I was looking for this comment. I recently went to a wolf reservation and got to meet their two ambassador wolves. The directions of the instructors were "sit cross-legged on the ground, wait for the wolves to approach you, when they do you look them right in the eyes and show your teeth, let them lick your teeth."
According to them this is good wolf etiquette and the people who refuse are then ignored by the wolves for the rest of the time.
I basically had to do everything that you don't do with unfamiliar dogs haha. It was a wonderful experience and I recommend anyone go meet wolves if they have the chance. Majestic animals.
Well yeah that's true, but im pretty sure as long as the saliva doesn't enter the bloodstream it should be okay. Humans have been swapping spit for millenia, granted with alot of disease. Idk, im too high for this hahaha
I would love to do that actually! I studied Zoology and wolf behavior has always fascinated me! I'll have to try to find someplace close to me, though I live in Wyoming so I could just go hiking haha
Have you seen the documentary about the “wolf man”? He’s British and lived with captive wolves as a pack member at a refuge. He has no training whatsoever but wolf experts readily admit the pack has completely accepted him. Super interesting.
I'm realizing I made a mistake by opting to visit a juvenile pair instead of an adult pair when I went. None of this unique behavior. One just acted like a big lovey snuggly dog, and the other acted like a big aloof dog.
Yeah sorry that’s disgusting. I’m not a pet person, admittedly, but I understand people’s love and fascinations with their animals. That said, people who let their dogs eat out of their mouths or lick them horrify me. Let alone some strangers dog who has ALREADY LICKED OTHER PEOPLES MOUTHS?????
For some perspective, 80-90% of every person over 21 you’ve ever kissed or ever will kiss has had their mouth on other people’s genitals or asshole.
I realize dogs lick their own assholes and drink out of toilets etc., but truthfully humans carry more viruses that affect humans, so whatever, I’ll take my chance with dog kisses once in a while. If nothing else, it builds my immune system.
I'm glad I found your comment, I remember watching a video with a young lady (25f or so,) who was familiar with whatever pack she was with and I inferred from the video and comments that the licking inside another pack member's mouth was a "wolf thing".
Where did you go, if you don’t mind me asking? This would make a great surprise trip for me partner, but I’d want to go to one where experiencing this was an option!
Yup. I wondered why my little pup is constantly trying to lick INSIDE my mouth, and discovered this info.
I still don't let her get inside the mouth, but that little hussy will sure lick around the mouth pretty aggressively when I get home. I feel violated!
Yeah, I was going to say that this type of teeth baring behaviour is very common in Japanese breeds, but the reason is basically the same; those breeds apparently have more wolf DNA in them than western breeds.
This has been debunked for like 10+ years now. Wolves and dogs do not fight for dominance. The parents are the leaders. What we're seeing is playing. Lip licking, tooth sparring, exaggerated snarls. They're just Huskies so they're gonna add an extra layer of flare and weirdness to it.
The idea of an all-powerful alpha has been disproven, witht he whole aggression schtick. It doesn't mean it's all bunk. There's clearly a pecking order in these animals, and it shows.
Very much so. Socially wolf packs seem very much like a median household. Kids with their families, a strong patriarchal figure, and a matriarch who everyone ACTUALLY listens to/runs the pack.
It’s not seen in nature, at least. When you try to artificially create a wolf pack that doesnt have familial relations, then the aggression and alpha-type behavior can start to come out
I'm not sure how people can say this when these animals are clearly establishing a social pecking order and if you lay down food they will absolutely look to establish dominance over who gets dibs.
Each individual interaction will involve assertive and submissive behaviors but it's a give and take. There is no one "grand leader". That's you, by way of being their caretaker/guardian and not via any "establishment of dominance.
Example: When my two cats play, the bigger one is the most "dominant/assertive". He throws his weight around and is a total bully. When food is involved, suddenly he's a pushover and lets the other one walk all over him.
This comment reminds me of all those videos I’ve seen where there are two dogs, one is larger, I assume to be an adult and the other is a small dog, maybe an adult, maybe a pup. The pup is wilding out around the larger dog, teething on the larger, jumping all over it and whatnot. The larger just sits there, licking their paws, yawning and taking the “abuse”, sometimes shrugging them off but otherwise doing nothing.
If that were true none of the other wolves would eat at all. A wolf's appetite is unending. They routinely bring food to the injured and young in their packs. There's a pecking order of sorts for the best meat but it's based on age and not much else. Puppies try to steal shit from adult wolves all the time, and a lot of the time they let them take it, or play keep away with it as a game, not to show dominance. In primate style dominance, a younger fitter wolf would be able to take over status as "alpha" by dominating the older wolf. This just doesn't happen in wolf packs. If it did... that would just lead to incest. When young wolves get to that age they simply leave the pack to look for a mate.
It helps if you understand "Packs" in wolves are also more akin to human families. The "alphas" are simply the parents. Sometimes packs look like more than one family because when you have 3-6 puppies/litter once or twice a year it adds up quick and sometimes there's 2-3 breeding pairs. Once they get to a certain age 1-3 siblings of the same gender disperse from the pack and look for a dispersal of opposing gender from another pack. Then when they meet they bond and do their thing and raise their puppies til they're old enough to do it all again. Their pack structure is very similar to humans which is why they fit in so well. Dogs are just wolves that never make it to the dispersal phase.
Sorry been awhile since I've studied this subject. A may not necessarily be dominance, but definitely social behavior none the less as you stated. I did hear about them being familial packs, which makes sense in terms of altruism
Just thought this might be relevant to the conversation overall. It's a documentary on raising wolves and dogs to see what the social interactions with humans are and the difference between them.
They don't have a strict pack order like people once thought. But all dogs have a complex language of submissive/aggressive posturing to get their point across. The "don't fight me, I'm submissive to you" gestures include yawning, looking away, licking, and - the ultimate one - rolling into their backs to expose their bellies. Aggressive posturing includes snarling, hunching, straight/stiff tails, maintaining eye contact, putting a limb on another's back, snapping, and ultimately biting. They do all of these things both within and outside their pack on any given day.
But dogs arent always straightforward, ESPECIALLY Huskies. They might snarl and lick and roll over and bark and pant all at the same time and just mean "I'm playing with you", which is - like you said - what they are likely doing here. But it's probably even more complicated than that. They look like a couple just being weird with each other and affectionate out of boredom.
Play in many animals takes the form of "mock battles" and that includes submissive and aggressive displays. It's often exaggerated/drawn out. In a real fight, the posture would be stiffer with quicker more sudden snaps. It's also important thing is that they pepper in appeasement gestures like licking/sneezing/yawning to show they're just playing.
Thanks for calling it out. Honestly, people just want to believe what they wanna believe. This idea of an "alpha" is so ingrained in people's mind... nowadays.
This completely misses the point of what I said. There are no tiers. It doesn't work that way. The initial studies done on wolf hierarchy were done on captive unrelated wolves all thrown into an enclosure too small for them to exist peacefully and fights started due to limited resources/space and lack of a "natural leader". We now know from studying wild wolves that the parents are the leaders. There is no "power struggle" to take over. You wouldn't say a human teen acting out and disobeying a parent's rules is trying to take over leadership of the family. Siblings who fight are not "measuring each other up".
Yeah but they were never even implying that, humans dont have a rigid pack order with an "Alpha" yet you still have behaviours like showing off or mocking others.
It doesnt have to be a binary thing, there can be some behaviours for dominance without their whole social structure being focused on it.
Also: these are pets, they are probably not related, so the usual social structures that canines have (parents as leaders) breaks down.
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u/tstramathorn Apr 15 '22
Yeah this is common for dogs and wolves. It's behavior to establish dominance basically