Friendship between a wolf and a man is a great storyline for a movie or adventure novel. Wolves have always been incredibly attractive to humans. Often people even deliberately give birth to dogs that look like wolves. It is widely believed that it is impossible to tame a wild wolf. Some experts to one degree or another refute this statement.
Is it possible to raise a wolf
There have been cases in history when a wolf really became a pet for a person, replacing a dog, and even carried out commands. It is worth remembering that this is not a common practice, but incredible exceptions.
In general, raising a wolf is possible, albeit incredibly difficult. It is necessary to start doing this from the first days of the wolf cub's life. Eric Siemen, a biologist from Germany, noted that after the age of nineteen, the wolf cub will be impossible to socialize. Specialists in raising wolves, of which there are not so many in the world, begin their work with puppies 8-10 days old. Since there are still two to three weeks before the start of solid food intake, the puppies are weaned from the mother and fed with milk from a bottle during this time.
The main secret of taming the wolf is to become a "member of the pack" for the animal, that is, to do everything so that the wolf perceives a person as a relative. But this condition alone is not enough, a person must become not only a relative, but the leader of the pack, otherwise complete domestication will not work. The fact is that a rigid social hierarchy is always built in the animal world. In a pack, there cannot be two equal wolves, one always stands above the other on the social ladder, dominates over him. Therefore, a man and a wolf cannot become friends, even if the wolf takes him for his own.
The Dutcher family from the United States abandoned all the benefits of civilization and settled in the forest to study the wolf pack. For 6 years of life, side by side, they managed to make friends with the whole pack of wolves.
This should also be reflected in the upbringing of the cubs. If the wolf cub attacks, then the person should not be afraid, run away, in any way show fear, but must fight back - otherwise, from an early age, the wolf cub will understand that he is stronger and he dominates the relationship.
What dangers can lie in wait
It should be understood that it is impossible to completely domesticate a wolf, and the stories of people who managed to tame a wolf as a pet dog are, rather, natural anomalies. The researchers note that a "socialized" wolf can be more dangerous than a wild one. A wild wolf, hearing a man, smelling him, will rush to run. An animal accustomed to a person will not be afraid to come up and bite first.
Any manifestation of affection (patting the scruff of the neck, stroking the head), to which domestic dogs are accustomed, the wolf can take for an attempt to attack and give a tough rebuff.
In addition, it is not for nothing that there is a saying: "No matter how much you feed the wolf, he still looks into the forest." No matter how wonderful conditions a person creates for a wolf, no matter how he tries to surround him with home warmth and comfort, sooner or later he will run away into the forest, this also applies to wolves born in captivity.
In the Leningrad Zoo, trainer Dmitry Vasiliev raised a wolf cub, which still perceives him as a mother and behaves like an obedient dog. With all other people, the wolf is quite aggressive.
In general, you can forget about the dream of having a wolf as a pet. The upbringing of wolves can only be carried out by specially trained people who have chosen wolves as the object of scientific research.
