How many of you have seen zoos with large packs of wolves? It seems I've almost always seen them in pair or sometimes trios. The only place I've seen a large pack is at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana (USA). They were very active but also pretty rough. Are wolves usually in pairs due to injury potential in packs or simply due to space constraints?
Highland Wildlife Park in Scotland has a pretty decently sized group, probably the biggest I have seen in the UK but I think some safari parks in England have larger packs.
Colchester Zoo currently holds 3 sisters, previously to this there was 2 unrelated males, however about a decade ago I believe there was a larger breeding pack. This reduction in individuals might be because of an escape that happened in November 2013 or because the enclosure just isn't particularly large.
Pairs are the norm in AZA zoos, and one of the main reasons would be genetic management (it's the best way to guarantee the "correct" females breed with the "correct" males). At least with the US SSP species (Mexican Grey and Red Wolves), this leads to a trade-off where most of the zoos keeping larger groups (which there are some of) are not breeding wolves, and most of the breeding facilities are housing them in pairs or trios. There's also a space consideration to wolves, as large canids generally take up an outsized amount of space when compared to other similarly sized species (a good wolf exhibit requires more space than a good exhibit for lions and tigers, even), and zoos oftentimes have space as a limited resource that'll determine how many individuals a zoo can keep.
Largest pack I can recall seeing was at the North Carolina Zoo a year ago. They had 7 or 8 Red Wolves all trotting around the enclosure at once.
Woodland Park had 4 or 5 gray wolves when I visited in 2016. I think that's the only time I've seen more than two.
The largest pack I’ve seen in person was at Colchester Zoo. There was at least six or seven wolves (from memory, the alpha pair and four or five adolescent pups). In 2018, Brookfield Zoo held a pack of 10 Mexican wolves. They noted the transfer of nine of these wolves to other facilities (with the retention of a young female to pair with an incoming male) was in line with the natural dispersal age of this species being 2-3 years.
Stone Zoo in MA has a pack of 6 Mexican gray wolves. They are all brothers so, as Neil mentioned above, this is another example of a larger pack that is not in a breeding situation.
Thanks for the comments. Are there usually problems with aggression toward the omega pack members? Are other canines and hyenas also often kept in pairs?
Zoo Osnabrück has quite a large pack with 5,9 Hudson-Bay Wolfs (according to zootierliste), but maybe they will give at least some of the offspring (2020) away to be able to breed again. The Enclosure is quite big and during winter they can use the black bear enclosure as well, but I think with 14 animals there is no space left for more. I never really saw much aggressive behaviour, besides some dominating of omegas before/after feeding. In this picture I managed to photograph 12 of them.
I don’t recall seeing more than 4 wolves in an enclosure all at once. The most I’ve seen is probably at ZooAmerica, though they’re down to 3 currently. Obviously, any of your local wolf preserves probably have large packs of wolves but it’s up to your speculation if you want to count that as a zoo.
Toronto Zoo has a great wolf pack exhibit (I know its my home and I am biased) but I think the Tundra Trek is one of the best (and bonus points its close enough to the restaurant so can observe for extended periods) Toronto Zoo | Animals *edit to add: its a rather large pack; my estimate is 10 wolves but the last litter said 8 babies alone so maybe even more are there, it is a large enclosure with multiple viewing areas Toronto Zoo | Press Releases
They are down to 5.7 in the meantime, two females died last year. Only 1.1 of the 2019 offspring could be sent to Japan, there was no further interest in them. As far as I know the males are castrated to avoid further offspring - if I'm not mistaken the remaining females are daughters/sisters of the males anyway. For most of the part they are not aggressive but the old alpha male was bitten out of the group and I don't think he was the only one...
I believe Tama zoo used to have a large Korean Wolf pack of 7 individuals, but they have since died off and the last time I checked, they hold 4 individuals.
