Between 1991 and 1996, Jim and Jamie Dutcher lived with and filmed a pack of wolves in Idaho. From this intensive field work came the award-winning documentary, Wolves at Our Door. The husband and wife team are out with a new book that highlights some of the things they learned on living a flourishing life from the wolf pack they were embedded within. It’s called The Wisdom of Wolves: Lessons from the Sawtooth Pack.
Jim and Jamie share what wolves can teach us about family, respecting your elders, play, the importance of belonging to a group, leadership, and what it really means to be an alpha wolf. Tune in for a fascinating conversation on a fascinating creature that has much to teach us humans.
Show Highlights
- How Jim and Jamie ended up spending time studying wolves
- Why research on wolves needs to be conducted in captivity
- How earlier studies on wolves ended up being somewhat misleading
- Why the term “alpha” is a misconception
- Other misconceptions about social hierarchies in wolf packs
- Why being a “lone wolf” is a very temporary situation
- Are wolf pack leaders domineering and aggressive?
- What’s the role of the “omega” wolf?
- How wolf personalities manifest in packs
- How the pups of a pack were reared
- The importance of play and why wolves play so much
- The culture of learning in wolf packs
- How wolves care for the elderly of their pack
- Why do wolves howl at the moon?
- What happens when wolf packs encounter one another?
- The relationship between wolves and ravens
- What happened to the Sawtooth Pack after the Dutchers finished their study?
- How wolves respond to the death of a pack member
Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast
- How to Really Be Alpha Like the Wolf
- The Myth of the Alpha Male
- Wolves at Our Door
- Play It Away
- The Importance of Roughhousing With Your Kids
- AoM series on status
Connect With the Dutchers
Living With Wolves on Facebook
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