There’s always something exciting happening at the Wolf Conservation Center (WCC) in South Salem, New York. But recently, history was made when a couple of rare, fluffy babies appeared on one of their outdoor webcams.
It all started a few weeks ago, when the folks at WCC noticed that one of their red wolves, Oak, was rounder than usual. She’d had her first litter with her mate, Adeyha, last year, and it seemed her second batch of pups were on their way.
The WCC staff monitored Oak’s enclosure through outdoor cameras and were elated when, one late April night, they saw the doting mom carrying a tiny baby in her mouth.
“Under the cover of darkness, Oak moved her pups one at a time from the den to another location in her enclosure,” WCC wrote on Facebook.
You can watch that moment here:
The next day, staff members ventured into Oak and Adeyha’s enclosure to check on their newborn babies. They were thrilled to find six healthy pups cuddling with their mom, dad and siblings born last year.
The litter of pups, consisting of three girls and three boys, wasn’t just adorable — their birth was groundbreaking for the endangered species.
“With just 16 red wolves currently known to live in the wild, these pups are the future of their critically endangered species,” WCC wrote on Facebook.
The WCC staff continued monitoring the pups through their enclosure cameras and watched in awe as Oak mothered them with a natural ease.
“As with all wolf moms, Oak is proving to be nurturing and loving,” WCC’s director of education, Regan Downey, told The Dodo. “She spent the first few weeks primarily with the pups, nursing them and encouraging them to stay relatively hidden as they started to gain their footing. Even now, as the pups are starting to explore the world around them, Oak is never far away and keeps a watchful eye on her pups.”
See her care for her pups here.
Oak spends nearly every moment with her pups, making sure they’re safe and fed, but she’s not the only one raising them. Her previous litter, consisting of 1-year-old pups named Sassafras, Tupelo, Cedar, Maple and Juniper, are pitching in to help, too.
“One of the things we’re especially excited about is that her yearling children are able to help raise their younger siblings; a valuable learning experience,” Downey said. “They’ll teach their siblings how to play, how to hunt, how to howl (basically, how to be wolves!), and when they have pups of their own in the future, they’ll have this experience as a reference point. This is similar to how wolf packs function in the wild, as well.”
Thanks to their siblings’ help, the weeks-old pups have finally started to howl, and they’re quickly learning the ropes on how to become strong, independent wolves in the future.
“These tiny howls may be small, but they represent something big: the next generation of red wolves finding their voices,” WCC wrote on Facebook. “Every milestone like this is a step forward for this critically endangered species.”