canidcompendium:Wolves will kill for more space, new USU study findsby Amy Joi O’DonoghueHavin
canidcompendium:Wolves will kill for more space, new USU study findsby Amy Joi O’DonoghueHaving your own space not only brings peace of mind, but it also correlates strongly to a greater chance of survival for wolf families at Yellowstone National Park.A new study involving Logan’s Utah State University and University of Oxford found wolves will fight to the death to protect their turf if they lack adequate space to raise their pups.The aggressive behavior of families looking out for their own is not limited to wolves, or the wilds of nature, said researcher Dan MacNulty, a USU ecologist and assistant professor in the Department of Wildland Resources.“These family groups of wolves that are competing with each other for space and resources. That is not unlike humans,” he said. “It is well-demonstrated that chimpanzees will compete and war with each other over space and resources and certainly humans are known to do so, if in a more sophisticated way.”The study, published in the online issue of the Journal of Animal Ecology in the British Ecological Society, followed 280 collared wolves in northern Yellowstone for 13 years.“This study produced a generally novel result because the conventional thinking is that large carnivores are limited by the abundance of prey in a given area,” MacNulty said. “But what these wolves are ultimately limited by is the amount of space they have to raise their pups in safety.”Read more -- source link
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