The ability to adapt has been crucial to writing\u2014and amending\u2014an animal care manual for the dire wolves, a manual which James points out is \u201ca world\u2019s first effort\u201d since he and his team are compiling it for a species that has not existed for 10,000 years. Yet it speaks for how long a journey lies ahead for the dire wolves. Given Romulus and Remus\u2019 desire to tear and destroy, it even invites the obvious question of how soon it is until they can hunt?\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cThey give chase,\u201d James says, \u201cbut they\u2019re not skilled hunters yet. They\u2019re still young, and they\u2019re still kind of goofy. They get a lot of deer that come through, and they quickly just break off in a chase. It wouldn\u2019t be too dissimilar to my Australian shepherd. She sees a squirrel, she\u2019s off, but if she ever got the squirrel, I\u2019m not sure she\u2019d know what to do next.\u201d<\/p>\n
James\u2019 example also belies a key difference between a domesticated dog and a true wolf pack. One is raised and sheltered by humans; the other learns to hunt from its elders. These dire wolves have no elders though.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll take generations of dire wolves to get to the point where they\u2019re truly independent and skilled hunters,\u201d James admits. \u201cWe\u2019ll continue to work with some cross-fostering efforts so you can bring in experienced wolves, they don\u2019t have to be dire wolves, so they can raise a pack and teach them how to hunt. We can [learn from] this generation, and it will be really fundamental to creating future generations of animals. These guys\u2014Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi\u2014are likely to never be really skilled hunters, but we\u2019ll work through generations of wolves and remove human intervention at every step, until you get to the point where you have these truly wild animals.\u201d<\/p>\n
James\u2019 acknowledgment that Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi are just the first of generations of dire wolves to come is intriguing, especially since when the species\u2019 revival was announced in April, the publicly stated plan was to eventually build up a wolf pack of six to eight dire wolves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still going to focus on this pack and building a pack structure for these guys,\u201d James explains. \u201cWe have opportunities to work with some of our Indigenous partners, some of our Native American partners, to try to do this type of effort on their lands, and I think that\u2019s where we can get into more of the hands-off management.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ability to adapt has been crucial to writing\u2014and amending\u2014an animal care manual for the dire wolves, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-184944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}