- She might be old, but she’s still living her best life.
We like to think of wolves as these majestic apex predators that rule the natural world. Yet, the cold hard fact is that the life of a wolf is a hard one.
Most wolf pups perish before reaching adulthood. Even when a wolf gets to grow up, it’ll be incredibly lucky if it sees its fifth birthday.
And then we have 907F.
This clinical serial number is the official designation of a veritably ancient female wolf living in Yellowstone National Park. She has managed to reach the ripe old age of 11 years.
Being that old, she’s mostly just lying around waiting for the inevitable end, right? You might think so, but recent events have shown that 907F still gets down and dirty in her autumn days.
We’re saying that because she just gave birth to her 10th litter of puppies.
You go, grandma.
‘She Keeps Going’
Wolf 907F is, as far as anyone’s aware, the oldest wolf to have lived its entire life in Yellowstone’s Northern Range. This abundant area has plenty of prey animals, but it also means that there are multiple wolf packs in the area.
As a result, most Northern Range wolves don’t get to die of old age. In fact, due to pack-on-pack violence, accidents, weather exposure, sickness, and other potentially fatal incidents, the average life expectancy of a wolf is about four years.
Yet, wolf 907F has somehow managed to beat all expectations. Even the researchers tracking her have a hard time believing she’s still kicking.
“Every day, I expect that she might die just because she is so elderly, but I’ve been thinking that for the last few years, and she keeps going,” Kira Cassidy, a research associate at the Yellowstone Wolf Project, told LiveScience.
Wolf 907F was born sometime in 2013. Two years later, in 2015, the young beast birthed her first litter.
Still, she hasn’t made it through the years unscathed. Around 2017, she lost her left eye.
“We don’t know how it happened, whether it got poked out by a stick or maybe an antler when she was hunting,” Cassidy explained to Cowboy State Daily.
“It’s not completely gone. It’s not an empty socket. But it’s shrunken in, and it’s not a functional eye.”
A Smart Cookie
Although she is a cyclops, 907F has displayed extremely rare longevity for a wolf. Part of it is undoubtedly due to simple good luck, such as her pack’s territory lying mostly within Yellowstone, which gives them safety from hunters.
Yet, she is also a remarkably intelligent and cunning animal.
Case in point, researchers have noticed that 907F checks both directions for oncoming vehicles every time before she crosses a road. It might sound like a small thing until you consider how hard it is for humans with our supposedly superior intellect to look both ways.
“An older wolf can know even simple things, like where it’s safest to cross a river during flood stage,”
Over the years, 907F appears to have grown into something of a grandma (or great-great-grandma) figure in her pack. She often shows up when the young’uns are in trouble to show them the proper way to wolf.
Retirement Days
It’s impossible to say how many pups 907F has given birth to as wolves share mothering duties. Still, the 11-year-old matriarch has nine confirmed litters behind her, with some of her offspring currently leading their own packs.
With such a successful family history, everybody assumed that the venerable grandmother was done with making babies.
Earlier this year, she proved everybody wrong. This spring, 907F gave birth to three puppies.
“The fact that 907 is still having pups is amazing, and her litter being small is expected given that she is so old,” said Cassidy.
Yet, age is slowly but surely starting to catch up to 907F. An active and brutal huntress back in her prime, she now hangs back during hunts and spends most of her time looking after the pack’s pups.
Then again, it seems the rest of the pack doesn’t seem to expect their grandma to hunt like she used to. In fact, they’ve even been observed to bring food to the old lady — as if to say, “You’ve done enough.”
Wolf 907F is starting to push the absolute limits of wolf lifespan, as the oldest recorded wolf in Yellowstone lives to 12 and a half years. Yet, at least her retirement days seem to be good ones.
“[Her pack] are happy to be with their family going from day to day,” Cassidy said.
“Even if they have injuries or are missing an eye or something really stressful is going on in their life, they move through that stress and go back to seemingly really enjoying their life.”