TIL wolves have been noted to engage in a kind of "fallow field-farming", whereby they allow the deer population in a particular area to recover over the course of several years before killing any
Reading Barry Lopez's book "Of Wolves and Men":
[...] disadvantage. The important thing to bear in mind is that generally wolves do not overrun the prey population and kill it out, although they have been known to do so, just as they have, extraordinary as it seems, practiced a kind of fallow-field farming by not killing deer in certain parts of their territories for four or five years, letting the prey population recover there.
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Wolf science needs more scrutiny on its claims, ever since the alpha male paper which did an incredible amount of damage to society.
That or we come out with a bunch of fake claims about wolves which would improve society, were they to be applied to people
I know, I know, that’s an insult to science, but how cool would it be if Joe Rogan started spreading the idea that the wolves in a pack survive longer when they share resources more evenly? Or that “lone wolves” do best when they’re cordial with nearby packs? Maybe even that packs formed by genetically diverse wolves outperform homogeneous packs, even if the individual wolves are stronger in the less diverse groups?
I’m being mostly sarcastic here, because I really do value honest research, but it’s a nice thought.
Of course, we already have chimps and bonobos, who are basically ideal proxies for mostly warlike and mostly peaceful humans, respectively, and it hasn’t made us any less violent.
Pretty sure idiots were gonna use whatever else enables their idiocy anyway, this was just one of a myriad of ways to flavour said idiocy.
Didn't help tho
To me it sounds like they moved to richer areas where it was easier to find suitable prey.
Behold, fellow wolves! A deer in the clearing! It has been days since our last meal but we must allow this one to live.
Fallow-field farming doesn't seem like a good analogy at all here. Leaving a field fallow allows other things to grow in the field which then provide nutrients for the crop you grow after re-sowing. This is just waiting for the population to recover. That would be more like not harvesting as frequently, rather than not sowing as frequently.
I think he got his fiction mixed up with reality, wolves don't live very long; this would be half of their lifespan.
They could very well be leaving an area alone because there's less of their favorite prey there. How would you determine their motivation?
Has the scientist really asked the wolves about their intentions? :)
Or could this be a misinterpretation of some statistics?
I have learned in school that predators go for the weakest prey only. So if a herd of deer has already lost a few, then maybe there are no weak ones left in this herd, and the wolves have to suffer hunger for a while, until they find another herd.
So, another interpretation could be that the wolves simply remember the fact about the first herd, and avoid it for a while. The outcome would be the same.
Interesting if true.
Really makes me feel the one quote from The Matrix where Agent Smith calls humans a disease for constantly moving to one area, consuming all the resources in said area and moving on.
In comparison, animals are so much more considerate.