Stories are shared regularly at these meetings, but usually these stories are full of hearsay and innuendo with little fact. As someone who participates in wildlife management meetings where wolves and their prey are common topics of discussion, I can personally attest to the latter. I expect the book to be of broad interest as well because the polarizing nature of wolves is due, in part, to their hunting and predatory behavior. Accordingly, this book will be a valuable reference (in more than 1000 hours of radio tracking wolves and moose, I have witnessed only three wolf-prey interactions). Most investigators of these studies will be lucky to witness the pursuit of wolves just once even though this is their focus. “Highly useful for defining research questions and informing conclusions from such studies of wolf hunting behavior. Marco Musiani, University of Calgary, Canada | Ecology Readers will be glad that all this finally ends up in a such a cohesive book.” I have been there, in Yellowstone and at other field research sites, and I have seen the volunteers, the three authors of this book, and also the wolves and prey, all in action. I have personally witnessed all this effort in the field, although I have not collaborated with the authors directly. As also explained in the book, a colossal network of volunteers has been instrumental in collecting the wolf hunting accounts. Poignant images are used to carefully point out, convey, or highlight hunting principles or strategies. The images are vivid, graphic, and enthralling. A highlight of the book is its superb photography. This book is indeed unique and will be of interest to many readers, including ecologists and other individuals concerned with wolves and more broadly with wildlife, wilderness, and animal behavior and conservation. “The authors represent three generations of career wolf ecologists. Read More about Wolves on the Hunt Read Less about Wolves on the Hunt But even as wolves help drive the underlying rhythms of the ecosystems they inhabit, their evolutionary prowess comes at a cost: wolves spend one-third of their time hunting-the most time consuming of all wolf activities-and success at the hunt only comes through traveling long distances, persisting in the face of regular failure, detecting and taking advantage of deficiencies in the physical condition of individual prey, and through ceaseless trial and error, all while risking injury or death.īy describing and analyzing the behaviors wolves use to hunt and kill various wild prey-including deer, moose, caribou, elk, Dall sheep, mountain goats, bison, musk oxen, arctic hares, beavers, and others- Wolves on the Hunt provides a revelatory portrait of one of nature’s greatest hunters. While adapted to hunt primarily hoofed animals, a wolf-or especially a pack of wolves-can kill individuals of just about any species. The wolf is indeed an adept killer, able to take down prey much larger than itself. Landis, the authors create a compelling and complex picture of these hunters. The first book to focus explicitly on wolf hunting of wild prey, Wolves on the Hunt seeks to fill these gaps in our knowledge and understanding.Ĭombining behavioral data, thousands of hours of original field observations, research in the literature, a wealth of illustrations, and-in the e-book edition and online-video segments from cinematographer Robert K. Because of wolves’ habitat, speed, and general success at evading humans, researchers have faced great obstacles in studying their natural hunting behaviors. And there is perhaps no apex predator more impressive and important in its hunting-or more infamous, more misjudged-than the wolf. The interactions between apex predators and their prey are some of the most awesome and meaningful in nature-displays of strength, endurance, and a deep coevolutionary history.
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