The Food Question

This thread follows Mowat’s search for the wolves’ food, from an apparent absence of prey to evidence of dietary flexibility and ecological dependence.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

An Empty Summer Range

An Empty Summer Range The Missing Prey The migrating Caribou leave the area, yet the wolf family remains in good condition and continues its nightly hunts. Mowat cannot see what the adults bring home. A Problem for the Assignment The government study expects a straightforward wolf-and-deer relationship. The empty summer landscape complicates that assumption and makes the animals’ survival a central research question.

A Mouse Hunt Observed

A Mouse Hunt Observed Angeline’s Performance Mowat watches Angeline stalk through grass and pounce repeatedly. At first he thinks she is playing, because the prey is too small to fit his image of a large carnivore’s meal. The Missing Meal Explained After numerous successful pounces, he realizes that she is eating Mice. The small prey offers a plausible answer to the family’s unexplained summer food supply.

A Meal Carried Home

A Meal Carried Home A Puzzling Return The adult wolves return from hunting without visible prey and go straight into the den. Mowat initially cannot explain how they feed the pups. Regurgitated Food Ootek explains that adults bring food back in their bellies and regurgitate it for the young. Mowat later sees the process himself, connecting the adults’ hunting behavior with the pups’ meals.

The Mouse Diet Test

The Mouse Diet Test Testing the Hypothesis To assess whether small rodents can sustain a larger body, Mowat chooses himself as an experimental subject. He eats mice and monitors his condition, treating the test as indirect evidence about wolf nutrition. Correcting the Ration He realizes that his first meals omit much of the mice’s fat and changes his preparation to include the whole animal. The experiment shows both his scientific resourcefulness and the limits of his improvised method.

Many Sources of Food

Many Sources of Food Local Knowledge Ootek describes wolves taking Ground squirrels, fish, and other available prey. His accounts broaden the study beyond the mice Mowat has personally watched. Adaptation Over Certainty Mowat learns that a wolf’s diet changes with season and opportunity. The family’s survival depends on flexible hunting, not on a single large prey species.

Late June, after the caribou migration north

Early summer, beside the observation camp

Later in the summer, after the mouse hunts

During the final week of Mowat’s mouse-diet experiment

After Ootek joins the observations