What does wolf howl mean

　　Animals in nature have their own unique habits, and wolves are no exception. Wolves are carnivorous animals. Most of the time they like to catch small animals such as rabbits and pheasants, and sometimes they hurt people. They have a large appetite, and can eat dozens of catties of meat at a time; of course, they are also very capable of enduring hunger, and they can eat enough for a few weeks without worrying about it.
　　Wolves like to start hunting at night. After dusk, the hungry wolves will go out to hunt, howling while walking. As we all know, the calls of most animals are communication signals to communicate with each other, and wolves will make different calls in different situations.
　　The most common way wolves howl at night is to call their partners.
　　For example, female wolves often call their pups by howling; pups will call out to their pups when they are hungry; Howl to find the desired mate.
　　Many literary works like to describe the night scene of the wilderness like this: “On a clear and starry night, with a bright moon in the sky, on the hillside, a wolf raises its head and howls, as if it is a symbol of loneliness.” In fact, this is just people’s romance. imagine. Most likely, it was the alpha wolf who was expelling the strange lone wolf that stepped into its territory.
　　For years, researchers have been trying to figure out what makes wolves howl. Researchers who raised wolves in captivity found that the pattern of howling wolves was closely related to the size of the wolf pack and the presence or absence of the alpha wolf. The researchers boldly speculate that maybe howling wolves is not a simple exchange of information.
　　In 2008, Lang Jie, a cognitive behaviorist at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, raised nine wolves with his own hands at the Institute of Wolf Science. These wolf cubs who have never experienced the “severe beating” of nature do not know how to hunt at all, but they still howl regardless of the occasion.
　　When the pups were six weeks old, Ranger took them for a walk. Each time one was taken away, the remaining pups would start howling. The reason is that wolves in captivity do not have natural families, so they spontaneously form hierarchical wolf packs, and each wolf has a “preferred object” that can play together, groom each other, and sleep together.
　　In order to test his idea, in the next few weeks, Ranger took every wolf away. Each one was randomly selected before the walk. Every time the pup left less than 20 minutes, the wolf pack began to make a commotion, but the one that was taken away did not respond in most cases.
　　They later discovered that the pack howls the most when the alpha wolf leaves, and that a wolf howls louder when its “favorite” leaves. In this way, Lange believes that howling wolves indirectly reflects the social relationship between wolves.
　　At this time, someone raised a question, could this howling be caused by anxiety? So Ranger collected wolves’ saliva, measured their epidermal hormone levels, and found that anxiety and howling were not always linked. While the wolf pack was numerically anxious when the alpha wolf left, this was not the case when the mate left. Although they howled incessantly, they were obviously not very anxious.
　　So it is not difficult to see that the howling of wolves is not impulsive, but planned. They are trying to connect with important wolf pack roles by howling and bringing the pack together.
　　This fits well with a 1996 observation by wolf biologist Dave Maker of the University of Minnesota. After observing the wolves, he once put forward a point of view: “The main reason for howling wolves is indeed to gather wolves after hunting.” At that time, he tracked 15 wolves in the wild and found that they could howl to loosen the loose wolves at the end of hunting. Formation, instant integration and gathering.
　　But John Seberg of the University of Waterloo pointed out that it is unscientific to extrapolate the behavior of animals in the wild from the behavior of captive animals. Wolves can track pack members by scent, so howling in the wild may have other uses.
　　Nowadays, there are still many things to explore about why wolves howl.
　　The evolution of magical skills and population secrets of animals has been a topic that humans have been exploring for many years. Perhaps in the near future, researchers will be able to successfully solve the problem and lead us to a glimpse of the truth.