Wolves and changing perceptions

In the Netherlands, where I live, people are getting excited because a wolf has been spotted in the wild: the first one in decades. This has made me think about how wolves are portrayed nowadays and how they used to be.

There seems to be something of a romanticised view of wolves in modern fantasy -- The Wheel of Time, for example, and the Farseer Trilogy. They're presented as noble and wise animals, generally on the side of the protagonists. Yet in older stories wolves are usually a threat (one exception I can think of is The Jungle Book). Tolkien has his wolves, and in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the wolves are the secret police of the White Witch. A book that I often read as a child, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (and to a lesser degree its sequel, Black Hearts in Battersea), has packs of wolves as a threat to anyone out in the woods after dark -- and they're evil enough that the "wolves" in the title also refers to the figurative wolves who are the antagonists.

So where did this shift come from? Is it simply because people have forgotten what a threat a pack of wolves can pose, simply because there aren't that many of them? When Stephen Fry was in America, he visited a ranch in Wisconsin I believe, where the people were frustrated by the laws naming wolves a protected species -- apparently they'd regularly wake up to find that wolves had come right up to their house in the night and savaged and killed their horses. Not very noble or wise on the part of the wolves, I have to say.

Has anybody else noticed this?

yup. here in the US, folks who live in the rural farming areas do not like wolves due to predation on their livestock.

Dioltach said:

So where did this shift come from? Is it simply because people have forgotten what a threat a pack of wolves can pose, simply because there aren't that many of them?

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Quite possibly this. Possibly combined with the whole "noble savage" thing.

Plus, they look a bit like dogs.

They'd regularly wake up to find that wolves had come right up to their house in the night and savaged and killed their horses. Not very noble or wise on the part of the wolves, I have to say.

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Well, it's actually a mistake to ascribe traits like 'noble' to animals anyway, given that that's a human construct that doesn't really have any meaning to them.

Though it seems perfectly wise to me: sneak in during the night when things are unguarded, take the meat you want (and need to survive) and then disappear before there's any retribution.

delericho said:

Well, it's actually a mistake to ascribe traits like 'noble' to animals anyway, given that that's a human construct that doesn't really have any meaning to them.

Though it seems perfectly wise to me: sneak in during the night when things are unguarded, take the meat you want (and need to survive) and then disappear before there's any retribution.

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And this is precisely what I'm getting at: there's this trend to ascribe virtues to wolves that aren't there in real life. know the genre is called "fantasy" for a reason, but it strikes me that wolves are anthropomorphised more than other animals, and typically in a way that seems very much at odds with reality, and with perceptions of wolves from only a few decades ago.

Dioltach said:

Not very noble or wise on the part of the wolves, I have to say.

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Right. Humans leave lunch penned up and waiting, and that makes the wolves the unwise ones? Pot calling the kettle black, there.

And we probably need to hold off worrying about whether they, collectively, are "noble" until we ourselves generally fit that bill, no?

They are animals, they interact with their environment as best they can. Thinking them unwise or ignoble for how they interact with us, when we are the ones largely in control of their environments, seems rather self-centered on our part. Beyond that I won't go, as it may be deemed political by some.

Has anybody else noticed this?

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Humans have a tendency to idolize everything - for good or ill. The characterization as a noble creature has about as much truth as the characterization as a dark and dangerous beast.

However the characterization as noble or wise doesn't come from our forgetting the threat - cultures that have been more at risk from wolves, who had a very clear idea of the threat, have still had a fairly positive view of them.

There was a period of time in which Europeans (and related places, like the USA) had a very adversarial view of the natural world - it was us humans vs everything natural, the world was present to be tamed and exploited, and anything that didn't follow the plan was an affront to human superiority. As we have come to see that we cannot do just as we darned well please, we've had to return to have a better understanding of wild animals, and then we see more of what we consider positive qualities that we were ignoring previously.

delericho said:

Plus, they look a bit like dogs.

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Except that really, dogs look like wolves. All the characteristics you find in dogs can also be found in wolves. We have just bred to change the prominence of some features. One can take how you worded this as a touch of a Freudian slip that kind of points out that we tend to forget that, as if dogs were something completely separate from wolves, when they can often still interbreed.

Well, it's actually a mistake to ascribe traits like 'noble' to animals anyway, given that that's a human construct that doesn't really have any meaning to them.

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Humans are animals. If anything has led to our misunderstanding of the animal kingdom, it is the idea that we aren't animals. Heck, this has led to even greater misunderstanding of ourselves!

Dioltach said:

And this is precisely what I'm getting at: there's this trend to ascribe virtues to wolves that aren't there in real life.

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Well, consider for a moment the loaded term "virtue" for a moment. What makes a trait or behavior virtuous? For example - doing what one must to feed and protect one's family. This is virtuous when a human does it, but not when a wolf does it? Really?

Remember my statement above that we are animals. We look at animals, and see a mixture of what we'd call virtues and vices. How is that at all different form looking at a human?

but it strikes me that wolves are anthropomorphised more than other animals, and typically in a way that seems very much at odds with reality, and with perceptions of wolves from only a few decades ago.

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You know that our perceptions of wolves from only a few decades ago were wrongity-wrong, with wrong sauce, right? I mean demonstrably, scientifically wrong?

Our perceptions of wolves (including perhaps most notably the concept of an "alpha wolf") were highly influenced by the observations of Rudolph Schenkel, who studied wolves back in the 1930s and 40s. Unfortunately, he studied them in captivity, and incorrectly assumed that what he saw applied in the wild. However, what he observed was a captive group of unrelated individuals shoved together against their will, when in the wild wolves move in family groups, and have much different social dynamics. Scientists continued to observe wolves through the filter of his mis-characterizations for decades. David Mech wrote a book in 1970 that echoed many of these misconceptions, but after further observation in the wild, Mech himself now rues the fact that book is still in print, for how misguided it was. Science eventually gets it right, but it can take decades, and then longer to wipe misconceptions from the general populace.

Umbran said:

Except that really, dogs look like wolves.

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Most people have at least some direct experience with dogs. Very few of us have direct experience with wolves. That's why I put it the way I did.

Humans are animals.

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I suppose, if you really want to be pedantic about it, I should have said "Well, it's actually a mistake to ascribe traits like 'noble' to other animals anyway, given that it's a human construct that doesn't really have any meaning to them."

delericho said:

I suppose, if you really want to be pedantic about it, I should have said "Well, it's actually a mistake to ascribe traits like 'noble' to other animals anyway, given that it's a human construct that doesn't really have any meaning to them."

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My suggestion is that the human construct *does* have meaning for them.

We think of "honor" as an abstract concept, and we naively then think that it can only come from, and thus be applicable to, things that have the same sort of abstract thinking that produced the concept.

But consider - let us assume that came up with the concept of "honor" was observing humans. But, humans are animals. Far more of our behavior than we like to admit is *not* the abstract, rational behavior we characterize as uniquely ours. Lots of our behavior is based in our animal origins. That means that much of what constitutes "honor" may be from our animal attributes. And then, why shouldn't we use it to describe animal behavior (albeit *carefully*)? We can see many things we think of as abstract concepts in animals - love and loyalty are good examples. Pretty every dog owner knows their animals can love and be loyal, right? So, that opens the door to the idea.

Moreover, we are learning more and more that the abstract, rational behavior is not really uniquely ours. There is a continuum of it - down among the ants, individuals are very much like living machines, yes. But, when you get to dogs, cats, dolphins, corvidae, great apes, and African Grey parrots, things start looking a lot less clear.

Rather than say, "we cannot apply 'honor' to an animal" consider instead, "what might constitute honor in an animal?" And, in doing that, you might learn about animals, humans, and honor.

...Extermination campaigns against wolves were pretty pervasive in the U.S. in the past. Backed mainly by the cattle industry, they persisted for a long time and did much too give the wolf it's "evil and vicious" stereotype. While its true that ranchers today are compensated for wolf predations, much of the cattle industry would still like to see the entire species destroyed on this continent.

...The first notes of change began when President Roosevelt started backing conservation efforts in the early 1900's. But even today, the negative image of wolf persists in many areas of the country. This image has become so entrenched, that many folks resist any factual information that runs contrary to this image.

Urbanisation means that humans are no longer in direct competiton with wolves (except the rural farmers) and so do not need to portray them as the evil and the enemy. Humans have also proven well and truely that they can dominate the environment and so no longer live in fear of it.

Instead humans have learnt to admire nature and are aware that all its parts need to live together harmoniously. The wolf is a great metaphor for that - a dangerous predator that is also beneficial to its range (ie has value) AND is cute and furry like a puppy (has aesthetics) and lives in affectionate family groups that we can understand.

Humans are going to invest things with human qualities regardless, personification is a fundamental human trait so the Noble wolf works fine by me