Center for Scientific Studies

Review of "Vicious: Wolves and Men in America"

by James A. Huggins, Ph.D., University Professor & Director of the Hammons Center for Scientific Studies

June 154, 2005 - This is not merely an account of wolves but it is a treatise which blends human history with that of another species that developed alongside us. It is an amalgamation of historical facts surrounding human and wolf biology set against the backdrop of folklore across a temporal scale. Coleman attempts to get at the questions of “why” we, as humans, behave differently now toward a predatory species than we once did. While Coleman is most concerned about the history of this phenomenon in the United States, folklore passed on by our European progenitors undoubtedly played a role in our early attitudes toward wolves. The persecution of our now lupine friends can be traced across time and across continents. In fact wolves were exterminated from England around 1500, from Scotland in 1864, from Ireland in 1770, from Denmark in 1772, from Bavaria in 1847, from Poland in 1900, from France in 1927, from the US (outside Alaska and sections of Minnesota and Michigan along the Canadian border) in 1950 and from Mexico in 1960. There are many stories of the “big bad wolf” and his aggressiveness toward man and yet there is not one documented killing of a human by a nonrabid wolf since the arrival of Europeans on this continent! Why were they so vilified in times past? Why did we eradicate them with such vehemence? Why today do we grace our calendars, even get well cards, with pictures of wolves? In his search across time for these answers the data lead him to evolution of our society. In his efforts to document the evolution of attitudes toward predatory species, in particular the wolf, he relates many stories of cruelty enacted against our canine competitors. Even early naturalists such as John James Audubon, who we might have thought to appreciate all forms of nature, seem to be caught in the appreciation for the wanton destruction of wolves and even of barbarous acts of behavior. However, in addition to their vilification, Coleman is able to document the “time” when the last wolves were romanticized and presented as animal heroes. As Coleman so aptly puts it “humans mourned the passing of ideals they despised in living wolves but revered in dead ones”. Folklore had changed and urbanites no longer worried about losses to livestock. We found ourselves longing for the

This book while primarily one about the interspecific relationships between man and wolf does contain some very rich chapters concerning canid biology. Coleman has certainly availed himself well of the information available about the behavior of Canis lupis and his discussions surrounding dispersal, pack structure, communication, altruism, and even his discussion of trophic levels will be particularly enlightening for the beginning student of biology. His interaction with the likes of noted biologist David Mech was no doubt invaluable. Coleman’s brief treatment of the coyote is also notable. He raises the alarm of the potential for the swamping of gray wolf genes, substantiated through DNA studies conducted at Ontario’s Algonquian Provincial Park, via interbreeding with the adaptable and ubiquitous coyote. It is perhaps a well founded worry despite the fact that the reintroduced Yellowstone wolves have reduced the coyote populations in the park. As a matter of reference, it might be noted that red wolf populations, during an attempted reintroduction along the Appalachian Mountains and faced with few of their own kind, were subsequently found to be replete with coyote alleles. Certainly, population sizes will play a major role in whether this prediction comes to fruition.

Insight into human nature is also considerable and abounds within this book. Insight into the works of God can be found in some of the most unlikely places and the following bounded from the pages of this book when the author related the fact that some naturalists argue that the categorization of living beings forms the basis for human cognition. It is perhaps notable that the “naming of the animals” in Gen 2: 19 does appear to be the first cognitive exercise that God assigned to Adam. I loved his statement concerning the fact that man, alone among all earth’s animal life, had fashioned communication systems that could make members of the same species incomprehensible to one another. While it is a true statement concerning the incomprehensibility (babble) that exists, I would disagree that “we”, though the blame is ours, did this on our own. I would invite Coleman to investigate Genesis 11: 9 for a superior explanation of this phenomenon. The Tower of Babel is perhaps explanatory through its name alone. In addition, I am at odds with his statements that “Instead of an out-of-body nirvana, creatures generate transcendence through their offspring. Heaven exists in genes left behind, not paradises to come, and natural selection determines the amount of immortality an individual can achieve”. Despite such digs at Christians, there is much to be learned from his work.

As most any school child knows, a whole continent was changed by our belief in “manifest destiny” and the westward expansion that followed but too few have looked beyond the social force of colonization and industrialization on humankind to the ecological impact that our forefathers wreaked upon the land we occupied. Certainly, like two mules harnessed to the same plow, colonization and extinction worked in tandem as our country was formed. The study of biology has certainly allowed us to understand the reasons for the demise of many species and it has provided the tools by which we may be able to rescue some from extinction. Unfortunately, as pointed out by Coleman in this historical account of wolves and men in the Americas, this biological harvesting of knowledge has not been accompanied by concomitant and appropriate attempts to salvage our relationship with nature and the ecological processes of our planetary home. While we are no longer represent a “direct” vehicle of destruction toward large predatory species, we remain, nonetheless, “indirect” harbingers of annihilation to many species through our nonchalant attitude toward the ecology of this planet. It is my sincere prayer that our folklore will evolve into one of ecological rescue and rehabilitation.