Caught on Trail Cam: Rare Wolves Roll Around Like Puppies

A trail-cam video shared by the Center for Biological Diversity shows two Mexican gray wolves acting like puppies. The nighttime footage shows one wolf rolling around on the ground, while a second wolf acts curious about what the other one is doing.

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The Mexican gray wolf is an endangered subspecies of the gray wolf. Humans hunted these animals nearly to extinction in the U.S., and in the 1970s, there were only a few Mexican gray wolves left. Defenders of Wildlife explains that in 1998, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released 11 Mexican gray wolves back into the wild in Arizona, and that was the start of an effort to breed these animals and reintroduce them back into their natural habitats.

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Wolf advocates are now asking wildlife authorities to consider releasing more captive wolves back into the wild to boost the population’s genetic diversity.

“Mexican wolves won’t recover unless agencies restore as much genetic diversity as can be salvaged from what’s already been squandered,” said Michael Robinson, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Watch two rare Mexican gray wolves act like puppies here:

Header stock image of Mexican gray wolf by Mary Therit/Getty Images

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