Tag: Wolves

My burgeoning love affair with wolves (from a very safe distance)

~ Joy Lynn Fielding ~ Leave a comment

Wolf pups

Before I started reading about wolves for my Strength of the Pack series, my knowledge of them was gleaned entirely from multiple readings of White Fang as a child (and by multiple readings, I mean somewhere in the region of thirty. I loved that book).

Having spent far longer of late than I should reading about wolves’ behaviour, communication, body language and pack structure, not to mention watching videos of adult wolves playing with one another and with little fuzzy cubs, I am fast falling in love with these fascinating, complicated and toothy creatures.

One or two things I stumbled across in my reading I found particularly interesting, though to anyone with a knowledge of wolves already, they are undoubtedly very old news.

  • Wolves can hear as far as six miles away in the forest and ten miles in the open.
  • They have practically no body heat loss through their fur (snow will not melt on a wolf’s coat).
  • How dominant wolves sometimes adopt a submissive role when playing with members of the pack.
  • The extent to which all adult members of the pack play with the cubs. Seriously. Go to YouTube and look. You’ll lose hours of your life, but it’ll put a smile on your face.

Black Wolves (aka the perils of research)

~ Joy Lynn Fielding ~ Leave a comment

OR11_odfw

I’ve just been reading about a recent study which discovered that black wolves’ coat colouring derives from the historical mating of wild grey wolves with black dogs.

I found that to be interesting in a fairly abstract way, but that’s all. Until I read this quote from Robert Wayne, one of the academics involves in the study:

“It [the black coat] must have adaptive value that we don’t yet understand. It could be camouflage, or strengthening the immune system to combat pathogens, or it could reflect a preference to mate with individuals of a different coat color.”

So a certain dark-coloured wolf (yes, Karl, I’m looking at you) is now bugging me about his preferences when it comes to a mate. Damn it. So much for my carefully planned story.

Back to the drawing board. Or the blank word processing document….

How to upset your dog in one easy lesson

~ Joy Lynn Fielding ~ 1 Comment

Listen to different types of wolf howls, again and again, all in the name of research, and only notice after about half an hour that the faithful old Lab is no longer curled up safely snoozing in his basket but is instead stalking around, eyes practically popping out of his head. Oops. Lots of cuddles and a venison ear later, he seems to have forgiven me. I never had these problems when researching the best types of Regency furniture for Our Heroes to have sex on.

Speaking of whom, Carnevalehas received another lovely review, this time from Becky Condit at Mrs Condit and Friends Read Books, who has awarded it 5 Sweet Peas. I’m truly delighted that people are enjoying Perry and Jack’s adventures.