WHY THE GRAY WOLF SURVIVED THE LAST ICE IGE

Dire Wolf Sketch

12,000 years ago when the climate of the world changes rapidly, most of the animals of that time extinct but the gray wolf survive that period. We see the short-faced bear, sabre-tooth cat and even their cousin the dire wolf also extinct in that time. We know this dire wolf and the other huge predators of that time completely dominated the gray wolf in everything. If you consider their habitat in the maps of that world you can find, the habitat of the dire wolf and the gray wolf are same but the number of gray wolf is much less than the population of the dire wolf.

Dire Wolf Skeleton

After observing the life style and diet of the gray wolf we see that this gray wolf diet is very vast. They hunt larger animals like bison again they hunt speedy animals like the rabbits, mice. Even they hunt the fishes too. From this type of diet, we can imagine how much adoptable they are in the diet. Obviously the cause of this kind of vast diet hides in the past, from the world where they were dominated by the other predators – that is the world before 10,000 years ago.

In the world before 12,000 years ago the gray wolf are very much dominated by the other big predators. That is why most of the time when they hunt huge preys, there always a great chance of losing it by the hands of the other predators. That makes the gray wolf very much capable of hunting different types of animals. And since the gray wolf was dominated by the other predators they may started to leave the North America and headed towards the Eurasian zone.

12,000 years ago when the rapid climate changes occurs, most of the megafauna herbivorous cannot adopt the new temperature with the drier lands. That leads them to the extinction and others who were adoptable with these changes; their population grows and give them more eyes to watch each others’ back. So other huge predators like the dire wolf, sabre-tooth cat failed to hunt most of the time, so there creates a huge food crisis, that makes them into the brink of extinction, and the new climate completes the procedure of their extinction. In the other hand, the gray wolf knew what to do, what to hunt in the emergency time as they were always dominated by the other predators.  So food crisis was not a problem for them, and if we see today’s world map of the habitat of the gray wolf we can see they almost covers 50% of the land of the world. That proofs that they also migrate from the America to other places. So, they already knew how to adopt in the new climate. That is why the new climate change is not a problem for them in America.

That is why the Gray Wolf survived the last Ice age period.

Gray Wolf