Being able to sleep in almost any situation or position
Irresistible urge to chase squirrels and rabbits
Hating the vacuum cleaner
Wanting to do everything with friends
Loudly and repeatedly announcing to housemates that someone is at the door
Long, shouted conversations to other werewolves across the neighborhood (bonus points at 2am)
Taking advantage of any and all free food
Werewolf-vampire solidarity
Fighting any animal that trespasses into the backyard
Boundless energy
Too much energy
Eating out of the trash if it smells tasty
Being bad at sports because you don’t want to let anyone else take the ball from you. Then destroying the ball in front of everyone because you want to make a point
Trying to fight things 10x your size like a fucking idiot
Being unable to hold a grudge for more than a few hours
Trying to make people feel bad for you over mundane things that aren’t actually that bad. And somehow succeeding.
Snoring
Needing to try a bit of your friends’ food, even if you’ve tried it 5645674 times before and have never once liked it
Getting way too friendly with random strangers
Being in a love-hate relationship with water
Digging. For no reason.
Thinking you’re a badass despite being a hyperactive ball of emotions and hedonism
Loud sobbing while pressing yourself up against the sliding glass door at your friends who locked you out because they were tired of your bullshit and wanted some goddamn peace and quiet
See I liked the first post, but now you’re just claiming that werewolves would be better if they acted more like domesticated dogs, which is blatant respectability politics. Stop tryna gentrify werewolves.
Hey dude! I read your comment (and a few others that were similar) last night and I totally get where you’re coming from. A lot of these were jokes regarding to the ways my dogs get themselves into trouble in a suburban neighborhood. I have no personal experience with wolves, so I don’t have any particularly funny things to say about their behavior, so I did a bit of research and read up on the behavior of wolves when raised in the same context as a domestic dog.
A lot of what they said was that, while they do pack bond with their adoptive family, wolves are not attuned to humans the way dogs are, which makes sense. Dogs do retain a lot of their instincts, but it is probably incomplete.
(Also worth mentioning is that human-raised wolves often respond to human strangers with apprehensive friendliness, not aggression.)
My reasoning is that a well-adjusted werewolf would still (at least in human form) be attuned to humans, but also have a lot of instincts that would be highly out of place in an urban environment, such as hunting and defending territory. (Looking back at my list, some of the things I have up there are pretty dog-centric, which I have no explanation for other than me roasting my dogs, sorry.)
Anyway, thanks for your input as well as the excuse to do research instead of homework, I always love having a reason to procrastinate. I think I went on a tangent and got off-track there.
I would be very interested in hearing the bullet points of your research!
I’m still reading up, but the articles are here, here and here.
-Wolves absolutely make TERRIBLE pets
-Feral dogs do not revert back to wolf behavior, even over several generations, and are usually solitary scavengers rather than pack hunters
-The grey wolf is not a direct ancestor of the domestic dog, but they share a common ancestor and are very closely related
-Between 70 and 80% of the world’s dog population is made up of feral dogs. Weather or not this includes dingoes is unknown.
-When feral dogs do form packs, they tend to be smaller (2-8 individuals) with multiple breeding individuals that do not form long term bonds like wolves do, with pup care and protection being almost entirely the responsibility of the mother
-Whereas wolves are often a pack comprised of a monogamous breeding pair and their offspring, though unrelated individuals may also join. All members take part in feeding and rearing the pups, as well as defending them from predators
-Breeding and foraging/hunting can vary between individual groups of both wolves and dogs, though wolves generally stick to the basic pack setup, sometimes with multiple breeding pairs
^Table from the third article (which is the best one in my opinion)
-When in conflict with one-another, wolves tend to have less intense aggressive interactions than dogs (who are more likely to become physically violent when quarreling amongst themselves)
-After an aggressive interaction, wolves are often able to reconcile and continue to cooperate together, whereas dogs will avoid each other and limit interactions with an individual they are at odds with
I’m still reading, but I really like the third one since it’s an actual scientific write-up than an article. It is VERY long, though.
Fascinating! Thanks for going through this stuff, I really appreciate it.
Actual Wolf Instincts sure would make for some interesting werewolves – most of the Gritty Macho Werewolf shit does sound a lot more like dogs, actually!
So a more wolfy werewolf setup would be like “happy low-conflict families with a ton of supportive older siblings and parent figures” or “this group of friends doesn’t have much luck dating except for that One Couple who are the axis of the social group, but they have gamed together for years and share a Labrador who they all love fiercely”
Okay so @crockpotcauldron‘s werewolf pack description of “this group of friends doesn’t have much luck dating except for that One Couple who are the axis of the social group, but they have gamed together for years and share a Labrador who they all love fiercely” is… um… my life. o.o
One of my longest-running friendships is with a couple who runs a weekly gaming group and they have two cats that I would die for. And then the other longest-running friendship is with Deep End and Skinny Btch and their children, and I am kinda useless at dating but they have basically adopted me into the pack and I love their kids.
So um… I guess I’m a werewolf. o.o
@crockpotcauldron says “You would be a fantastic werewolf! A huge, fluffy, devoted marshmallow of a wolf” and I both feel called out and like yes. Yes my real identity is “fluffy devoted marshmallow” thank you for this.
Wolf behaviour sounds like “when you live in the wild, you can’t actually
afford to fight each other over little things” stuff.
Mooncustafer 