Today Shaun Ellis is a wolf behavior expert who researches in a special way: by
living with wolves and becoming part of their world. At a wildlife park in North ...
ARBEITSBLÄTTER Wilderness
Meet the pack
“To speak for the wolf you have to live like a wolf.” The man who says this is the English Shaun Ellis. When he was a young man he liked to observe wild animals. So he learned to use his sense of smell and sound to find his way at night when he studied foxes and badgers. Today Shaun Ellis is a wolf behavior expert who researches in a special way: by living with wolves and becoming part of their world. At a wildlife park in North Devon, England, he has worked with 13 captive wolves since 1990. But he studied the red fox in the UK and the coyote in Canada, too. In 2005 the wolf researcher spent eighteen months living in isolation at Combe Martin Wildlife Park with three wolf pups that had been left on their own – Yana, Tamaska and Matsi. He educated them to be wild wolves and became the pack’s alpha male. He spent seven years living with the Native Americans on their reservation in northern Idaho, United States. These people taught him how to observe wolves, and he was able to get in with a pack of wolves and live among them. As a volunteer in a project at the foot of the Rocky Mountains he started to study wolves. Ellis tried to behave like them because he believes that doing this is the best way to understand these animals. He wanted to find out whether he would be accepted by a pack that had never seen a man. No wonder that Ellis had to learn a lot: howling, licking and snarling – even eating and playing like the wolves. Using recording equipment at night in freezing temperatures and snow, he began recording wild wolf howls in the woods and then played them back again and again the next day. He wanted to learn how to communicate with the wolves. So he learned that each wolf has a different sound depending on its pack status. Sometimes howling can even help to calm the pack when it is on the defensive. Because many people believe that wolves are highly intelligent but often misunderstood by humans, Shaun Ellis frequently speaks about his work on television and at public events. In 2003 his book “The Wolf Talk” went out, followed by “Spirit of the Wolf ” in 2006. In the DVD “A Man Among Wolves”, Shaun is shown teaching a young wolf to howl by holding it up and howling in its ear. The howl is a method of communicating with pack members. A wolf ’s howl can be heard up to 10 miles if conditions are good. Wolves often prefer to howl from a higher position because the sound can be heard further. Because he has such great knowledge, Shaun Ellis can advise other wildlife centers that look after and care for wolf packs today. He is also involved in a number of research projects in Poland and at Yellowstone National Park in the United States.
Read the text. What do you find interesting/ shocking/amazing? Give reasons.
Work with a partner. One of you is the reporter who wants to interview Shaun Ellis. The other one takes Shaun Ellis’s role. Prepare the interview with the help of the text. Then act it out.
