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Friday 9 March 2018

The dire wolf



When we think of dire wolves, we imagine the oversized wolves in "Game of Thrones". Dire wolves (Canis Diris) are an extinct species of wolf that lived thousands of years ago. They were bigger, broader, more muscular and heavier than the grey wolves.  They had massive jaws and ferocious teeth but they lived only up to 8 years. They were capable of living in all types of landscapes, from chilly mountains to forests and deserts. The dire wolf species hunted as many animals as they could catch, no matter what size the prey. They could eat horses, bison, camels, giant sloths and even mammoths. They both snacked on carcasses and they also hunted. Dire wolves enjoyed crunching on bones as they ate. They were pack animals with their own hierarchies. They've lived on the Earth for millions of years until the Ice Age when they mysteriously died off. Dire wolves looked different to the modern grey wolf. Dire wolves had shorter muscular legs, and grey wolves have slender long legs. This means that dire wolves didn't run that fast as grey wolves, and might also have relied on their bulk. The brain of a dire wolf is smaller than the brain of a grey wolf. The extinction of the dire wolf happened roughly 10,000 years ago and the reason for that is still unknown. At this time, another species of wolf called the Beringian Wolf who was very large also became extinct. It's popularly assumed that the prey of these large wolves died out that caused the prehistoric wolves to starve. The grey wolf became more successful and known to be faster and more intelligent than the prehistoric dire wolves and beringian wolves. The megafauna includes the dire wolf, sabre toothed cat, mammoth, whooly rhino, ect and they all became extinct overnight. It's been theorised that megafauna was killed by the Ice Age or the rapid temperatures, sometimes lack of prey or vegetation. But then other animals survived. It's likely that humans were responsible for the deaths of megafauna because during the timeline of megafauna becoming extinct, humans had arrived in the locations.   

Howls ^^

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