The Rise of Wolf 8: Five Amazing Facts about Wolves
Humans and wolves share the same hormone, oxytocin. Often called the love hormone, oxytocin can release in father wolves when they play with their children. This is true for the pups as well.
Wolves show compassion similar to humans. Like in human families, older wolf siblings will often let younger wolves win while roughhousing. They understand, at least to some extent, that the little ones will feel demotivated and unwilling to play again if they always lose.
Alpha wolves will adopt orphaned pups––which is unlike almost any other predator in the world. For most predator species, like tigers and lions, the normal behaviour for a new male taking over a pack would be to kill the prior male, his young, and breed the female. However, a male alpha wolf will help raise the young of the prior male. In fact, Wolf 8 began bonding with two pups that he would later adopt before even meeting their mother; a family born out of parental instinct instead of breeding instinct.
Wolves haven’t always been hunted by farmers. In early Japan, peasant farmers had a hard time keeping deer from eating their crops. As a clever solution, they built temples throughout the countryside and dedicated them to wolves, leaving symbolic food offerings and praying the wolves would come to kill the deer.
When wolf parents return to the den after feeding, pups greet them by licking the sides of their jaws. This triggers the adults to regurgitate meat they are carrying in their stomachs. The wolf lowers its head and brings up chunks of freshly swallowed meat. This is how wolf pups are fed before they are old enough to hunt.
