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This wolf trivia quiz has 70 free questions with answers and starts with the gray wolf itself: what a pack really is, why wolves howl (and why the Moon has nothing to do with it), how many teeth they carry, how fast they run and how much they can eat at one sitting. From there it moves through the subspecies and cousins that fill out the family tree - Arctic, Mexican and red wolves, the rodent-hunting Ethiopian wolf, and the dire wolf that split from the rest of the line millions of years ago. History and culture get their turn too: the 1995 return of wolves to Yellowstone and the trophic cascade that followed, the wandering wolf OR-7, the she-wolf of Rome, Fenrir and Týr, Little Red Riding Hood, Peter and the Wolf, and the zoo study that gave the world the 'alpha' myth. About a third of the questions are easy enough for a curious ten-year-old; the rest climb toward the detail only a wolf-watcher would know. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia, the National Park Service's Yellowstone wolf data and the primary sources they cite, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the scientific name of the gray wolf?
Canis lupus
Canis latrans is the coyote and Canis aureus the golden jackal; the wolf is close enough to both to produce fertile hybrids.
Q 02The wolf is the largest living wild member of which animal family?
Canidae
It is set apart from coyotes and jackals by a broader snout, shorter ears, a shorter torso and a longer tail.
Q 03According to biologists, what effect do the phases of the Moon have on wolf howling?
None at all
Wolves howl to assemble the pack before and after hunts, to raise an alarm at a den, and to find each other in storms or unfamiliar terrain.
Q 04A wild wolf pack is, at its core, what kind of group?
A mated pair and their offspring
Offspring typically stay with their parents for anywhere from 10 to 54 months before dispersing to find mates of their own.
Q 05Resting in the open at -40°, northern wolves cover their faces with what?
Their tail
They tuck the muzzle between the rear legs; a well-fed wolf also stores fat around the heart, kidneys and bone marrow for winter.
Q 06In what condition are wolf pups at birth?
Blind and deaf
Newborn wolf pups look a lot like German Shepherd puppies and first leave the den at about three weeks old.
Q 07How many teeth does an adult wolf have?
42
Those heavy teeth are better suited to crushing bone than any other canid's, though not as specialised as a hyena's.
Q 08Yellowstone biologists put a wolf's bite pressure at roughly how many pounds per square inch?
1,200 psi
Wolves typically start feeding on the largest internal organs first: heart, liver, lungs and stomach lining.
Q 09What is a wolf's top running speed, according to Yellowstone's wolf biologists?
35 mph
Most of the time wolves travel at a cruising pace of about 5 mph, saving the sprint for the final moments of a hunt.
Q 10In what year were gray wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park?
1995
The first 14 wolves arrived in two January shipments and were held in acclimation pens until late March.
Q 11The first Yellowstone wolves were captured near which Canadian national park?
Jasper
Ranch groups objected that the wrong subspecies, the northwestern wolf, was being brought south instead of the Northern Rocky Mountains wolf.
Q 12In Roman legend, which twins were suckled by a she-wolf?
Romulus and Remus
The image of the she-wolf nursing the twins was a symbol of Rome by at least the 3rd century BC and appears on some of the city's earliest silver coins.
Q 13In Norse mythology, the giant wolf Fenrir is fated to swallow which god at Ragnarök?
Odin
The god's son Víðarr then avenges him, kicking one foot into the wolf's lower jaw and tearing it apart.
Q 21Roughly how many wild gray wolves are there worldwide?
200,000–250,000
Persecution has still shrunk the species' range to about one-third of its historic extent.
Q 22How does the IUCN Red List classify the gray wolf as a species worldwide?
Least Concern
Its wide range and stable numbers earn the lowest-risk category, even though it is locally extinct across much of Western Europe, the United States and Mexico.
Q 23Which country holds an estimated 50,000–60,000 wolves, making it the species' most important stronghold?
Canada
Its wolves still occupy about 80% of their historical range, and as many as 4,000 may be harvested there each year.
Q 14Which Norse god lost a hand after placing it in Fenrir's mouth as a pledge?
Týr
The unbreakable fetter Gleipnir was forged by dwarves after ordinary chains failed to hold the wolf.
Q 15Which French author published the first written version of Little Red Riding Hood in 1697?
Charles Perrault
In that first version the wolf simply falls asleep after eating the girl and the story ends; the rescuing huntsman came later with the Brothers Grimm.
Q 16In The Three Little Pigs, what is the one house the Big Bad Wolf cannot blow down made of?
Bricks
The now-standard line 'I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in' first appeared in print in 1886.
Q 17'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' is a fable attributed to which ancient storyteller?
Aesop
It is number 210 in the Perry Index, the standard catalogue of the fables.
Q 18In Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, which instruments represent the wolf?
Three horns
The bird is a flute, the duck an oboe, the cat a clarinet and the grandfather a bassoon; the hunters' gunshots are the drums.
Q 19Arctic wolves of the High Arctic islands mainly hunt Arctic hares and which large shaggy animal?
Muskoxen
Wolves on Ellesmere Island see so few people that they show little fear and will approach humans cautiously and curiously.
Q 20The Ethiopian wolf, Africa's most endangered carnivore, is a specialist hunter of what?
Rodents
It hunts by day, when its prey is active, and in the Bale Mountains has learned to forage among cattle herds to hide its approach.
Q 24Under the right conditions, a wolf's howl can be heard across up to about how many square miles?
50
Scent-marking with urine is actually a more effective way of advertising territory than howling.
Q 25In what year were the last wolves killed in Yellowstone before their eventual reintroduction?
1926
The final victims were two pups found near Soda Butte Creek and killed by park rangers.
Q 26Within two years of wolves returning to Yellowstone, what happened to the park's coyote population?
It fell by about half
Coyotes learned to flee uphill: heavier wolves cannot stop on a slope, letting the coyote open up a big lead.
Q 27Which animal is the favoured prey of Yellowstone's wolves?
Elk
The recovery plan predicted each wolf would kill about 12 a year; the real figure turned out closer to 22.
Q 28The chain of ecosystem changes set off by returning wolves to Yellowstone is a textbook example of what?
A trophic cascade
Wolf kills also feed ravens, eagles, wolverines, grizzlies and magpies, and grizzlies benefited from more berries as elk browsing fell.
Q 29Yellowstone had a single beaver colony in 2001; how many did it have by 2011?
9
Elk under pressure from wolves browse more widely, easing their grazing on the willows beavers need to survive winter.
Q 30In 2011 the collared wolf OR-7, 'Journey', became the first wild wolf confirmed in which US state since 1924?
California
He wandered more than 1,000 miles from northeastern Oregon, and his descendants later formed packs south of the border.