Wolf Science Center final thoughts

It's been a week since I left the Wolf Science Center. Since that week I managed to sort out my university courses, start working on my dissertation and return to regular life. Wolf Science Center however will always be a great and wonderful experience. In this post it will be bit of a letter to all the people I worked with and a bit of an experience blur for those who weren't there.

Firstly. I keep mentioning that the people working there are great. This for me was a huge component to what made the experience work. Wolves in captivity aren't hard to find, however a great group of people to work with sure is. From the students( whom we all bonded together through nights of drinking, playing werewolf and experiencing wolves together) to the trainers (who we joked around with, convinced to do extra pack visit and all sorts of funny stuff), the Wolf Science Center is staffed by great people. Never have I bonded with a group of people so fast ans so strong as the summer spend there. I am sure a lot of people share similar experiences but getting along with coworkers make everything better. Like every workplace there are kinks in the system that need to be worked out of course and some days can become frustrating. This to my experience is natural and is just the day. Even if the day was bad, the animal refused to cooperate there is always someone there with a better mood to cheer you up. If any of you guys are reading this, keep smiling, give Wamblee and Amarok a big kiss for me and stroke Enzi's cute ears.

Secondly. The animals are kept under great conditions. One my main concerns before I visited were in regards to animal welfare. The wolves are kept in great conditions and so are the dogs. There is of course the issue that they are in captivity. They can't escape conflicts and obviously whatever life they would have in the wild would be in theory better than captivity. They are however more than happy to participate in any tests and experiments on going there and now testing that I have seen influences animal behavior in a long term.

Finally it was great working with animals there. I learned so much and I really enjoyed my dissertation work there. Good luck to everyone in the Wolf Science Center and if anyone is in Austria pay them a visit. The place is great.

One month in the Wolf Science Center. Project finalized and the Wamblee Tale

So here is an update on my recent adventures.

From left to right Wamblee and Yukon

My first month here has come and passed and boy has it been rather fast.  The first project I was assigned to was inequity aversion. Unfortunately that is still in the works and has been put on hold for a month due to the certain fence issues and also the PhD student leading the project will go on holiday and our supervisors don't feel that I should be testing alone. Which is all fair enough as this is a tricky project and people wanted to make sure the right shots were called.
So roll on my second project. We had a lone wolf here called Wamblee and he was to be introduced into a pack of three. The introduction and the effects the introduction had on the wolves' behaviour, would be my second project. In order to stick to the point I willwrite  his story below. But the introduction didn't go as smoothly as expected so that project had to be scrapped as well. At this point I was a month in and without a shred of data to show. After a discussion with one of the bosses and another PhD student who is now my supervisor I reached my final project which is greeting behaviour in captive wolf packs. I will look at how dominance affects greeting, location affects greeting and whether affiliative relationship scores affect greetings. It's quite interesting and I will be taking cortisol levels to boot which is really cool.
 Wamblee's introduction was a really great event to watch.It started off slowly. First Wamblee was introduced to Nanuk, the pack's dominant male.  After a few shaky days, Una ( the pack's submissive female)was introduced. She led Wamblee around on a chase for a day or two and then was removed and replaced by Yukon who was the pack's dominant female. It was all great for the two weeks they were together. Wamblee at first was at one corner being entirely submissive but through time he managed to overcome his anxiety and nervousness and join the pack. There was the question of Una though. She remained alone for some time and although joined by Nanuk and Yukon at some stages, she began to show a more dominant approach to Yukon when they were together. It should also be noted that Wamblee had taken a great interest in Yukon as he spend time sleeping close to her and playing with her.
The day came that Una was also put in the pack. She immediately attacked Yukon in a dominant stance, asking her to submit. A few fights broke up as Yukon refused to submit entirely. Wamblee wanted to intervene but Nanuk kept him away. It was after a few really bad fights that Wamblee decided to attack Nanuk in an effort to be dominant and possibly help Yukon.  As soon as that broke out, Wamblee and Yukon were separated from Nanuk and Una by the trainers and the pack of 3/4 was made into packs of 2.
At this point it should be noted that the whole procedure was always observed and trainers were on standby to intervene. Animal welfare was and is always the priority of the Wolf Science center and although Una and Yukon were both injured, care was and is given to the wolves and it is nothing they wouldn't sustain in a dominance fight in the wild.  A pack that is artificial is harder to click together. Packs in the wild consist of parents and their pups as well as older siblings and maybe grandparents. Regardless they are always a family unit and this is often not the case in captivity.
Which is what the 2 packs of 2 will be. Next year when the wolves will breed, the plan is to hand raise the pups( to ensure that humans don't phase or fear the wolves) and then introduce them to their parents again hence forming pack family units.
It was definitely something interesting to observe from behavioural aspects and also from the way the introduction was handled

Wolf Science Center week 3 update

So I am on my third week here in the Wolf Science Center and I decided to update all of you on some of the happenings here.

First of all I got myself a project. I am aiding a PhD student here in inequity aversion in wolves and pack dogs. Inequity aversion essentially boils down to whether wolves or dogs understand that they are being treated unequally and whether or not they do or feel anything about it. It's a very interesting subject and the more I read into it the more I get excited about the results we might yield. The person I am working with (all people remain unanimous unless they say okay) is great. She knows a lot about the subject, lets me do hands on work and she knows exactly what she wants. I am very glad about that.

As a side project I am doing wolf observations on my free time. This is to ensure some data to comfort my advisor back home. There is a lone wolf here that is currently being introduced into a new pack and my aim is to observe any relationship changes/conflicts that happened to the back after the wolf introduction. At the moment the wolf has been introduced to two of the three pack members and things are looking good.

What is very interesting here is training and the methods used. Although we aren't told much, some of the students decided to shadow a few of the trainers and I got taught a few very interesting things about training and in general animal behavior. I think animal behavior is definitely something a lot easier to understand when the subjects you are studying are not just in theory but rather present.

In addition to that I began work on my dissertation. It is probably too soon given that I have no idea of results or data collected yet but I started my research and the basic introduction stuff just to give myself a heads up.

I think the most important thing that made the transition here really easy are the students. Everyone here is great. It's a great company that bonds easily and there have been many interesting conversations between us. We share many things in common but are still diverse enough to have different view points on things and it's interesting to see biology and animal behavior from other schools and other perspective.

Three weeks have past faster than I thought and soon we will begin collecting data and I look forward to it. I will go in depth about certain aspects of what I learned soon.