01 Howl and mark
Territory is a sound and a scent, not a fence.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed66
Intelligence83
Range75
Resilience62
Cultural impact85
Ecological role94
LessMore
Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Did wolves recover everywhere?
Global LC hides Mexican wolves, some European growing pains, and US delisting fights. Resilience here is mid-high because many Holarctic populations rebounded -- not because conflict ended.
What happened in Yellowstone in 1995?
Fourteen wolves from Canada were released (more in 1996). Elk behaviour and riparian vegetation became a long argument, not a cartoon instant forest.
Is the trophic cascade settled?
Early popular accounts over-simplified. Later work kept wolves important and added drought, human hunting, and beaver. The cascade is a research programme, not a poster.
Who was Aldo Leopold here?
A forester who had killed wolves and later wrote the mountain-as-ethics essay (1949). The US environmental canon still starts many wolf talks there.
What is Isle Royale?
A closed wolf-moose system studied since 1958. Inbreeding and later genetic rescue (2018-) made it a lab of isolation.
Are wolves more intelligent than big cats in this atlas?
Pack coordination and canine social cognition sit high. Gorillas and elephants still outrank them. Scores are relative, not IQ certificates.
IUCN: Least Concern (global)
Operating a gray wolf life is a loop: sense, decide, act, and stay inside an energy and legal envelope.
Steps are type-level -- hunt, migrate or spawn -- not a promise that every individual follows the same film sequence.
Principles
Energy in, work out
Endurance chase and ambush on ungulates; winter moose or elk, summer more deer and beaver. Scavenge is ordinary.
Information before motion
Smell and a howl that spaces packs. Night hunts use hearing as much as the postcard stare.
Replacement rate
Slow breeders (whales, apes, albatrosses, tigers) cannot outrun a short political cycle. Fast clutch species still fail if the nest site vanishes.
Place is part of the phenotype
A gray wolf without its lake, ice, anemone or gravel is a different, usually failing, animal.
Human systems are now habitat
Quotas, feeders, reserves and films rewrite survival as much as weather. Lead, poison, and a ballot. LC globally does not retire a rancher or a Mexican-wolf recovery plan.
Diagrams
Gray wolf forage / hunt loop
Tracksense
Stalkmove
Killact
Guardhandle
Raiseinvest
Disperseleave
Gray wolf life-cycle loop
Birthstart
Weangrow
Learnmove
Disperselearn
Breedbreed
Senescenceend
Life-cycle steps
02 Assemble a hunt
A family coordinates a chase; failure is common.
03 Kill a ungulate
Hamstring and disembowel -- messy, not ceremonial.
04 Feed pups at a den
Spring dens then rendezvous sites.
05 Disperse yearlings
The gene flow that islands lack.
06 Hit a road or a vote
Modern mortality is legal and illegal in the same county.
Hard limits
Physiological envelope
Lead, poison, and a ballot. LC globally does not retire a rancher or a Mexican-wolf recovery plan.
Place dependence
Without the breeding site or forage pulse, brochure behaviour is theoretical.
Human and legal limits
Quotas, listings and trade rules now bound real populations as tightly as weather.
Keep exploring
More in Wildlife
🐅
Tiger
Asia largest cat — subspecies maps, 1973 Project Tiger, and roughly 4,000 remaining wild animals still frame a century of recovery arithmetic.
Overall 62 🦁Lion
A social pantherine whose prides, Gir relic and 2015 Cecil killing still structure African conservation politics.
Overall 66 🐘African bush elephant
The atlas type is the bush elephant -- an ecosystem engineer whose ivory ban (1989) and split from forest elephants still structure African conservation.
Overall 61 🐼Giant panda
A bamboo specialist whose WWF logo, Wolong quake and 2016 IUCN downlist from EN to VU made a recovery into a brand.
Overall 41 🐻Polar bear
A marine bear whose seal-and-ice budget made Churchill, Knut and climate models into one public animal.
Overall 56 🦍Gorilla
The atlas type is the western gorilla -- a knuckle-walking ape whose Fossey-era mountain cousins and Koko lab fame split one public name.
Overall 45 🐋Blue whale
The largest animal whose 1966 IWC protection, 1982 moratorium and still-thin Antarctic recovery define a hunted giant.
Overall 65