Wolfsong

As a chorus grows, wolves reflect and react to one another’s excitement with increasingly lively riffs, “making the wolf chorus into a kind of jam session,” writes Simon Fraser University psychology professor Steven Brown in a 2007 paper. Brown speculates that similar sessions may have taken place among our own distant ancestors. Did they gather, as wolves still do, to share emotions, contagiously blending and overlapping voices in the “precursor for the systems that [became] both song and speech in modern humans”?

We will never know for sure, but wolf song has long triggered a powerful emotional resonance in people, one that predates its use as a cheesy horror-movie sound effect. As Michael Runtz, formerly an Algonquin Provincial Park naturalist and now a biology instructor at Ottawa’s Carleton University, explains, howling “inspires a rush of adrenaline, probably because, going back in our history, wild dogs were our competitors. We still react to that.” During the public wolf howls, Algonquin staff play recorded howls before shepherding visitors out to hear the real thing. “There’s often a nervous giggle that happens, even with adults, when you first hear a howl,” Stronks says. “We want to get that out before the actual howl.”

If we can get past that ancient fear, Harrington argues, sensitive listeners can not only appreciate the song, but also discern the feeling behind it, just as we do when we listen to people speaking a foreign language. “You may not have the foggiest idea what they’re saying, but you still understand their mood,” he says. So to think that animals as similar as wolves and humans (both social, communicative creatures relying on teamwork for their predatory success) might use similar vocal cues in their messages is not much of a leap. High-pitched vocals are less threatening, Harrington suggests, because they signal, “I’m not as big as you are” or “I’m sending out a friendly vibe.” In wolves, friendly howls range from soaring solos to the campfire choruses punctuated by the yapping of dancing pups.

The blue notes are what Harrington calls “the lonesome howl, with pure tones going up three or four notes, building, and then dropping down, dropping down, three or four seconds. It’s just gorgeous. That sound may be mournful to you because there’s probably a universal mournfulness in certain vocalizations that can be understood at a gut level.”

At the opposite end of the howl spectrum, low-pitched, guttural sounds, such as the long, low, hoarse call of the alpha male, convey aggression, dominance and assertiveness. Stronks knows the difference firsthand. Last March, park staff dropped a roadkilled moose carcass into a nearby bog from a helicopter, something they occasionally do, as Stronks says, “to showcase scavenger behaviour” and let visitors see wolves, ravens and eagles in action. Stronks howled at a group of wolves near a carcass, while delegates attending a park interpreters’ conference looked on.

The wolves weren’t pleased. “Their response was way different than in the summer,” Stronks recalls. “What we heard was a much shorter howl: short, blunt, what I would call aggressive. They’re on a carcass on the edge of their territory, and if it’s an important food source for them, then it’s easy to speculate those howls are saying, ‘You’re not welcome here.’”

“Wolves have a tremendous ability to tailor a howl to the immediate situation,” Harrington says. At least part of the message lies in the delivery. The basic language of the howl may be “I’m a wolf, and I’m over here,” but whether the message is delivered through bared teeth or with a coquettish lilt makes all the difference to the recipient. Between high and friendly, blue and lonesome, and low and aggressive, “I can pick out some key points on the continuum,” says Harrington, “but it’s hard to read the subtler messages in between.”

He suspects wolves may conduct an introductory exchange among themselves, beginning with a “poker howl” that simply says, “I’m a wolf.” Depending on the response, the next message could be friendly and inviting, or aggressive and standoffish. For that reason, recorded calls sometimes do not work. “We might be playing a recording that says, ‘I am a wolf,’ and a wolf might howl back with a response about mood, or being a male or female,” says Harrington. “When we play the recording again, it just says, ‘I am a wolf.’ Pretty soon the other wolves give up, because they’re thinking, ‘That guy’s an idiot.’”
Harrington has heard animals change their howls in response to differences in his own howl, or alter their calls between each other. Once, in Superior National Forest in northern Minnesota, he saw the pack leader leave his group to issue a classic territorial warning to trespassing scientists. “He howled at me with this aggressive howl, and when the rest of the group heard it, they howled too,” he says. Possibly annoyed that the pack was giving away its location, the leader howled back at the rest with increased pitch and amplitude, and the pack fell silent. Whatever the exchange was, it was more complex than the sharp bark adult wolves use to shush yappy pups. When it comes to wolf communication, admits Harrington, “there are a lot of things we really don’t understand.”

That is as it should be, because wolves – regal, aloof, independent – may never fit into a Dr. Dolittle world where we decode their utterances and understand their psyches. After all, the creatures’ elusiveness, the mystery that surrounds them, is part of their allure. Stronks senses this at every public wolf howl. “[Even if] it’s so dark you can only see 10 or 15 feet on either side, you know there are 2,000 people out there, waiting, listening. They’re so silent you can’t hear them, but when the wolves begin, there’s an electricity in the air.”

We may never fully understand the wolf. But perhaps it’s enough to appreciate its discordant symphony and maintain a wilderness where the predator’s howls will continue to soar and keen through the night.

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Ray Ford lives within earshot of wolves and coyotes near the northwestern corner of Algonquin Provincial Park.

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