wolveswolves:

Hi! 🙂 I assume you’re referring to this 9gag picture that’s going around on the internet at the moment?

Sex doesn’t play a role for wolves when
it comes to attacking or not attacking another wolf. Wolves don’t have such
rules.

In wolf packs, the breeding pair who are leading the
pack exclude non-pack members from their territory and will attack and try to
kill trespassers. Other mature pack members (for example yearlings) are sometimes
less hostile to outside wolves, because those alien wolves are potential mates.
But wolves rarely attack or kill their pack mates. 

The 9gag picture is taken by Jean Paul at the International Wolf Center in
Ely, Minnesota. Here, wolves live in artificially composed packs in big
enclosures. Members of the packs may vary as wolves age and new wolf pups are
socialized and added. 

If a random pack of (often unrelated)
wolves is composite in such an artificial way, there is no natural pack
structure, so you get a battle on the power, and in the end a dominance
hierarchy that is maintained with difficulty. In situations like this, there’s
more dominance/submission display among pack mates, and more fighting, but
rarely with the intention to seriously harm, or kill each other.

Wolves can’t
talk with each other like we do, so their body is what they use for the majority of their
communicating. For us humans, that way of communicating may sometimes look very serious/aggressive,
when there’s actually nothing serious or seriously threatening going on. Besides,
wolves have a basic aversion to fighting and will do much to
avoid any aggressive encounters.

It’s difficult to tell from just a
picture what was going on in the depicted situation, but I’m pretty sure the
white wolf has no intention of attacking/harming/killing the other wolf/wolves.
The two wolves on the right are showing active submission to the white wolf.
I’m also pretty sure the white wolf is Shadow, who was the leader of the Exhibit Pack, so that would
reinforce that. Part of showing active submission includes lowering the entire
body and pointing up the muzzle to the more dominant wolf, which would be a
better explanation of the wolf’s position of it’s head instead of it being
a strategically move to protect the other wolf’s throat. 

In passive submission, a wolf rolls on
its back and exposes its vulnerable throat and underside, whimpering, with paws
drawn into the body. This is a very common way of showing submission that
wolves display without fearing to be attacked – both the dominant and the submissive
wolf know the dominant wolf will not actually attack the submissive wolf. So once again I’m pretty sure the lowest wolf isn’t placing its head there for the reason 9gag is describing.

Also, if a wolf dóes have the intention
of killing or attacking another wolf, he’s not going to waste time playing the
whole dominance/submission game – he’d just do it.

And just to myth bust the 9gag comment;
the lowest wolf isn’t a female. The picture was taken in 2009, and at that time
the only female in the Exhibit pack was Maya, who has yellow/orange eyes, very profound eyebrow
markings, and a light brown top of the muzzle whereas the wolf in the 9gag
picture has grayish eyes, a dark grayer top of the muzzle, and different
eyebrow markings.