Discoveries

Learn about all the latest scientific discoveries from the Wolf Moose project. For an initial overview of past discoveries, click here.

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Blood-engorged, female tick after it has fallen from a moose (above). With a blood meal, it will now lay eggs in the soil - eggs that will hatch next fall. The green are balsam fir needles. On Isle Royale, this creature survives by the blood of moose and no other animal. Its existence depends...
Ravens Why do wolves live in packs?  Most predators are like tigers, leopards, and weasels - they live solitary lives. Think about Kipling’s Sher Khan and expressions like lone wolves. Predators are the very symbols of solitariness. But wolves are different. They live in groups, called packs,...
Why don’t wolves eat all the food they capture? A long-held opinion about wolves maintains they are wasteful gluttons that regularly kill more than they can eat. This misperception is one of several reasons that some people use to rationalize persecuting wolves. The wolf-moose project has been...
What moose teeth tell us about air pollution For many decades, we have been polluting our air with, among other toxins, mercury and lead. These pollutants eventually fall from the atmosphere and contaminate the Earth’s land and water. During the environmental movement of the 1970s, anti-pollution...
Old Gray Guy For decades we had thought the wolves of Isle Royale to be isolated and highly inbred, but had also somehow managed to avoid inbreeding depression, the negative consequences of inbreeding.  In particular, Isle Royale wolves had rates of survival and recruitment that were similar to...
The right hip sockets of moose from Isle Royale, illustrating the progressive bony deterioration associated with osteoarthritis (OA). Panel (a) is a normal hip socket, with an open acetabular fossa (AF), through which a ligament passes through to the head of the femur. Early stages of OA involve...