BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Overread" data-source="post: 1677216" data-attributes="member: 68571">The wolf jumping the fence (which has dividers large enough for it to pass through without jumping) was raised in the article at the start of this thread:"""One thing in the behaviour of the wolf makes Kojola very suspicious: "Why is the wolf jumping high over the fence? It's behaving like a trained animal. It's definitely not natural behaviour in this kind of situation where the animal obviously could sneak between the crossbars.""""However feel that its important to understand that an animals reaction to its environment as we understand it is based on watching select groups of those animals and producing a general pattern and understanding for their behavour. Further constrains on time and resources (people as well as gear) as well as the effect of having observers in the field (disturbance) mean that we cannot simply study every indevidual of every species nor get a complete build up of them.Thus there are always going to be localised differences in how a population act based on their environment. I am reminded of wolves swimming to hunt for waterfowl which was not an expected hunting method but was shown to be successfull by a pack. I forget where this pack was but it was shown (last year or this year I think) on the BBC in a documentary episode on that wolfpack (as well as other wildlife on the island that was the focus of the study).Thus we come to our jumping wolf - it might be any number of reasons for this wolf to jump the fence rather than go through - it could be that locally electric fences (or barbed wire) are in use at low heights and thus all the wolves have learnt that jumping over is a better approach than to go through (where they are likley to get shocked); or it could be that this indevidual wolf once got trapped/stuck for a period of time when trying to get through a fence and thus adapted to jumping over. It might be that he just likes jumping to.Those are a few possible answers and even with a lot of study of the wolf we might never actually know the reason for the animals actions.Reading the article is appears the photographer used a baiting method in the pen (meat) to attract the wolf to the area. Using the method over what appears to be a longer period of time to get the wolf used to the precense of his camera gear and the firing of the flash. The jumping effect was most likley an unexpected bonus to the photographer and might simply be a feature limited to this indevidual wolf (and maybe even the area/pen in question).</blockquote>

Verification