The Wolf Army

INTERESTING FACTS

ABOUT WOLVES

1.Wolves run on their toes like all canids do. It enables them to run fast and turn at high speeds.

2.Wolves have about 200 million scent cells. Humans have only about 5 million. Wolves can smell other animals more than one mile (1.6 kilometers) away.

3.A wolf pup’s eyes are blue at birth. Their eyes turn yellow by the time they are eight months old.

4.Under certain conditions, wolves can hear as far as six miles away in the forest and ten miles on the open tundra.

5.Immense power is concentrated in a wolf’s jaw. It has arguably the most powerful jaws of all canids and of the most powerful of most other predators including lion and hyena. The jaws themselves are massive, bearing 42 teeth specialized for stabbing, shearing, and crunching bones. Their jaws also open farther than those of a dog.

6.A hungry wolf can eat 20 pounds of meat in a single meal, which is akin to a human eating one hundred hamburgers.

7.Wolves can swim distances of up to 8 miles (13 kilometers) aided by small webs between their toes.

8.A wolf can run about 20 miles (32 km) per hour, and up to 40 miles (56 km) per hour when necessary, but only for a minute or two. They can “dog trot” around 5 miles (8km) per hour and can travel all day at this speed. Some wolves have unofficially been measured to run up to 50 miles(80km) per hour.

9.A light-reflecting layer on a wolf’s eye called the tapetum lucidum (Latin for “bright tapestry”) causes a wolf’s eyes to glow in the dark and may also facilitate night vision. While a wolf’s color perception and visual acuity maybe be inferior to a human’s, a wolf’s eyes are extremely sensitive to movement.

10.Unlike other animals, wolves have a variety of distinctive facial expressions they use to communicate and maintain pack unity. Recent research suggest that wolves also communicate with their eyes.