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Submitted: October 30, 2011
Image Size: 446 KB
Resolution: 1024×769

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Trick or Treat...by *Lupinicious

Photography / Animals, Plants & Nature / Wild Animals

Happy Halloween everybody

This guy put on his Halloween face for you*g*

What? A DD?

Are you kidding me

Thank you so much, Anoya, that's indeed quite a treat, so no tricks today

I would never have expected that

---

A bit of additional info that I gave in comments but which might be hard to retrieve now:

This is a photo of a European wolf (Canis lupus lupus) in a captive pack of 9 wolves at the Sababurg park in central Germany. He is the omega of the pack (Alpha = highest ranking animal(s) of the pack, Beta = runner-up and Omega = lowest ranking wolf in the pack) and felt threatened by his pack mates around him (but they didn't actually mess with him that day).

Even though his facial expression looks furious, the crouching pose, the tucked-in tail and the laid-back ears are typical signs of fear and submissiveness, and all he wants is to be left alone. He also signals, however, that he is ready to defend himself should he have to. If some other wolf approached him now, he would snap at him/her.

Some trivia: Did you know that omega wolves, while pretty much every bigger captive pack has one, practically don't appear in wild-living packs? Wild packs are usually families that only consist of the parents (alpha male and alpha female), their off-spring (puppies) and last year's puppies (yearlings). Wolves are pubescent by the age of 22 months, and they usually leave the pack at about 20 months of age to find a mate and constitute a new pack. The idea that the parents are challenged in fights for alpha position in wild packs is a common misconception and that very rarely (if ever) takes place.

In captive settings, the yearlings cannot leave the pack, and while puppies still have a "puppy license" for their first and some of the second year of life, this expires with pubescence and then things might escalate. It has been described that omegas actually serve an important role as "scapegoats" in a captive pack, much like often observed in human social groups.

EXIF data

Camera: Canon EOS 1Ds Mk III
Lens: EF 70-200 f/2.8 IS II USM
Exposure time: 1/640s
Aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 500
Exposure compensation: -1/3
Exposure program: Aperture priority (Av)
Distance to subject: 11.9 meters (~ 40 ft)
File format: 14 bit RAW

Oh, and if this one's too scary for you, try my previous deviation, which is much more charming: