Monts de Gueret Animal Park
The wolf pack howls on average for 85 seconds. It is usually started by a single wolf, after which other wolves may join in. The pack leader, the alpha wolf, usually uses a lower-pitched howl and howls more frequently than wolves standing on the lower rungs of the pack's hierarchy. Although some functions of the howling are still unknown by scientists, they believe that wolves may howl to scare off other wolf packs from their territory and to gather their own pack, as wolves possess perfect hearing and their howling can be heard for up to in the forest and in open space. Researchers have found a relationship between the number of times a wolf howls and the strength of their relationship with other pack members. According to Friederike Range, co-director of the University of Vienna's Wolf Science Center, "the strength of the relationship between wolves predicted how many times a wolf howled."
Lone wolf (trait)
In the animal kingdom, lone wolves are typically older female wolves driven from the pack, perhaps by the breeding male, or young adults in search of new territory. Many female wolves between the ages of one to four years old leave their family to search for a pack of their own. This has the effect of preventing inbreeding as there is typically only one breeding pair in a wolf pack. Very few wolves will simply remain lone wolves; as such, these lone wolves may be stronger, more aggressive and far more dangerous than the average wolf that is a member of a pack. However, lone wolves have difficulty hunting, as wolves' favorite prey, large ungulates, are troublesome for a single wolf to bring down alone. Instead, lone wolves will generally hunt smaller animals and scavenge carrion.