(Photo: Flickr: tambako)
Wolves howl when they're separated from their closest friends, according to a new study published
in Current Biology. As highly social animals, wolves will howl more
frequently when a close friend has wandered away from the pack, the
study found.
In the study, the researchers removed a wolf from a pack kept in an enclosure at the Wolf Science Center
in Austria. Each wolf from the pack was then taken on a 45-minute walk
around the woods. Researchers recorded the howling rate of the wolves
who remained in the enclosure. The closer one wolf was to another
wolf--as measured by how much time they spent playing with and grooming
one another--the more the wolf howled for his removed friend.
"We didn't know there was some flexibility on how much they howl
depending on their relationship," said study co-author Friederike Range,
from the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna in Austria. "The
amount of howling is really defined by the quality of the relationship."
"The wolves are choosing to howl because a preferred wolf has been
removed and they appear to consciously choose to stay in touch with that
wolf, " wolf-howl specialist Holly Root-Gutteridge, who wasn't involved
in the study, told BBC News. "That's fascinating because it's really
hard to separate social contact calls from the trigger causing them and
also the hormone change the trigger causes." Root-Gutteridge added, "It
means the wolves may be taking complex social interactions into
consideration and then changing their own behaviour accordingly, not by
instinct but by choice."
Source: isciencetimes
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