Red Wolf - Canis rufus

Characteristics
Range
Habitat
Diet
Life Cycle
Behavior

Classification

Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Canidae
Genus: Canis

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Characteristics

The red wolf has gray or black fur mixed with red, especially on its legs and sides. Ot has a long snout and a long, black-tipped tail. It is larger than a coyote and smaller than a gray wolf. The red wolf weighs between 45-80 pounds and stands about two feet tall from shoulders to feet and is about four feet long from nose to the tip of its tail.

Range

The red wolf once roamed over much of the southeast United States, but by the early 1900's it had disappeared from all states except Texas and Louisiana. The red wolves in those state were mating with coyotes and the population was becoming hybridized. Fearing the species would become extinct, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service captured fourteen pure red wolves and started raising them in captivity. In the 1980's, the species became extinct in the wild. The first group of these captured wolves were released in the Alligator Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina in 1987. The refuge was chosen because it had no coyote population. Today there are about 80 red wolves in the refuge. Additional red wolves were released on three three islands off the coast of Florida and Georgia.

Habitat

The red wolf makes its home in swamps, forests, and coastal plains.

Diet

The red wolf is a carnivore. It eats rabbits, birds, rodents and occasionally white-tailed deer. It also eats carrion or dead animals.

Life Cycle

Red wolves mate from February through March. Two months after mating the female gives birth to a litter of between two and ten pups. Both the male and the female care for the young. Only the alpha male and female in a pack mate. Other wolves in the pack will help care for the young and bring food to the female.

Behavior

The red wolf is mostly nocturnal, although it is sometimes active in the day during the winter months. It makes its den along stream banks in the enlarged burrows of other animals, under tree stumps or in hollow logs. The red wolf is a relatively social animals and it lives in packs that may include a breeding male and female and their pups. Occasionally, there is a second male in the group. Red wolves will sometimes form packs to hunt.