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Speaker 1: Ali Ward back with another episode of smologies or small ologies.
Speaker 1: Get it small ologies. So this is our six somologies episode,
Speaker 1: And if you're looking for any of the previous smologies
Speaker 1: you'll find them in this feed or at Alleyward dot
Speaker 1: com slash smologies. But what is asmology? There's a great question.
Speaker 1: So smologies are quicker, kid and work and in law
Speaker 1: and classroom friendly edits of our full ologies episodes and
Speaker 1: they clock in around twenty minutes, so all the good stuff,
Speaker 1: but with less of a commitment. It's perfect for those
Speaker 1: of you that are returning to the office and have
Speaker 1: a short commute. Maybe you're on a holiday road trip
Speaker 1: and you need something to keep the whole family occupied.
Speaker 1: Speaking of holidays, November twenty third, this Tuesday is wolf
Speaker 1: in neut What you have not heard of? Wolfanut? You
Speaker 1: haven't heard of it? Really, then you haven't listened to
Speaker 1: the longer full version of Lupinology. So I'll summarize. So
Speaker 1: it's a holiday started by a seven year old to
Speaker 1: celebrate canines and kindness. It's when the spirit of the
Speaker 1: wolf brings and hides small gifts around the house for everyone,
Speaker 1: and people who have had, or have or are kind
Speaker 1: to dogs get better gifts than anyone else. You eat
Speaker 1: roasted meat or vegetables and a cake decorated like a
Speaker 1: full moon. So in twenty nineteen I had a wolf
Speaker 1: neut party and I hid gift rep socks around the house.
Speaker 1: It was lit. It was the best ten out of ten.
Speaker 1: Ho Okay, So today's episode is on Upanology, or the
Speaker 1: study of wolves and the word comes from the Latin lupis,
Speaker 1: meaning wolf. But if you ask loupinologists what their job
Speaker 1: title is, they will probably refer to themselves as a
Speaker 1: wolf biologist. But let's be honest, lupinologist, this sounds way
Speaker 1: way cooler, much more regal. So today's lupinologist is an
Speaker 1: associate professor of evolutionary genomics and epigenetics at Princeton University,
Speaker 1: where she runs the von Holt Lab of Ecology and
Speaker 1: Evolutionary Biology. She got her bachelor's degree in psychology from
Speaker 1: Eckard University, her masters from NYU in biology, and got
Speaker 1: her PhD, making her a doctor from the University of California,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles in ecology and evolutionary biology. And she guided
Speaker 1: us through the incredible world of wolves, including what makes
Speaker 1: a wolf a wolf? Wolfy DNA, is there a connection
Speaker 1: between wolves and howling at the moon, the realities of
Speaker 1: pack dynamics, how they hunt, the idea of a lone wolf,
Speaker 1: and how dogs, coyotes, jackals, hyenas and wolf wolves are
Speaker 1: all related. So Circle November twenty third, dream up a
Speaker 1: full mooncake and prepare to celebrate wolf nut as we
Speaker 1: duck into the wolf's den and welcome wolf biologist and lupinologist,
Speaker 1: doctor Bridget von Holtz. And yes, that was my dog
Speaker 1: shaking her collar in the background. O Gby. She loves
Speaker 1: this episode. God ology, What is a wolf? What's the
Speaker 1: difference between a wolf and a coyote and a big
Speaker 1: fox and a domestic dog? Genetically speaking?
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, genetically well, so all of these animals are
Speaker 3: are carnivores. They're in carnivora, and that means that there's
Speaker 3: a defining feature to be a carnivor. And this is
Speaker 3: usually talking about skeletal shape and cranial shape and teeth morphology.
Speaker 3: So to eat meat, you have to have certain physiology,
Speaker 3: you have to have certain tea structure to cut and
Speaker 3: share that meat. There's usually some old faction and visual
Speaker 3: sense in terms of being a predator that eats has
Speaker 3: a meat based diet. Within carnivora, we're going to focus
Speaker 3: on more of the canine related families and species Foxes, coyotes,
Speaker 3: doglike species. They do have common ancestors, so they do
Speaker 3: arise from this ancestral carnivore. The ecology that has shaped
Speaker 3: each of these lineages, their diet, their social nature, all
Speaker 3: of this variation.
Speaker 4: Is quite incredible.
Speaker 3: So wolves, broadly speaking, live across much of the northern
Speaker 3: parts of all of the continents. This is called a
Speaker 3: whole Arctic distribution. We usually find the in temperate or
Speaker 3: much more higher latitudes. Coyotes are a North American evolved
Speaker 3: canine species, so you only find coyotes in North America.
Speaker 3: Jackals are also the Eurasian version, basically that we don't
Speaker 3: have jackals that evolved in North America. They are both
Speaker 3: a little bit smaller typically than a gray wolf. They
Speaker 3: live in a very different type of ecology, So if
Speaker 3: we focus on North America, which is the continent, I'm
Speaker 3: a little.
Speaker 4: Better at coyotes and wolves.
Speaker 3: Though they both live on this continent, they do essentially
Speaker 3: segregate out based on habitat and the presence of the other.
Speaker 3: Coyotes don't typically live in a pack structure, although they
Speaker 3: have been known to form packs over the course of
Speaker 3: their evolution, but typically coyotes mate as a pair and
Speaker 3: don't really form any larger groups than that have a
Speaker 3: much larger group, they will predate on much larger species,
Speaker 3: and they competitively take larger prey, whereas coyote might come
Speaker 3: up and then try to steal whatever prey or carcass
Speaker 3: items are left from a wolf, and that's where conflict
Speaker 3: will usually.
Speaker 4: Happen like go on my angle.
Speaker 3: And wolves are known to kill coyote. Alternatively, coyotes can
Speaker 3: gang up and kill wolves, especially if it's injured or
Speaker 3: malnourished or young, So there is competition between those two species.
Speaker 1: So wolves, coyotes, jackals, foxes, and dogs share a common ancestry,
Speaker 1: diverging many millions of years ago. But this is lupinology,
Speaker 1: not jackology. So back to wolves and how big is
Speaker 1: a wolf? What kind of dog size would you compare
Speaker 1: it to?
Speaker 3: Well, actually, malamutes can be much larger than wolves, So yeah,
Speaker 3: I've seen malamutes well over one hundred and twenty pounds
Speaker 3: and wolves wolves can be very close to that size,
Speaker 3: but generally you can get them anywhere from eighty pounds
Speaker 3: upwards to.
Speaker 4: One hundred one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 3: So dogs can be larger than wolves, but also we've
Speaker 3: bred them to be incredibly large, and maybe their diets
Speaker 3: have something to do with it whether or not they're larger.
Speaker 3: But wolves are pretty substantial creatures.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how many species of wolves are They're all
Speaker 1: over the world. I had no idea, like a hundred
Speaker 1: species I don't know, and I thought i'd get a
Speaker 1: clean answer. But a holy moly, is it herky? Jerky
Speaker 1: and murky. So if you like drama, you will love wolves. Man.
Speaker 1: So I rolled up my yellow sweater sleeves and I
Speaker 1: dug in to find three What on earth.
Speaker 4: Did you know this?
Speaker 1: Okay, first, let's just be be back this puppy up.
Speaker 1: So the genus Canus includes jackals and coyotes, and wolves
Speaker 1: and doggos and dingoes and even the dire wolf, which
Speaker 1: has been extinct for roughly ten thousand years. Don't let
Speaker 1: George R. R. Martin plenty wool over your eyes. Dire wolf
Speaker 1: two words as a real animal, an extinct dire wolf
Speaker 1: one word Game of Thrones fiction. Okay, So, the alive
Speaker 1: species of wolf on the planet include the African golden wolf,
Speaker 1: the Ethiopian wolf, and in North America and across Eurasia
Speaker 1: Canus lupus. Now America, studies have shown we gout one
Speaker 1: wolf Canis lupus, the gray wolf, plus a bunch of subspecies.
Speaker 1: So the timberwolf, that's a gray wolf, Arctic wolf, gray wolf,
Speaker 1: Mexican wolf, this gray wolf, the extinct Oregonian brown wolf
Speaker 1: that's a gray wolf, the buffalo wolf or loafer wolf,
Speaker 1: which was hunted to extinction nineteen twenty six. It's also
Speaker 1: Canis lupus that's a grey wolf. Okay, there's also a
Speaker 1: red wolf in the Carolinas. And here is where wolf
Speaker 1: experts throw down. So there is a ton of debate
Speaker 1: that's gone on for decades and decades about if the
Speaker 1: smaller ruddy wolf of the American southeast is its own
Speaker 1: species and thus protected, or a hybrid of a gray
Speaker 1: wolf in a coyote and thus should be vulnerable to
Speaker 1: more hunting. As it stands in twenty nineteen, it's endangered,
Speaker 1: but it's protected and is considered its own species. But
Speaker 1: many scientists are like, ugh is it though a lot
Speaker 1: of DNA says it's a hybrid. So there you have it.
Speaker 4: Three and half.
Speaker 1: Ish species of wolves, and in North America the gray
Speaker 1: wolf is endemic, meaning it is native here. So now
Speaker 1: let's move on to how wolves relate to one another.
Speaker 1: Let's talk family dynamics first.
Speaker 3: So if we back up, we have this expectation that
Speaker 3: wolves travel in family groups, or at least groups of relatives,
Speaker 3: and the success of a particular individual is highly dependent
Speaker 3: upon having group members with it, so pack members. Most
Speaker 3: of the livelihood of wolves depends upon multiple individuals coordinated
Speaker 3: in their social hunting and also cooperative raising of young
Speaker 3: and and.
Speaker 4: Caring for each other.
Speaker 3: So the goal was to identify some source populations in
Speaker 3: Canada and capture live capture a handful of individuals so
Speaker 3: we potentially maintain this pack cohesion. Where upon release somewhere,
Speaker 3: these animals still maintain their group structure, still potentially had
Speaker 3: higher success as a group than you would find if
Speaker 3: you released one wolf somewhere on its own in the
Speaker 3: middle of a brand new place. How long do wolves live,
Speaker 3: So in captivity they can live quite a while in
Speaker 3: this little posh luxury element of being given food and
Speaker 3: the safety in Yellowstone, there's usually a mortality rate at
Speaker 3: about four and a half years. That two to four
Speaker 3: and a half is an average lifespan, depending upon again
Speaker 3: what's the cause of mortality. There's a lot of intra
Speaker 3: specific mortality, which means that wolves kill other wolves, So
Speaker 3: whether it's territorial disputes or some other event.
Speaker 4: Wolves are absolutely.
Speaker 3: Known for having battles that end in the mortality of
Speaker 3: conspecifics ps.
Speaker 1: Some of the finest people on the planet don't know
Speaker 1: what conspecific means and how to google it just now,
Speaker 1: and it means animals or plants belonging to the same species.
Speaker 3: But they also get yeah, right. They are very social creatures.
Speaker 3: They maintain territories, and even though there is recognition of relatives,
Speaker 3: there are debates about how do you acquire new territory,
Speaker 3: or if you're a disperser and you need to find
Speaker 3: a mate and you need to have a new home
Speaker 3: range because you're going to have a litter, how do
Speaker 3: you acquire that new space and those resources to support that,
Speaker 3: especially in a landscape maybe that's saturated with other wolf
Speaker 3: populations already. So this battle usually does result in a
Speaker 3: give and take of boundaries, and there's expansion or shrinking
Speaker 3: of home ranges, and then there's usually conflict either around
Speaker 3: resources or territory usage.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of wolf drama.
Speaker 1: Speaking of wolf drama, we have to talk about wolf packs.
Speaker 1: We have to from memes allegedly identifying different roles within
Speaker 1: the pack to the often cited alpha males. People are
Speaker 1: obsessed with wolf pack dynamics what exactly is a pack dynamic? Like?
Speaker 1: Is there an alpha? Is there a beta? Do they
Speaker 1: take care of the elderly wolves if they make it
Speaker 1: that long? What is that little pot like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's very complicated. The original.
Speaker 3: Description of wolf society and this lovely idea of altruism
Speaker 3: and cooperation that is still maintained, but it's not necessarily
Speaker 3: that cookie cutter that every wolf pack is going to
Speaker 3: have that size and shape and dynamic.
Speaker 4: So there are many packs that.
Speaker 3: Do enjoy this traditional idea of monogamous breeding, pairs that
Speaker 3: have annual litters of pups and maybe some of their
Speaker 3: older offspring will maintain membership in the pack to help
Speaker 3: care for the next generation of offspring.
Speaker 4: These packs do exist.
Speaker 3: There are, however, many other structures of packs where there
Speaker 3: could be a single male that breeds with as many
Speaker 3: female as he can most of the time, nearly all
Speaker 3: of the time they're unrelated to him, so there is
Speaker 3: this element of avoiding inbreeding and kin recognition. But there
Speaker 3: are lots of structures in variation to that pack structure.
Speaker 3: But again, we love to have this idea that wolves
Speaker 3: are just always going to care exclusively for their pack members.
Speaker 3: There is a lot of provisioning for everybody else in
Speaker 3: the pack, But there is still this battle between I
Speaker 3: want to reproduce, I want to be the dominant individual
Speaker 3: in the pack, and that battle can be very much
Speaker 3: shaped by age and resource availability, body size, maybe just
Speaker 3: personalities of individuals. There are wolves that might be far
Speaker 3: more bold and others that are far more shy. That
Speaker 3: will shape how they interact in a pack and what
Speaker 3: that means for their rank in that system.
Speaker 1: Wolf the Family Pack Drama confirmed so many possibilities based
Speaker 1: on any number of factors. Okay, but what about the
Speaker 1: connection between the canine in the moonlit tundra and the
Speaker 1: one snoring on your lap. When it comes to domestic
Speaker 1: dogs and wolves, I feel like everyone has this question.
Speaker 1: How far down the line are they? How different genetically
Speaker 1: are they? And how did we get like hairless chihuahuas
Speaker 1: out of a wolf? How did we domesticate that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, dogs and wolves are really curious. They aren't very
Speaker 3: different at all the ability This is a huge and
Speaker 3: important question for evolutionary biologists in asking how do we
Speaker 3: get such variation when we look at dogs? How do
Speaker 3: we get that when we have these dog breeds that
Speaker 3: we know came from this basic cookie cutter of a wolf.
Speaker 4: Wolves don't vary that much.
Speaker 3: They might have different colors, they might have slightly shorter
Speaker 3: fur maybe center for if they live in an arid
Speaker 3: desert environment, and a sicker coat if they're more arctic,
Speaker 3: but they're not that different in size and shape as
Speaker 3: you get in dogs.
Speaker 4: So a lot of the work that's been.
Speaker 3: Done to understand the genetics behind why dogs are so
Speaker 3: diverse shows that there are a lot of mutations that
Speaker 3: have happened over the course of their domestication, and it
Speaker 3: can be very few that happen that disrupt genes very
Speaker 3: quickly and you get a brand new appearance.
Speaker 1: So they are just as similar as we suspected. But
Speaker 1: domestication has had a huge impact on how dogs look
Speaker 1: and act and continue to evolve. So maybe in ten
Speaker 1: thousand years puppy dogs will have even bigger eyes and
Speaker 1: fuzzier ears. In my opinion, don't mess with perfection. They're
Speaker 1: great the way they are. Okay, we have some questions
Speaker 1: from listeners like you, but first, each week we donate
Speaker 1: to a cause of the ologists choosing and Bridget chose
Speaker 1: the Red Wolf Coalition at redwolves dot Com. Which teaches
Speaker 1: people about the value of red wolves to the ecosystem
Speaker 1: and the people living in the restoration area. And Bridget says,
Speaker 1: I continue to study red wolves and they currently need
Speaker 1: as much support as they can get from the public,
Speaker 1: so making that donation possible. Are a few sponsors of
Speaker 1: ologies which I may talk about right now.
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Speaker 2: prices very in.
Speaker 1: Express onto your Patreon questions and as always you brought
Speaker 1: it and by it I mean great questions Bath but
Speaker 1: the art in Anakin Geniak both asked about lone wolves.
Speaker 1: Are there any theories about why some wolves become loners.
Speaker 3: There are certainly many times in a wolf's life where
Speaker 3: they will absolutely choose to venture out on their own,
Speaker 3: and that could be the random sighting that you're kind
Speaker 3: of catching a wolf in mid dispersal, or there's also
Speaker 3: perhaps this I don't know how commonly it's known, but
Speaker 3: that wolf packs only exist as packs seasonally.
Speaker 4: No way so in winter, when prey is usually a
Speaker 4: little more vigilant, so snow.
Speaker 3: Is on the ground, food for prey species like elk
Speaker 3: or caribou is harder to find. They're usually more vigilant
Speaker 3: against predators because they're more vulnerable.
Speaker 4: On snow surfaces.
Speaker 3: If it's packed snow and their long legs get stuck
Speaker 3: in it, they're quite vulnerable.
Speaker 4: So wolves really do well.
Speaker 3: In the winter when they pack up and in the
Speaker 3: warm months when there's much more food resources.
Speaker 4: They're often not in packs, so.
Speaker 3: You might see wolves on their own because they're just
Speaker 3: out hanging out doing their wolfy thing. They rendezvous with
Speaker 3: each other periodically, but wolves are often for a good
Speaker 3: half of the year and temperate zones on their own,
Speaker 3: so lone wolves lone wolves absolutely exist. They might be
Speaker 3: out in pairs hanging out with their favorite buddy or someone,
Speaker 3: but it's often they're not always that close in touch
Speaker 3: with each other.
Speaker 1: But the notion of an alpha male as we think
Speaker 1: of them in concer terms, like a CEO overseeing a
Speaker 1: terrified team of subordinates, is a myth. So canine ethologist
Speaker 1: David Meach, who's studied wolf behavior for decades, has disavowed
Speaker 1: some of his previous notions of alpha's because they were
Speaker 1: based on captive wolf packs of unrelated wolfies. So in
Speaker 1: the wild, most packs are just families of a pop
Speaker 1: and a ma and their pups, and maybe a few
Speaker 1: other families and their kiddos, maybe an unrelated straggler or two.
Speaker 1: Meach did report seeing some dominance behaviors, and in his
Speaker 1: twenty ten paper titled Prolonged Intensive Dominance Behavior between gray
Speaker 1: wolves Canis Lupus, he describes a time he witnessed what
Speaker 1: his team thinks was a dad wolf straddling and harassing
Speaker 1: what may have been his son, kind of like a
Speaker 1: test before the son took off for his own territory.
Speaker 1: So science means always asking new questions and collecting more
Speaker 1: information and then learning new things by analyzing it and
Speaker 1: the myth of the alpha male is simply that. But
Speaker 1: let's go back to more of your questions, Sally about
Speaker 1: wolf and dog genetics. Sarah ger asked, my neighbor claims
Speaker 1: her dog is half wolf and that her dog is
Speaker 1: the offspring of a domestic canine who mate it with
Speaker 1: a wolf. Is this biologically possible or is she just
Speaker 1: trying to make her dog seem more cool?
Speaker 4: Both both are probably true? Okay, I mean both are both.
Speaker 4: The first one is certainly true.
Speaker 3: Dogs and wolves can absolutely reproduce, no question about it.
Speaker 3: The feasibility of her dog or her dog's parent coming
Speaker 3: across a wolf. I don't know if this is a
Speaker 3: captive environment, if someone's breeding dog wolf hybrids, which is
Speaker 3: highly possible, or if they live somewhere rural enough where
Speaker 3: a wolf.
Speaker 4: Is running around and decided to reproduce it.
Speaker 3: Both are possible, but offspring in that cross is absolutely viable.
Speaker 1: A ton of people Natalie Mastik, Lauren Dean, Christina Weaver,
Speaker 1: Andrea Levinson, Amelia Hines, Matthew Thomas Hill, John Sansone, Stephanie Malick,
Speaker 1: Anna Thompson, Jody Kendall, Lucy Keegan, and Samantha ge All
Speaker 1: had questions. Do wolves care about the moon? Do they
Speaker 1: howl at the moon? Do they like the moon? Just
Speaker 1: the moon affect their behavior? What is it with wolves
Speaker 1: in the moon?
Speaker 4: That's yeah, I see why that's a question.
Speaker 3: Well, wolves howl all the time regardless of what the
Speaker 3: moon is doing, so I don't know of having the
Speaker 3: moon out.
Speaker 4: Actually, so a full moon will give more light at night, and.
Speaker 3: Although most wolves are not actually hunting in the middle
Speaker 3: of the night, the dawn and dusk era will have
Speaker 3: put perhaps more light than normal, which might make hunting
Speaker 3: or movement a little more interesting, and maybe there's more activity.
Speaker 3: So maybe there's more howling because there's more action. But
Speaker 3: I I this is just me speculating. I don't know
Speaker 3: if anything that ever talks about having to basically control
Speaker 3: for if there's moonlight or not on understanding a wolf's behavior.
Speaker 1: So mystical wolf moon connections are flume flam, but wolve's
Speaker 1: communication devices aka songs sung from their boob bable snoots
Speaker 1: have a range of up to ten miles and it
Speaker 1: helps get the pack back together or intimidate others not
Speaker 1: in their click. So essentially they're saying I'm lonely or
Speaker 1: get away from me, you scare me and I hate you?
Speaker 1: And what about encounter? Citie Newman, Mariko Shin, Carrie, Isabel
Speaker 1: be Hoper, and a few people asked what should I
Speaker 1: do if I see a wolf when I'm out hiking
Speaker 1: or backpacking.
Speaker 3: I would say, it's not very different from bear gear.
Speaker 3: I would have bells and whistles on my shoes and
Speaker 3: backpack and blowing some one of these survival whistles will
Speaker 3: just pretty much deter an animal who already doesn't really
Speaker 3: want to interact with you. Okaybye, Okay, Yeah, having pepper
Speaker 3: spray is never a bad thing, so I would just,
Speaker 3: you know, probably turn and walk the other way or
Speaker 3: back up. They're a little bit different, not quite like bear.
Speaker 3: So usually a wolf is already going to see you
Speaker 3: much long before you've ever seen it. So I would
Speaker 3: be surprised if you happen to surprise a wolf, although
Speaker 3: I'm sure.
Speaker 4: It can happen. It's not anything I've ever worried about.
Speaker 1: Solid advice that I hope you never have to use. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you love wolves as much as I do, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you're asking yourself what can we do to help
Speaker 1: these delightful, fluffy loyal, smart creatures. Who do I call,
Speaker 1: who do I write? I will protect them at all costs.
Speaker 1: And a bunch of people wanted to know what can
Speaker 1: we do to help the wolfies? How can we save them,
Speaker 1: especially red wolves. Dakota Harriman asked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think any well, email, email your or send
Speaker 3: a letter to your congressman or congresswoman, your local government.
Speaker 3: I know that there are many agencies that are pro
Speaker 3: red wolf or pro gray wolf. So in our DC,
Speaker 3: or there's a there's red wolf foundations in many locations.
Speaker 3: You can donate money, you can donate services.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there are plenty of really great organizations, some
Speaker 1: that even work with indigenous folks to protect the gray wolf,
Speaker 1: which is a sacred animal to many cultures. So maybe
Speaker 1: look into a local one to you now, as we
Speaker 1: round the bend into the home stretch of the episode,
Speaker 1: You know, I always want to know what makes our
Speaker 1: ologists get up in the morning, And what about the
Speaker 1: best thing about your job? What do you love about
Speaker 1: what you do?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that I get to do this. I
Speaker 3: can't believe that this is a job. I mean, I
Speaker 3: just it's amazing. Every so often, you know, you have
Speaker 3: those rough days, and you're like, what else could I do?
Speaker 3: Like nothing, I would never want to do anything else.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine whatever a normal job would look like.
Speaker 3: I get to sit and research something that's invisible, right,
Speaker 3: Like we can't see DNA, we can't see evolution tangibly
Speaker 3: from three million years ago. And yet we press some
Speaker 3: buttons in our computer and some really lovely evolutionary theory,
Speaker 3: and we we've exposed what our history looks like, and
Speaker 3: we can understand more about something we can never possibly observe.
Speaker 4: And I think that's just so incredible.
Speaker 1: Ah, so many cool things about wolves. Lupnology truly fascinating.
Speaker 1: November twenty third Wolf Note celebrated. So these dog sized
Speaker 1: icons of the outdoors are so amazing, their societies are
Speaker 1: so complex. So to recap what we learned dogs descended
Speaker 1: from wolves. That there are only three species of wolves
Speaker 1: Canis lupus, the gray wolf, the African golden wolf, and
Speaker 1: the Ethiopian wolf, but plenty of subspecies that are still
Speaker 1: being debated. That there isn't a known correlation between the
Speaker 1: moon and their howl, and that wolves really only travel
Speaker 1: in pacts during the winter. The myth of the alpha
Speaker 1: male is just that myth, and yes it's possible that
Speaker 1: your friend might have a dog wolf hybrid. So to
Speaker 1: find out more about doctor Bridget Bonholt, you can check
Speaker 1: out her website, which is von Holt dot Princeton dot edu,
Speaker 1: where you can stay up to date on all of
Speaker 1: her current research. And if you liked this episode and
Speaker 1: want to listen to the full Ologies episode, complete with
Speaker 1: maybe some saucy language and a side of innuendo, you
Speaker 1: can find the entire adult friendly Ologies catalog at aliword
Speaker 1: dot com slash ologies, including a full lupinology episode that
Speaker 1: this was cut from. Thank you to biologist and lupinologist,
Speaker 1: doctor Bridget Bonholt, and thank you new Smologites. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you're here. New episodes are out every two weeks
Speaker 1: or so for you, and there's a full list of
Speaker 1: credits for this episode at aliward dot com slash smologies.
Speaker 1: Since we like to keep things shortened small around here,
Speaker 1: and if you listen to the end of the episode,
Speaker 1: you know, I give you a piece of advice, and
Speaker 1: this week it's that I know making your bed doesn't
Speaker 1: sound very fun, but when you come home and your
Speaker 1: bed is made and it looks nice. You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is such a treat for myself. So if you
Speaker 1: make your bed in the morning, think ah, I'm doing
Speaker 1: this for myself. Later at night, don't think about doing
Speaker 1: it for your parents. Think about having a nice made
Speaker 1: bed when you get home. It's such a treat. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I've been doing that since I was about thirteen. I
Speaker 1: make my bed every day. It's just nice. When I
Speaker 1: get home, I say hey, thanks me from this morning anyway,
Speaker 1: until next time. Smologize bye bye ology, spology, god.
Speaker 4: Hoology its Polish hologiolog