The study goes on to say that degree of reliance between the two sources of food is uncertain and that the amount of consumption between the two species depends on the season and year. Evidence suggesting that Arctic wolves depend more on hares claims that the mature wolf population paralleled the increase of hares rather than muskoxen availability.
More supporting evidence suggests that muskoxen provide long-term viability and other ungulates do not appear in the wolf's diet. Studies provide evidence that the muskoxen are indeed their primary prey because wolf presence and reproduction seems to be higher when muskox is more available than higher hare availability. Sometimes there is debate whether the muskox or the Arctic hare is the primary prey for the hare-wolf-muskox predator-prey system. This sort of food source will not always be found in the Arctic wolf's diet because of regional and seasonal availability. It has been also found that Arctic wolves scavenge through garbage. They have also been found to prey on lemmings, caribou, Arctic foxes, birds, and beetles. In the wild, Arctic wolves primarily prey on muskoxen and Arctic hares. There is no available information of the wolves' movements where the muskoxen were. The researchers found that wolves prey mainly on the muskoxen. About 2,250 km (1,400 mi) south of the High Arctic, a wolf movement study took place in the wintertime in complete darkness, when the temperature was as low as −53 ☌ (−63 ☏). This makes Arctic wolf movement hard to research. The only time at which the wolf migrates is during the wintertime when there is complete darkness for 24 hours. Very little is known about the movement of the Arctic wolves, mainly due to climate. Īrctic wolf feeding on muskox carcass in Ellesmere Island One of these wolves attacked 3 people, was shot, and tested positive for rabies. A number of incidents involving aggressive wolves have occurred in Alert, Nunavut, where the wolves have lived in close proximity to the local weather station for decades and became habituated to humans. In 1977, a pair of scientists were approached by six wolves on Ellesmere Island, with one animal leaping at one of the scientists and grazing a cheek. Otto Sverdrup wrote that during the Fram expedition, a pair of wolves shadowed one of his teammates, who kept them at a distance by waving his ski pole. The wolves on Ellesmere Island do not fear humans, which is thought to be due to them seeing humans so little, and they will approach humans cautiously and curiously. The Arctic wolf is relatively unafraid of people, and can be coaxed to approach people in some areas. Wayne furthermore stated that he believed the habitat in which the wolf happened to be found was a good enough characteristic to distinguish a subspecies. Arctic wolves could be distinguished by having three wolves in the putative population with a specific SNP, whereas another subspecies could be distinguished by having 20 wolves with that SNP. Wayne, mentioned he disagreed with the conclusion that a subspecies had to be genetically distinct, believing that different subspecies could slowly grade into each other - suggesting that although it was impossible to determine if an individual wolf was one subspecies or the next using DNA, the population of Arctic wolves as a whole could be distinguished by the looking at the proportions of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP): i.e. During a meeting assembled in 2014 by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, one speaker, Robert K. (2012) using autosomal microsatellite DNA and Mitochondrial DNA data indicate that the Arctic wolf has no unique haplotypes which suggests that its colonization of the Arctic Archipelago from the North American mainland was relatively recent, and thus not sufficient to warrant subspecies status. Both wolves are recognized as separate subspecies of Canis lupus in the taxonomic authority Mammal Species of the World (2005).
He also attributed the name Canis lupus orion to a Greenland wolf specimen from Cape York, northwest Greenland. He wrote that similar wolves could be found on Ellesmere Island. In 1935, the British zoologist Reginald Pocock attributed the subspecies name Canis lupus arctos (Arctic wolf) to a specimen from Melville Island in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Canada. Queen Elizabeth Islands region (QEI) divided into five major areas by apparent importance to arctic-island wolves.
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