#on wolves

[shadowhaert]

when the lamb loves the wolf

hélène cixious / u.k / pierre corneille / agustín gómez-arcos / konstantin korobov / hélène cixous / u.k / amy j. richardson

[sicknessinmotion]

you say, wolves are so hungry, but are you not?

unknown // article by anja petersen // unknown // wikiquote.

[unpeeled-human]

one of my personal favorite tropes

[guiltyidealist]

new favorite YouTube comment just dropped

[skippyisntfunny]

[lizardsfromspace]

Scientists shouldn't have to pretend they're bringing back the dire wolf. Geneticists should be able to say "I want to make wolves larger for no reason", and we should have the resources to say "that sounds cool as hell. Here's a billion dollars"

[bethanythebogwitch]

[bebs-art-gallery]

Art by Matteo Moni

[ferncloud]

let's find comfort with mama

[great-and-small]

This is unrelated to anything else with the silly “Dire Wolf” controversy but them putting these images in all the articles give me the weirdest uncanny valley discomfort. Like it is hard for me to take these photos seriously. Do you know why?

Wolf pups just do not look like that. Because wolves typically have their pups in underground dens, it is an evolutionary advantage for the vulnerable pups to blend in with the dark earth of the den. If they were born white, they’d be sharply contrasted and easier for predators to spot. Even arctic wolves are born dark and gain their typical white coat a little later (though not all arctic wolves are white either).

Fun fact in Game of Thrones they used domestic dogs to play the dire wolf pups; puppy Ghost is cute but he’s clearly no wolf!

Giving birth to pups that are darkly colored is a pretty basic adaptation in a lot of canids that litter underground. Red foxes and arctic foxes are also born a very nondescript shade of dirt. Exceptions exist, but this is just a thing that a lot of wild canines do. Here are various canids (red fox, Ethiopian wolf, maned wolf, and African wild dog) that do this

I don’t know if we have any proof that dire wolves had their pups in dens but it would be kind of weird if they didn’t. So even if the dire wolf had a light coat as an adult they would likely still be born with a darker color to act as camouflage.

So when I keep getting this image

blasted on all my feeds you can understand why my brain has trouble registering it even as a gray wolf pup. It’s just weird. It looks like what chat gpt would spit out if you requested an arctic wolf pup. That thing would stand out like crazy in an underground den. You can make something look like something else all you want but the evolutionary history of a species is too complicated for us to ever faithfully recreate from scratch.

[beastwhimsy]

this is moonlit mane but her TRUE PACK NAME is FIERCE FANG and one day the wolves will howl for her and she'll run to them and they'll accept her into their pack just you wait and see <- fierce fang does not yet understand that she lives in aotearoa, which famously has absolutely zero wolves

[yuumei-art]

Windswept I'll never get tired of making Princess Mononoke fanart. Still my favorite movie of all time

[abby-howard]

[sad-clown]

giving mama a bath

[iconicname]

silly werewolf transformation