Wolves

Wolves are an animal commonly featured in North American and European stories. They are based off of the gray wolf. There are other kinds of wolves. There are the closely related red and timber wolves. As the latter was only recently distinguished to be different from gray wolves, many depictions of wolves include their image, folktales, and habits in their pre-writing research. There are many races, or subspecies, of gray wolves. Depictions of wolves these days often reflect or make mention of these, such as with arctic wolves. There are also the less closely related maned, African golden, and Ethiopian wolves. There are a variety of extinct canid relatives that are also dubbed with the suffix wolf, such as dire wolves, and some rare alternative names for other animals are given wolf, like the painted wolf for African Wild Dogs or tiger wolf for the spotted hyena. There are also non-canid animals and plants that honor or remark upon wolves in their name, such as wolf spiders and wolfsbane.

## Interactions with humans

Wolves seem to behave differently depending on the locality, with different subspecies having different behaviors, different environments provoking different attitudes, and even different human countries seeming to change their very nature. It is noticeable how wolves in the area of France, since the Holy Roman Empire days and before then and even when wolves from other places were re-introduced into the area, are somehow more likely to massacre sheep than others wolves. French wolves seem to crave to kill them just as how the stories depict. All this time, scientists, animal's rights activists, and conservationists were insisting that studies show that wolves rarely kill sheep. And that's true, for everywhere but this area in Europe. It's almost like something about the place compels them to become the evil villains of folklore, or rather, what they used to be.

The rage-killing of wolves in France expanded to other cultures, and many people throughout the world began to see wolves as sheep-killers. This greatly contributed to their image and reputation. It's led to the extinction of several subspecies and near extinction of wolf and wolf-like animals on the whole. Despite having been the ancestor of man's best friend, the sheer hate of wolves almost make it seem like people are reacting against the betrayal of a close friend, though most people would say that it looks more like extreme discrimination.

Some areas had wolves share this fearsome reputation, such as in Scandinavia and China. In other areas, at least before word spread, wolves had different reputations. In Japan wolves were known to guard travelers on mountains. Since they hunted the boar and deer that ate people's crops farmers would actually lure them to their farms, even using magical talismans to do so. The Ainu venerated wolves and dogs, and allowed them to interbreed and sometimes used them in sacrificial rituals. It's harder to tell how Native Americans viewed wolves without doing tons of research and skimming through tons of misinformation. The English/American public views Native Americans as finding wolves to be majestic and noble creatures. What I do know is that gray wolves (but not coyotes and Algonquin wolves) in North America are far less likely to attack livestock, pets, and humans. It's not impossible, but the nature of a majority of the subspecies and regional variants seems to be more shy and calming than those of the east. The difference between the two types isn't noted by media yet from what I know, merely my observation. However the North American wolves' submissive behavior towards humans is noted by wolf conservationists and fans.

Many mythological characters are related or transformed into wolves. Wolves became somewhat important in these religions.

## In fiction & mythology

In the past they were often featured in oral and written literature. They were commonly portrayed as villains, especially in stories from European groups. These days people sometimes portray wolves in a different light as a result of guilt for villainifying them. Due to scientist and environmentalist efforts to get people to like wolves for the sake of conservation, stories these days occasionally portray wolves in a different light. While their violence is still key in many of these stories, other characteristics and their roles as protagonists give them a better angle. Often that of a sad, misunderstood, contemplative hero. Even in some films that do portray them as villains they are not as bloodthirsty and evil as before, such as their comical appearance in Zootopia.

I'd like to believe that as misunderstood heroes, they reflect our regret. The research people had to do, the thinking people had to do, the shake out the common belief that they are gluttonous sheep-eaters.

As they have different attitudes and people have roamed around the world seeing different types of wolves, so too have they had different reputations in the stories of the cultures that lived around them. As a generalization, in Europe wolves are most often clever and gluttonous, provoking villainy in their natures. Whereas in North America and Asia they are more noble and heroic.

Work by one researcher has led to a huge confusion amongst the scientific community on wolf ranks. He studied the nature of social ranks amongst wolves. However, he studied first those in captivity and attributed those behaviors to the wild ones. He realized his wrongs and tried to correct them, however both the scientific community and the common community reject these notions. It's not that scientists say he's wrong- it's just that everyone loves the concept of alpha, beta, and omega wolves too much to truly let it go and repair the damage. Both the wolf lovers community and there werewolf lovers community (two very different things in this context) can't let go of the falsehoods. They want leading wolves to be alphas, not just fathers like they truly are. In reality a wolf pack is much like a human family that lives closely together and works together on their business or farm. The mother and father marry and start their own family, and the kids stay through adulthood to help take care of the family's work until they decide to go off and leave. Thus most wolf packs consist of a father, mother, and several generations of children. Most people wish that wolf packs consisted of a man who knows how to run things and fights, his wife, and many close friends. Thus in wolf inclusive media after the 1960s there may be references to alpha, beta, and omega behavior.

Wolves are seldomly referenced in music. Often when they are featured in them it is to portray a bloodthirsty or sexual person, especially a man, such as in Howl by Florence + The Machine, or Me and Mr Wolf by The Real Tuesday Weld.

## In language

The word wolf, according to wiktionary, ultimately comes from Proto-Indo-European's wĺ̥kʷos.  This word means wolf but is heavily similar and related to \*wl̥kʷós, meaning "dangerous". Like it or not, the roots of wolves being dangerous to European humans has its roots thousands of years in history. The glyph "狼" is used in multiple Asian languages to mean wolf. It originates from an archaic or "radical" glyph meaning dog (犭) and one that continues today that means to be of a good quality (as an item or general concept) or a virtuous person (良). However, wolf may not necessarily mean good things to people in modern Asian cultures despite this combination, as wolf in Chinese can also refer to cruel people or lecherous men (we also have these connotations in English, but more in the form of stereotypes as we rarely call these people wolves). In other languages, it can refer mostly to the animal itself rather than be used as a synonym. The old word for wolf in Proto-Semitic is not given a particular meaning other than wolf, so I'm currently not sure what it was before that, and if linguists know what words it was related to. That Proto-Semitic word has evolved in some of its descendant languages to refer to other animals other than wolves, such as jackals and hyenas. In Proto-Indo-Iranian ćárguš and some of its dialectal variants means "a predatory animal" and this precursor evolved to form the word wolf in Indonesian and Malay, and both of those descend from Sanskrit's **सृगाल** (sṛgālá), which can mean jackal. It's also the name for a type of (unknown) tree and it also carries negative connotations with it.

English itself has some negative synonyms with wolf. Someone wolfing down food means to swallow it almost whole, but very greedily. It means to shovel piles and piles of food in gluttonously. This references old stories such as Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs. It may also be used to describe someone pushy and predatory, and this word is very much more in description of a wolf than the previous word, it is more metaphorical. It may also be used to describe men sexually harrassing women, in that they are wolves. This can be seen in older cartoons of wolf characters wolf-whistling and making a huge fuss over a pretty lady.

The word wolf (and its more German form, wulf) is also used in personal and location names. Wolfgang is descended from Old High German and isn't so common anymore. It is associated with age and prestige, in part thanks to Wolfgang Mozart, the infamous classical musician. However, he's more Mozart than he is Wolfgang to most people, I think. It is much more common as a German name, and many royalty and accomplished people bear the name Wolfgang. Aethelwulf, Old English for Noble Wolf, was a king of Wessex. Ealdwulf was king of East Anglia. Beowulf is the star of a famous epic poem, and some people are named that, but it is also considered archaic sounding along with strong and aristocratic. Other names like Rudolph and Randolph are also descended in part from wolf (wolph). That's right, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer's name means "famous wolf". Which fits his misfit story, actually. Wolf all by itself is also a surname, and is rising in popularity as a given name.

The British village Noseley is actually related to the name Nothwulf. It's funny because wolves use their noses. Look how its transformed from that. Several towns in the U.S are flat out named wolf, found in: California, Kansas, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania. There is also an active volcano named Wolf, in the Galapagos Islands.

## In media

Wolves are well portrayed in media, however they are not in every piece of media like dogs or birds. They are often presented as minor or major villains of a story, such as the wolves that corner Bella in a Beauty And The Beast, or werewolves in various werewolf horror films. Werewolves are extremely popular these days, and romance novels consisting of them consist of an entire subgenre of supernatural romance. The subculture is so large that they have their own slang and it leaks out into modern language, like "alpha and omega". Recently, in part thanks to Wolf's Rain though no one thanks it, wolves have begun to have a more misunderstood representation. An example of this would be Legoshi in Beastars. Overtime wolves are being portrayed less as truly evil animal villains and to better roles, even when villains, like their goofier portrayal in Zootopia. This is in part due to conservationist efforts to improve their image so that they can stay alive.

## References

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wolf\_(disambiguation)&oldid=1094557446
2. ↑ https://www.economist.com/china/2021/02/25/china-has-given-up-trying-to-eradicate-wolves
3. ↑ https://open.spotify.com/album/2FgknX5e7fJlriQtxvpLhZ
4. ↑ https://open.spotify.com/album/3lZ6LgRBT4VV6bjFSdIFxp
5. ↑ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/w%C4%BA%CC%A5k%CA%B7os
6. ↑ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%8A%AD#Translingual
7. ↑ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%89%AF#Chinese
8. ↑ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%8B%BC
9. ↑ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Semitic/%E1%B8%8Fi%CA%94b-
10. ↑ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Iranian/%C4%87%C3%A1rgu%C5%A1
11. ↑ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%83%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B2#Sanskrit
12. ↑ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wolfgang
13. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang
14. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86thelwulf,\_King\_of\_Wessex
15. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ealdwulf\_of\_East\_Anglia
16. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noseley
17. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf\_(disambiguation)