A Man Among Wolves

Last night I watched a truly amazing show on the National Geographic Channel. It was called “A Man Among Wolves”. The man among the wolves is Shaun Ellis, a British researcher. What I found amazing was here was a man who gave up everything; family, money etc to raise 3 abandoned wolf pups. And not just raise them, but raise them like wolves. He taught them to howl, how to hunt fish, I mean just amazing. Several things surprised me, and several I found completely interesting. For instance:

The pack allowed Shaun to be alpha. For almost 2 years. Only when he left for several weeks to go to Poland and the United States for research, did he return to find that he had been replaced.

Next amazing thing is they accepted him back in the pack in another position. As peacemaker. AMAZING.

On occasion Shaun would have to go get stitches because of the nature of wolf life (their skin is A LOT tougher than ours). When he would return, the wolves would take the stitches out and lick the wound. He said that his wounds healed twice as fast. Their licking keeps bacteria out of the wound.

He ate what they ate. He would drag a carcass in and feed right along side the wolves. As alpha, he would let each member of the pack know when they could eat, and what. Before bringing the food in, he would take the liver out, flash cook it, put it in a bag back in the dead animal, drag it in and pick that out. OK, that my friends, is DEDICATION!

Shaun is working on developing a way to keep wild wolves from coming on to ranchers land. It involves playing a tape of wolves howling a defensive howl at certain times during the day. If this were to work it would save many wolves from being killed by ranchers and hopefully change attitudes towards wolves.

If you get the chance to see this show, you should stop and watch it. Just really amazing stuff.