Cyber Monday Deals

All pack members seem to like playing with and caring for pups. The adults play with each other, too. Adults and pups play by chasing, jumping over each other, ambushing and wrestling with jaws or forelimbs. Other play behaviors include muzzling, tail wagging, paw raising and licking faces---and running! Though their usual walking speed is about 5 miles per hour, a wolf can run 35 to 40 m.p.h. (this is their "sprint" speed, not their distance speed). (The average distance a wolf travels in a day is 10 to 15 miles, but sometimes they will travel 50 miles in a day.)

...So, the pup becomes a young wolf, losing his baby teeth (at 4 to 6 mos) and finally getting his 42 adult teeth (see chart below for wolf dentition), and quickly enough becoming a yearling; but only about 25% of pups born in the wild make it through their first year, the rest dying because of lack of food, disease (mange, parvovirus among others), accident or attack by bears or humans. If a wolf survives to yearling status and becomes a full adult, her/his weight can be anywhere from 80 to 100 pounds average for female and male respectively (males are roughly 20% larger than females. They can get up to 175 pounds in weight). They grow to be about 6 or 6 1/2 feet long from the very tip of the tail to the tip of their nose, and are about 2 1/2 feet tall at their shoulder. They become sexually mature at 22 months.

In the wild, wolves generally live to around 8 years of age but can live to the ripe old age of 13 or so. (In captivity, wolves live as long as domestic dogs).