118 Fun Facts About Wolf

What is the scientific name of the gray wolf?

Canis lupus. Dozens of subspecies have been described, and one widely cited classification, disputed by some taxonomists, counts the dingo and the domestic dog among them.

The wolf is the largest living wild member of which animal family?

Canidae. Of the dog family's roughly 40 wild species the wolf is the heavyweight, and that bulk goes with its speciality: tackling large prey as a team.

Wolves often join in a chorus of howls just before they do what?

Set off on a hunt. The group howl rallies the pack, and the same call warns neighbouring wolves to keep away and helps separated members find each other.

A wild wolf pack is, at its core, what kind of group?

A mated pair and their offspring. The young stay a year or two, sometimes longer, before leaving to found packs of their own, so a pack is a family, not a gang.

To save body heat in bitter cold, wolves let which part of the body cool to just above freezing?

Their footpads. Blood flow to the pads is controlled separately from the rest of the body, so they stay just warm enough not to freeze while losing as little heat as possible to the snow.

In what condition are wolf pups at birth?

Blind and deaf. Newborn wolf pups depend on their mother for warmth, and only at about three weeks old do they first venture out of the den.

A wolf's carnassial teeth strip meat from bone like which tool?

Scissors. Among a wolf's 42 teeth, the carnassials' sharp edges slide past each other to shear flesh from bone, leaving the fangs to grip prey and the molars to crush.

Inside Yellowstone, where hunting is banned, what is the leading cause of death for wolves?

Other wolves. Packs defend their territories fiercely, and clashes between rival packs kill more of the park's wolves than anything else, while outside its borders people are the main cause of death.

Wolves can sprint at about 35 mph, but which gait carries them tirelessly across long distances?

A trot. Wolves cruise at roughly 5 mph for hours on end, their long legs and big feet built for distance, and save the sprint for short bursts after prey.

Which US law brought wolves back to Yellowstone?

Endangered Species Act. It obliged the government to restore lost species where possible, so 14 wolves were brought in and penned for ten weeks, because wolves freed at once tend to head for home.

Yellowstone's first reintroduced wolves were captured in 1995 in which province?

Alberta. The 14 wolves were caught near Hinton, east of Jasper National Park, a spot chosen because its rugged, forested terrain and its prey resembled Yellowstone's.

In Roman legend, which twins were suckled by a she-wolf?

Romulus and Remus. King Amulius ordered the infant twins killed, but they survived on the bank of the Tiber, where the she-wolf nursed them until a herdsman found them.

In Norse mythology, the giant wolf Fenrir is fated to swallow which god at Ragnarök?

Odin. His son Víðarr avenges him at once, in one telling by planting a foot on the wolf's lower jaw and tearing its mouth apart, in another by stabbing it to the heart.

Which Norse god lost a hand after placing it in Fenrir's mouth as a pledge?

Týr. The gods were tricking Fenrir into a magic chain while pretending it was sport, and when the bound wolf realised he had been trapped, he bit off the hand Týr had offered.

Which French author published the first written version of Little Red Riding Hood in 1697?

Charles Perrault. His tale has no rescue: the wolf eats the girl and a closing moral warns young ladies against charming strangers, while the hunter who saves her arrived later with the Brothers Grimm.

In The Three Little Pigs, what is the one house the Big Bad Wolf cannot blow down made of?

Bricks. In Joseph Jacobs's 1890 telling the wolf eats the first two pigs, then tries the brick house's chimney, falls into a pot of boiling water and ends up as the third pig's supper.

'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' is traditionally credited to which storyteller?

Aesop. In his fable a shepherd boy raises so many false alarms that when a wolf really attacks the flock nobody comes, which is where the phrase 'to cry wolf' comes from.

In Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, which instruments represent the wolf?

Three horns. Prokofiev wrote the piece for a Moscow children's theatre and gave every character its own instrument, so young listeners learn to tell the flute's bird from the oboe's duck and the clarinet's cat.

Arctic wolves of the High Arctic islands mainly hunt Arctic hares and which large animal?

Muskoxen. Wolves this far north have almost never been hunted, so instead of fleeing they tend to stand and stare at the rare humans they meet, and some even come closer for a look.

The rare Ethiopian wolf, found only in the country's high mountains, is a specialist hunter of what?

Rodents. Although it lives in packs, it hunts alone by day, pouncing on the giant mole-rats and grass rats of Ethiopia's high grasslands.

About how many gray wolves live in the wild worldwide?

200,000. Estimates run from 200,000 to 250,000, most of them in the remote north, after the wolf was wiped out across much of western Europe, Mexico and the United States.

Although wolves were wiped out across much of western Europe and the United States, how does the IUCN rate the species worldwide?

Least Concern. The wolf's vast range and stable global numbers keep it out of every threatened category, although some regional populations, such as those in parts of Europe, are seriously threatened.

Besides howling, how do wolf packs mainly advertise the edges of their territory?

Scent marks. Wolves spray urine along their trails, and like a howl the marks warn neighbouring packs not to intrude, but they keep working long after the sound has died away.

Who killed Yellowstone's last known wolves in 1926?

Park rangers. At least 136 wolves were killed inside the park between 1914 and 1926 as official predator control, ending with two pups that rangers found near Soda Butte Creek.

Which smaller predator became scarcer inside Yellowstone's wolf territories soon after the wolves returned?

Coyote. Wolves treat their smaller relatives as rivals and kill them around carcasses, and with fewer coyotes about, foxes and birds of prey may have benefited.

Which animal is the favoured prey of Yellowstone's wolves?

Elk. They make up about nine in ten of the wolves' winter kills, and each wolf takes around 20 a year, well above the 12 that planners predicted before the reintroduction.

The chain of ecosystem changes set off by returning wolves to Yellowstone is a textbook example of what?

A trophic cascade. The term describes a change at the top of a food chain rippling down through every level below it, as may have happened where streamside willow and aspen began to recover.

In Yellowstone, which animal regularly drives wolves off the carcasses of their own kills?

Grizzly bear. Against predictions, grizzlies take over wolf kills almost at will, which has turned the carcasses into an important food supply for bears in lean years.

In 2011 the collared wolf OR-7, 'Journey', became the first wild wolf confirmed in which US state since 1924?

California. OR-7 left his pack in northeastern Oregon and wandered more than 1,000 miles, crossing the state line in late December 2011 before finally settling down with a mate back in Oregon.

Captive-bred red wolves were released in 1987 at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in which state?

North Carolina. The red wolf had been declared extinct in the wild in 1980, and this release began a comeback: more than 60 zoo-bred adults were freed there by 1994, and they soon formed packs and bred.

Since 1996 the IUCN has listed the red wolf under which category?

Critically Endangered. By the 1970s so few remained that biologists trapped the last wild red wolves and started a breeding programme with just 14 of them.

Captive-bred Mexican wolves, or 'lobos', were first released back into the wild in 1998 in which state?

Arizona. The lobo had been wiped out of the wild north of the border by the 1980s, so the 11 wolves freed in 1998 were bred from a handful of captive survivors.

The largest collection of dire wolf fossils comes from which site?

Rancho La Brea Tar Pits. The dire wolf is probably the most common mammal preserved in the Los Angeles asphalt, most likely because predators that came to eat trapped animals became stuck themselves.

A 2021 DNA study of dire wolves found that they were what?

Distant cousins of wolves. The study put the split about 5.7 million years ago and found no sign that the two had ever exchanged genes, so the look-alike skeletons were a case of convergent evolution.

Colossal's 2025 female 'dire wolf' pup was named after what Game of Thrones title?

Khaleesi. She and two male pups were grey wolves carrying 20 gene edits that mimic dire wolf traits, and the IUCN's canid specialists ruled they were neither dire wolves nor proxies for them.

The 'alpha wolf' idea grew out of a 1947 study of wolves living where?

In a Swiss zoo. Rudolf Schenkel watched up to ten unrelated wolves from different zoos sharing one small pen in Basel, a setup that bred fights for rank rarely seen in the wild.

What did L. David Mech later do about his 1970 'alpha wolf' book, The Wolf?

Pushed to get it out of print. Years of fieldwork had convinced him that the 'alpha' label was misleading, and after repeated pleas his publisher finally stopped printing the book in 2022.

About what share of its own body weight can a wolf eat in a single sitting?

About 18%. A big wolf can bolt down around 20 pounds of meat at one meal, a useful trick for a hunter that may then go days or even weeks without eating.

Wolves on North America's Pacific coast have been observed catching which fish?

Salmon. Coastal wolves wade into shallow streams to grab the fish during the run, and when the catch is plentiful they often bite off and eat only the heads.

In which US state can a single wolf pack's territory cover 1,000 square miles or more?

Alaska. Territories grow where prey is thin on the ground, so a pack there may need ten times the land of one in the lower 48 states, where a territory can be under 100 square miles.

Cromwell's government set wolf bounties in which country, where wolves lasted into the 1780s?

Ireland. The rewards drew professional wolf hunters from abroad, yet the island's last wolf is said to have been killed in 1786, more than a century later.

Which country has several thousand wolves, more than the rest of the Middle East combined?

Turkey. Wolves loom large in Turkic legend too: in one origin tale of the first Turkic empire, a she-wolf nurses a boy who survived a battle and becomes the ancestress of its ruling clan.

Which naturalist first classified the wolf, giving it its two-part scientific name in 1758?

Carl Linnaeus. In the same work he classed the dog as a species of its own, pointing to its upturned tail, which he found in no other canid.

Roughly how many adult Ethiopian wolves were estimated to survive in 2011?

About 400. They cling to seven isolated mountain enclaves in Ethiopia's highlands, where farming keeps pushing them higher and diseases caught from domestic dogs can sweep through a population.

Yellowstone's famous wolf O-Six was named after what?

Her birth year. Born in 2006 and known to researchers as 832F, she led the Lamar Canyon pack until a hunter shot her just outside the park in 2012, a death that stirred debate over wolf hunting.

Yellowstone's Druid Peak wolves set a park record in 2001 for what?

The largest pack. The Druids swelled to 37 wolves, a size biologists call highly unusual and not necessarily an advantage, because more members mean more food has to be caught.

On Isle Royale in Lake Superior, wolves have been studied since 1958 alongside which prey animal?

Moose. It is the longest-running study of a predator and its prey, and when inbreeding and disease cut the island's wolves to just two, the park service brought in 19 new ones.

In November 2020, voters in which US state narrowly approved a ballot measure to reintroduce wolves?

Colorado. It became the first state where voters, rather than federal officials, ordered wolves brought back, and ten animals flown in from Oregon were released in its mountains in December 2023.

How long does a breeding pair of wolves typically stay together?

For life. If one partner dies, though, the survivor rarely stays alone for long and usually finds a new partner quickly.

Yellowstone biologists estimate which wolf sense to be thousands of times keener than a human's?

Smell. Nobody has managed to measure it precisely, but a wolf's nose guides much of its life, from finding prey and carrion to telling pack-mates from strangers.

The word 'lycanthropy' comes from Ancient Greek roots meaning what?

Wolf-man. It joins lykos, wolf, to anthropos, human being, and for ancient writers it named not a monster but a form of madness in which the sufferer believed he was a wolf.

Which author wrote White Fang, a 1906 novel about a wolf-dog cross in the Yukon?

Jack London. He wrote it as a mirror image of The Call of the Wild: instead of a pet dog turning wild, a wild wolfdog is slowly won over to life among people.

In Never Cry Wolf (1963), Farley Mowat claimed the Barren Lands wolves lived largely on what rather than caribou?

Small mammals such as mice. The book's picture of wolves as harmless mouse-eaters is credited with winning them public sympathy, though the official who supervised Mowat's fieldwork called it semi-fictional.

In Kazakhstan and Mongolia, wolves have traditionally been hunted with the help of which animal?

Trained eagles. Hunters on horseback fly golden eagles at wolves, and the bird's task is often to pin the animal down until its handler rides up to finish the job.

Most recorded wolf attacks on people have been attributed to animals suffering from what?

Rabies. A rabid wolf usually acts alone and roams long distances biting whatever it meets, whereas healthy wolves have learned to fear people and generally keep away.

Where did North American black wolves get their dark coat colour, according to genetic research?

From interbreeding with early dogs. The gene came over with the dogs of people arriving from Asia, and it has lasted because it also seems to boost immunity: black wolves survive distemper outbreaks better.

Besides meat, what else have North American wolves been found eating?

Blueberries. For all their reputation as pure meat-eaters, wolves snack on fruit in season, and European wolves also take apples, pears, figs, melons and cherries.

Descended from wolves, the dog holds what distinction among all the animals humans keep?

The first ever domesticated. Hunter-gatherers were living with dogs at least 14,000 years ago, well before anyone had tamed goats or cattle or planted the first crops.

A 2015 study found wolves thriving in the evacuated zone around which nuclear plant?

Chernobyl. With people gone there is no hunting, farming or forestry, and the study found about seven times as many wolves as in nearby nature reserves, despite the radiation.

In which season are wolf pups usually born?

Spring. A litter born then has the whole summer to grow, and by autumn the pups are strong enough to travel and hunt with the adults before winter sets in.

The extinct Japanese wolf is still honoured at mountain shrines belonging to which religion?

Shinto. Mountain farmers treated the wolf as a guardian of their fields, and villages kept wolf charms that were believed to protect their crops from wild boar.

About how long does a wolf's pregnancy last?

9 weeks. Usually only one female in the pack breeds, and once her litter arrives every adult helps to feed it.

In Ancient Greek religion, wolves were associated with which god?

Apollo. He was also called Lyceius, a title often tied to lykoi, wolves, perhaps because he guarded flocks from them, and the grove sacred to him under that name gave Aristotle's Lyceum its name.

Legends of Britain's last wolf are set in which region?

Scottish Highlands. More than one place there claims the kill: one tale has a stalker named MacQueen slaying the last wolf by the River Findhorn, though its accuracy is doubtful.

Which big cat significantly suppresses wolf numbers in the Russian Far East?

Siberian tiger. Tigers out-compete wolves for the same prey, so wolves stay scarce wherever the cats are doing well and spread only when tiger numbers fall.

Hunters and ranchers can hold back a wolf pack with fladry, which is simply a line of what?

Fluttering flags. Wolves are so wary of the flapping cloth strips that hunters in Eastern Europe ringed packs with them for centuries, and ranchers now string them round pastures to protect livestock.

Japan's last known wolf was killed in 1905 on which of the country's islands?

Honshu. Hunters sold the carcass to a visiting American zoologist in a mountain village in Nara Prefecture, by which time epidemics caught from dogs and relentless hunting had all but wiped the wolves out.

Which bird is known for following wolves on the hunt and reaching their kills almost at once?

Raven. The birds trail wolf packs because they cannot tear open a thick hide themselves, so a fresh kill gives them a meal they could never start alone.

Which bird trails wolves through winter to scavenge their kills and has been seen leading them to prey?

The raven will even call wolves to a dead animal it cannot open by itself. Once the wolves tear into the carcass, the scraps are easy for the birds to reach.

Gray wolves have multiplied since people left the exclusion zone around which nuclear disaster site?

Chernobyl's abandoned zone turned into an accidental refuge, and its wolves cluster in the higher-radiation areas near the centre. Scientists track them to learn how radiation affects wild animals.

Vancouver Island's coastal 'sea wolves' swim between islands, sometimes following the migration of which fish?

Salmon make up about a quarter of what these wolves take from the ocean, and they are documented eating only the heads. That may protect them from an infection that can be fatal to wolves.

When wolf pups first open their eyes at around two weeks old, what colour are those eyes?

Blue eyes appear at 11 to 15 days, but the pups' sight is far from finished. They cannot make out shapes until weeks later.

In Game of Thrones, which direwolf, the runt of the Stark litter, is adopted and named by Jon Snow?

Ghost is an albino, a white cub that Jon takes for himself at the start of the story. The direwolf later helps him kill an undead wight that attacks his commander.

The Wolf Moon, named for wolves heard howling in midwinter, is the traditional full moon of which month?

January got the name because people believed hungry wolves howled more in deep winter. In fact the howls help wolves find pack members, mark territory and coordinate hunts.

Which state, home to the International Wolf Center, alone in the lower 48 has always kept a viable wolf population?

Minnesota's wolves held on in the remote forests of its northeastern corner while packs vanished from nearly all of the lower 48. Once protected, they spread back into Wisconsin and Michigan.

How do adult wolves returning from a hunt deliver meat to pups that are too young to follow them?

By regurgitating it, adults give pups their first solid meals from about 15 days old, when the milk incisors come through. The pups themselves stimulate the adult to bring the food up.

The aardwolf, an African hyena whose Afrikaans name means 'earth-wolf', feeds mainly on which insects?

Termites vanish by the hundred thousand: one aardwolf can lap up as many as 300,000 in a single night. Its long, sticky tongue is tough enough to withstand their bites.

Which metal has the chemical symbol W because of wolfram, the German name it carries across much of Europe?

Tungsten is called wolfram in most Germanic and Slavic languages, after the ore wolframite. The old miners' word looks like 'wolf-cream', though its true origin is obscure.

What feature of the traditional 'wolf collar' protects livestock guardian dogs from a wolf's bite to the neck?

Long iron spikes point outward so that an attacking wolf cannot get a grip on the dog. Shepherds in central Italy call their version of the collar a roccale or vreccale.

Which extinct striped marsupial was also known as the Tasmanian wolf, though unrelated to true wolves?

The thylacine looked dog-like enough to be called a wolf, yet it was a pouched carnivore. It once ranged across mainland Australia and New Guinea as well as Tasmania.

The Czechoslovakian Wolfdog began as a 1955 military experiment crossing Carpathian wolves with which breed?

A German Shepherd named Cézar and a she-wolf named Brita produced the first hybrid litter in 1958. The project started in army kennels as a scientific experiment.

Isle Royale, where wolves and their prey have been studied since 1958, lies in which of the Great Lakes?

Lake Superior froze hard enough in 1949 for a few wolves, possibly a single pair, to cross an ice bridge from Ontario. The island's research project is the longest predator-prey study ever run.

Which Russian sighthound, once used for hunting wolves, takes its name from an old word meaning 'fast'?

The Borzoi was known in English as the Russian Wolfhound until 1936. Russians use their phrase for 'fast dog' as the basic term for any sighthound.

The warrah, a tame wolf-like animal that Charles Darwin predicted would die out, lived in which archipelago?

The Falklands had no other native land mammal. The warrah was extinct by 1876, about four decades after Darwin compared its prospects to the dodo's.

Until DNA studies in 2015 proved it a separate species, the African wolf was classed as which animal?

The golden jackal label fell away when genetic tests placed the African animal closer to the gray wolf and the coyote. The two species can nonetheless produce hybrids.

What is the term for the way wolves, dogs and foxes walk on their toes rather than flat-footed?

Digitigrade animals keep their heels off the ground, which makes for a longer stride when running. Humans and bears are plantigrade and put the whole sole down.

Wolves grow larger the farther north they live, matching which principle about warm-blooded animals and climate?

Bergmann's rule says bigger bodies hold heat better, which pays off in cold climates. It is why the heaviest wolves live in the far north and the lightest in hot southern deserts.

A chronicle written for his royal family traces which conqueror's ancestry back to a blue-grey wolf and a fallow doe?

Genghis Khan's semi-mythical family tree opens The Secret History of the Mongols, written for the royal family after he died in 1227. In the legend the wolf and the doe are parents of the first Mongol.

In a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, a wolf softens his voice and whitens his paws to trick seven young what?

Goats left home alone are the targets, and the wolf goes to some trouble to fool them. He steals chalk or honey for his throat and flour to cover his black feet.

In Greek myth, which god turned the impious King Lycaon of Arcadia into a wolf?

Zeus is the god in each version, though the crime varies. In one telling Lycaon served him the flesh of his own son, and in another he sacrificed a child on the god's altar.

The Beast of Gévaudan, a 1760s man-eater thought by some to be a huge wolf, terrorised which country?

France sent soldiers, nobles and royal wolf hunters after the creature, and its identity is debated to this day. One later study counted 210 attacks that left 113 people dead.

The Skidi Pawnee of Nebraska knew which bright star as the Wolf Star?

Sirius is the Dog Star in Western tradition, so both cultures placed a dog-like animal in the same point of light. Other Pawnee branches knew it as the Coyote Star.

In Norse mythology, the wolves Sköll and Hati spend their time chasing what across the sky?

The Sun and Moon stay just ahead until Ragnarök, when the wolves are foretold to catch and devour them. Sköll hunts the Sun, while Hati pursues the Moon through the night.

Which saint is said to have tamed a fierce wolf that terrorised the Umbrian town of Gubbio around 1220?

Francis of Assisi brokers a peace in the legend: the townsfolk will feed the wolf every day and it will harm no one. The animal seals the oath by placing a forepaw in his hand.

The biblical warning about wolves in sheep's clothing appears in which address by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew?

The Sermon on the Mount uses the image for false prophets who look harmless. The fable of a wolf wearing a sheep's skin came much later and is first told by a 12th-century Greek writer.

Wolfsbane, a toxic plant whose juice is thought to have poisoned bait for wolves, is also known by which name?

Monkshood belongs to the genus Aconitum, a group of more than 250 flowering species. One old Greek name for the plant translates literally as wolf's bane.

Which 10th-century English king is traditionally said to have demanded 300 wolf pelts from the Welsh kingdoms?

Edgar the Peaceful and his tribute belong to tradition more than to proven record. Three centuries later Edward I went further and ordered every wolf in his kingdom destroyed.

Which actor starred as teenage werewolf Scott Howard in the 1985 comedy film Teen Wolf?

Michael J. Fox plays for the Beavers, a hopeless school basketball team that starts winning once the Wolf takes the court. The film went on to gross about $80 million worldwide.

Which British band's 1982 hit Hungry Like the Wolf had a jungle-adventure video filmed in Sri Lanka?

Duran Duran's clip won the first Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video in 1984. Director Russell Mulcahy suggested the location because he had just visited it.

In C. S. Lewis's first Narnia book, the wolf Maugrim serves as captain of whose secret police?

The White Witch's wolf was renamed Fenris Ulf in early American editions, after a monstrous wolf of Norse myth. Every edition since 1994 has gone back to Maugrim.

Which character leads the Seeonee wolf pack that adopts Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book?

Akela presides over the pack's council meetings in the stories. Cub Scout packs borrowed his name for anyone who acts as a leader to a Scout.

In which Studio Ghibli film is the heroine San raised by the wolf goddess Moro?

Princess Mononoke sets San and her wolf family against a nearby town led by Lady Eboshi. Moro and her pack attack the townspeople to defend the forest of the gods.

In both the 1985 film Teen Wolf and the MTV series, what is the name of Scott's best friend?

Stiles keeps the werewolf secret in both versions, and in the film he sells Teen Wolf merchandise on the side. In the series he is the son of the town sheriff.

In MTV's Teen Wolf, Scott McCall's new werewolf powers help him excel as captain in which sport?

Lacrosse replaced the basketball of the 1985 film when the story was reimagined for television. Scott's sudden success earns him the envy of teammate Jackson Whittemore.

MTV's Teen Wolf follows werewolf Scott McCall as he defends which fictional town from supernatural threats?

Beacon Hills is home in the series, while the hero of the 1985 film lived in Beacontown, Nebraska. The show ran for six seasons between 2011 and 2017.

In Dances with Wolves, what name does John Dunbar give the wolf with white forepaws that he befriends?

Two Socks gives the film its title: the Sioux name Dunbar after watching the pair chase each other. The western won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Which actor played the bitten teenager Scott McCall through all six seasons of MTV's Teen Wolf?

Tyler Posey's character starts as a social outcast and becomes a rare True Alpha. That is a leader who rises through strength of character instead of killing another Alpha.

Dogs have a small facial muscle that wolves lack, which lets them raise what into 'puppy dog eyes'?

The inner eyebrow lifts thanks to a muscle found in every dog dissected but not in wolves. Researchers think the sad, infant-like look won human care and was favoured during domestication.

The French royal wolfcatchers traced their origins to the luparii, wolf hunters serving which Frankish emperor?

Charlemagne's luparii grew into the louveterie, a prestigious post in the royal household. The office lasted through the Ancien Régime and returned under the Bourbon Restoration.

Compared with wolves, dogs from farming societies carry extra copies of genes for digesting what?

Starch-heavy scraps from human farms suited dogs that carried extra copies of amylase genes. The same diet would be inadequate for a wolf.

Amarok, a giant wolf said to devour anyone who hunts alone at night, comes from which people's mythology?

Inuit tradition sets the Amarok apart from ordinary wolves in one telling detail. Real wolves hunt in packs, but this giant always hunts by itself.

Which northern European country elected the wolf as its national animal in 2018?

Estonia calls the animal hunt in its own language, a word that looks oddly apt to English speakers.

Which German-Swiss author wrote the 1927 novel Steppenwolf, whose title a rock band borrowed four decades later?

Hermann Hesse later said his wildly popular book was largely misunderstood. Producer Gabriel Mekler suggested its title to the band behind Born to Be Wild in late 1967.

Wolverhampton Wanderers, the English football club nicknamed Wolves, have played at which stadium since 1889?

Molineux became home when the club moved from Dudley Road. Wolves were also among the twelve founder members of the Football League in 1888.

Lobo, a wolf with a $1,000 bounty on his head hunted by Ernest Thompson Seton, roamed which US state?

New Mexico's Currumpaw Valley was his range, and Seton caught him only through his mate, a white wolf nicknamed Blanca. Seton told the story in his 1898 book Wild Animals I Have Known.

Which conservationist's essay Thinking Like a Mountain recalls a she-wolf shot by his own hunting party?

Aldo Leopold had earlier been assigned to kill wolves, bears and mountain lions. Watching this one die turned him against the belief that fewer predators would mean more game.

Which ancient people, conquered by the emperor Trajan, fought under a dragon standard with wolf-like jaws?

The Dacians' standard, the draco, appears on Trajan's Column in the hands of King Decebalus's soldiers. It doubled as a wind instrument, with metal tongues set inside the open jaws.

After a late-winter mating season, wolf pups in the Great Lakes region are usually born in which season?

Spring births follow breeding in February and March. Litters of four to six pups arrive in late April or early May.