Humans might have the most complex system of communicating, but other animals also have ways of giving cues. A new study in Animal Behaviour says that wolves have subtle ways of speaking, through subtle facial clues that signal their intentions. The non-verbal communication even helps maintain cohesion within the pack.
Christian Hansen Wheat, an ethologist from Stockholm University says the facial expressions tell their comrades whether they are rough-housing or actually fighting.She called it a “fine-tuned communication tool”.
Earlier research into the facial expressions of wolves used methods that were designed to study dogs, and it was a poor proxy since dogs have fewer facial expression than their evolutionary forefathers.
Vergonia Maglieri, an ethnologist at the University of Pisa, along with colleagues, took a closer look at packs of wolves. The research involved habituating gray, artic, and Canadian wolfpacks inside forested enclosures, half the size of football fields. The study involved learning to identify each wolf, not just by their faces, but also by their mannerisms.
The team captured 135 hours of footage of the animals’ playful and aggressive interactions and caught 379 such moments on film. The researchers then went about analysing these expressions and also looked for other cues like: individual gaze, opportunity to counterattack, and went about categorising these incidents as friendly or combative.
The team found that wolves have five distinct facial expressions to communicate different levels of playfulness and aggression.
The study found that during playful interactions, wolves open their mouths and relax their lips. When the play-fighting goes too far, the wolves pull back its lips, reveal its gums and narrow their eyes. However, when it becomes an all-out battle for survival, wolves will reveal a light spot on the very top of its gums: a red warning flag and a call-to-arms for war. The expressions were observed in all three kinds of wolf packs.
Elisabetta Palagi, a co-author said: “A few key elements change the meaning.”In the future, the researchers want to see why dogs, unlike their wilder ancestors, have more simplified expressions. The researchers believe this could be because dogs often have to communicate with humans and having simple facial expressions is the best for inter-species communication.