Two female Arctic wolves nursing pups together

Snow White and Blackspot, two female arctic wolves, share a deep and meaningful bond. Blackspot cares for Snow White’s pups and even nurses them!

Having two females nurse the same litter is exceedingly rare – it’s a behavior that’s never been filmed before.

Wolves are very social animals. They live and hunt together in groups called packs. A wolf pack is really just another name for a family of wolves. A pack is usually made up of an adult male and female wolf and their offspring of various ages. Pack sizes range from three to twenty wolves.

A wolf pack has a definite social structure and rules of conduct. The pack leaders are the alpha male and female. These two animals are dominant over all the other wolves in the pack. The alpha male and female are the only wolves that breed and produce pups in the pack, and they also get to eat first at kills.

Wolf pups are born in the spring after a gestation period of around 63 days. A female can have anywhere between one and nine pups, but the average litter size is four pups. The pups are born with their eyes closed and are totally helpless. Pups weigh about one pound at birth. The female stays in the den nursing and caring for her pups while the other pack members hunt and bring back food for her to eat.

Wolf pups grow very quickly. By the time their eyes open, 15 days after birth, they weigh four pounds. At three weeks they begin to play inside the den. Two weeks later they weigh 13 pounds and have begun wandering outside the den under the watchful eye of their mom. This is when their mother starts to wean them from milk.

She and the other adult pack members start the pups on solid food by regurgitating semi-digested meat directly into their mouths or by depositing this food on the ground in front of the pups. When the pups get big enough the adults bring pieces of meat from their kills for the pups to eat. Between the ages of two and three months the pups leave their den permanently. Soon after this they begin traveling and hunting with the pack.

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