- Status: Safe
- Forests and mountains of Europe, Asia, and North America
Numbers
- Weight
- 97 lbmales 95-100 lb, females 80-85 lb
- Length
- 51 infrom 41 to 63 in, tail excluded
- Height
- 32 inat the shoulder, from 31 to 33 in
- Lifespan
- 7 years6 to 8 years in the wild
- Speed
- 43 mphtop speed; 30-37 mph maintained for twenty minutes
- Bite force
- 1400 psialmost double that of a German shepherd
- Horizontal jump
- 16 ftsingle leap
Ten fun facts
a wolf's jaws exert a pressure of nearly fourteen hundred pounds per square inch, almost double that of a German shepherd.
it walks by placing its hind paws directly in the tracks of its front paws, maintaining five miles per hour for hours.
the heaviest wolf ever recorded in Eurasia weighed one hundred ninety pounds and was killed in Ukraine after World War Two.
in Yellowstone National Park, about half of the wolves have black coats, a color inherited from ancient interbreeding with domestic dogs.
the alpha male hierarchy concept was described in nineteen forty-seven using captive wolves and debunked by its own author in nineteen ninety-nine.
a pack explores up to nine percent of its entire territory every single day while searching for food to eat.
fights between rival packs cause fourteen to sixty-five percent of wolf deaths recorded in Minnesota and Denali National Park.
pups are born blind and deaf, weigh eleven to eighteen ounces, and open their eyes after nine to twelve days.
in mainland Italy, more than half of tested wolves show genetic traces of interbreeding with domestic dogs.
Sicily had its own subspecies, the Sicilian wolf, officially recognized in twenty eighteen but already extinct during the twentieth century.
The quiz answers
Five questions about this animal. Pick an answer and find out if it is the right one.
Question 1 of 5
How is a wolf pack actually organized?
Question 2 of 5
How many pups are usually in a litter?
Question 3 of 5
How much does a wolf pup weigh at birth?
Question 4 of 5
What is the top speed of a wolf?
Question 5 of 5
What is the relationship between wolves and dogs?
Try it yourself
Measure sixteen feet in your yard using a tape measure: that is the distance of a single horizontal leap by a wolf. Try jumping that far yourself.
Walk on dry sand and try placing each foot directly inside the footprint left by your front foot: a wolf does this naturally with every step.
Weigh a backpack to fourteen ounces: that is how much a newborn wolf pup weighs. After four months, it weighs thirty times more, about twenty-six pounds.
Data from Wikidata (Q18498) and Wikipedia (Wolf).