, anemia, hematuria, icterus, and death.

Wolves are often covered with many kinds of arthropod parasites on their skin, including fleas, ticks, lice, and mites. The most harmful to wolves, especially pups, is the mange mite (Sarcoptes scabiei). Wolves rarely develop full mange, unlike foxes. Parasites that live inside wolves include protozoans and helminths, which are flukes, tapeworms, roundworms and thorny-headed worms. Most fluke species live in the wolf's intestines. Tapeworms are common in wolves, which get them through their prey. They usually cause little harm, though this depends on how many and how large the parasites are and how healthy the host is. Symptoms often include constipation, toxic and allergic reactions, irritation of the intestinal mucosa, and malnutrition. Wolves can carry more than 30 roundworm species. Most roundworm infections seem harmless, depending on the number of worms and the age of the host.

See also: Dog behaviour

Wolves are a social animal. They live in packs or alone. Most lone wolves are alone only for a short time. They leave their birth pack to start their own pack or to join another. A wolf's basic group is a mated pair and their young. Packs are usually about eight wolves in North America and 5.5 in Europe. Packs across Eurasia are often a family of eight, though some have had as many as 42 wolves. When a pack member dies, the stress hormone cortisol rises in the others. Young wolves usually stay in the pack for 10 to 54 months. Then they leave, often when they reach sexual maturity or when the pack has to compete for food. Some travel very far from home. Wolves are territorial and keep areas much larger than they need to survive. Packs travel constantly to look for prey. Fights with other wolves are among the main causes of wolf deaths. One study found that 14–65% of wolf deaths in Minnesota and Denali National Park and Preserve were caused by other wolves.

Wolves howl to gather the pack, warn of danger, find each other in a storm, and talk over long distances. They also use growls, barks, whines, body posture, and raised hackles. Wolves mark their territory with scent. They use urine, droppings, and preputial and anal gland scents. This is one of their most effective ways to mark territory. Raised leg urination is one of the most common forms. Wolves are monogamous, and mated pairs usually stay together for life. Females usually have one litter a year. Oestrus and rut begin in late winter and last two weeks. In summer, females often build dens for their pups, using natural shelters or borrowed burrows. Dens may be near roads and railways. Nearby magpies and ravens are often drawn by the smell. After a gestation period of 62–75 days, pups are born blind and deaf. They look similar to German Shepherd Dog pups. Pups start to eat solid food at three to four weeks old. By autumn, they are old enough to join hunts for large prey.

Main article: Hunting behavior of gray wolves

Packs usually hunt more successfully than single wolves. Still, single wolves have sometimes killed large prey such as moose, bison, and muskoxen on their own. Wolves are mostly active at night. In winter they often hunt through the night. In summer they usually hunt alone. Hunting large animals is risky. Wolves have been hurt by prey such as bison, elk, moose, muskoxen, and white-tailed deer. Smaller prey like beaver, geese, and hares carry little risk. Medium-sized prey such as sheep are killed by biting the throat, which cuts the carotid artery. Small, mouselike prey is caught by leaping and pinning it down with the forepaws. Wolves usually start eating the heart, liver, lungs, and stomach lining. Then they eat the kidneys and spleen. A wolf can eat 15–19% of its body weight in one meal. In 2025, a field report described a wolf pulling in a crab trap's buoy and line to reach the bait. The authors said this might be tool use. They noted that this depends on how tool use is defined. The origin of the behavior is still unknown.

Status and conservation

Further information: List of gray wolf populations by country

About 300,000 wild wolves were estimated to be alive in 2003. Wolves have been helped since the 1970s, and they have returned to some of the places they once lived. Wolves still face problems. They compete with people for farm animals and game, some people are afraid of them, and their homes are being broken into smaller pieces. The IUCN Red List lists the wolf as Least Concern, which means it is not considered at risk. Wolves live over a wide area, and their numbers are steady. Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the wolf is listed in Appendix II, which controls trade between countries. In Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan, wolves are in Appendix I, which bans buying and selling wild wolves between countries.

In North America, First Nations people in Canada may hunt wolves without limits. Wolves are protected in national parks under the Canada National Parks Act. In the contiguous United States, wolves became rare because farms spread across the land, their main prey such as the American bison disappeared, and people worked hard to get rid of them. The Endangered Species Act began protecting them in 1973. Since then, wolves have returned on their own and through reintroductions in Yellowstone and Idaho. Wolves have also spread into the Great Lakes states as part of the repopulation of wolves in Midwestern United States. The reintroduced Mexican wolf now has over 300 members as of 2026. In Europe, the European Union has about 20,300 wolves. Many countries protect them under the Berne Convention and the Council Directive. Wolves disappeared from Great Britain and Ireland long ago, but they have since returned to parts of Europe. Wolves also live in the Carpathian Mountains, the Baltic states, the Italian Peninsula, the Iberian peninsula, the former Soviet Union, the Arabian Peninsula, and across Asia. They live in places such as Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Heilongjiang, Xinjiang and Tibet. The last Japanese wolf died in 1905.

Relationships with humans

In culture

In folklore, religion and mythology

Main article: Wolves in folklore, religion and mythology

See also: Wolves in heraldry

Wolves appear in the myths of many peoples. The Ancient Greeks linked wolves with Apollo, and the Ancient Romans connected them with Mars. In Norse mythology, the giant wolf Fenrir appears, along with Geri and Freki, the pet wolves of Odin. In Chinese astronomy, the wolf is linked with Sirius. Many cultures also tell stories of people who turn into wolves, such as Lycaon in a Greek myth and the werewolf legend of European folklore. The Navajo and the Dena'ina also have wolf stories.

In fable and literature

See also: List of fictional wolves

Aesop used wolves in several of his fables. His most famous, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, warns people who raise false alarms. It gave us the phrase cry wolf. The Bible and the New Testament also mention wolves, with Jesus using them to describe dangers to his followers.

Isengrim the wolf first appeared in the 12th-century Latin poem Ysengrimus and is a major character in the Reynard cycle. Little Red Riding Hood, first written in 1697 by Charles Perrault, helped shape the wolf's bad reputation in the Western world. The Big Bad Wolf is a villain who can copy human speech. Other villainous wolves appear in The Three Little Pigs and "The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats". Wolves also appear often in Russian literature, in works by Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Nikolay Nekrasov, Ivan Bunin, and Leonid Pavlovich Sabaneyev. Tolstoy's War and Peace includes a wolf hunt. In the music of Peter and the Wolf, a wolf is caught but is spared and sent to a zoo.

In Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, wolves are main characters who live in friendly family groups. Wolf experts have praised this picture, since it is different from the villainous wolves common at the time. Farley Mowat's mostly made-up 1963 book Never Cry Wolf is widely seen as the most popular book about wolves. It was made into a Hollywood film. Critics say it makes wolves seem better than they are and contains mistakes.

Conflicts

Human presence seems to stress wolves. Their cortisol levels rise, for example, when people go snowmobiling near their territory.

Predation on livestock

Attacks on livestock are one of the main reasons people hunt wolves. They cause money losses and stress for farmers. No perfect way to prevent attacks has been found besides killing wolves. Some countries offer payments or insurance to help farmers. Wolves usually attack livestock when wild prey is hard to find. This happens often in Eurasia but is rare in North America, where wild prey animals have mostly recovered. Most losses happen in summer, when animals graze in remote pastures. Animals that are often attacked include sheep, domestic reindeer, goats, horses, cattle, and turkeys.

Competition with dogs

A review of studies on sympatric carnivores found no research on competition between dogs and wolves. Wolves do kill dogs, and some wolf groups depend on dogs as food. Dogs are often family members, so losing one can cause strong feelings. Shepherd dogs and livestock guardian dogs help protect sheep from wolves, though wolves sometimes harm these dogs too.

Attacks on humans

People have long feared wolves, although humans are not part of a wolf's natural prey. A wolf's reaction to people depends on its past experiences. Wolves that have never had bad experiences with humans, or that are used to getting food from people, may show little fear. Attacks are usually rare and limited to quick bites. Dangerous attacks may follow a long time of habituation, when wolves slowly lose their fear of humans. Most of these attacks happen in summer, when people go into forests to graze animals or pick berries and mushrooms. Rabid wolves are less common than rabid animals of other kinds, but they can be very dangerous.

Human hunting of wolves

See also: Human uses of hunted wolves

Theodore Roosevelt said wolves are hard to hunt because they are alert, have great endurance, and can quickly injure hunting dogs. Older methods include coursing with dogs such as sighthounds, Bloodhounds, and Fox Terriers. People also used poison such as strychnine and trapping. In Russia, hunters trap wolves using fladry poles with human scent. In Kazakhstan and Mongolia, wolves have long been hunted using eagles and large falcons, though this is becoming less common. Shooting from aircraft is very effective. Some dog breeds, including the Borzoi and Kyrgyz Tajgan, were bred specifically for wolf hunting.

Wolves as pets and working animals

Main article: Wolves as pets and working animals

Some people keep wolves and wolf-dog hybrids as exotic pets. However, wolves do not live alongside humans as easily as dogs do. They respond less to human commands and are more likely to act aggressively. Pet wolves and wolf-dog hybrids are more likely to seriously hurt people than dogs are.