It’s why I hope they’ll be accepted back into society someday. The risks seem minimal with proper care, and right now their options are captivity or wilderness. But they’re where dogs came from; a few generations of selective breeding to reduce adrenaline response would do the trick.

But the growls are kind of cute, and probably sound a lot more ominous than they are.

What? Wolves have massively more powerful bites than dogs, right?

Humans have one of the most deadly bites too. Just because something is dangerous, it’s tempting to shun it. But the danger is relative to the frequency of problems.

(If this is a “citation needed” situation: https://www.mayoclinic.org/first-aid/first-aid-human-bites/b...)

Probably more worrisome to me is taking for granted the way we've bred dogs to be gentle, calm, good-natured, etc. Most people don't do much to train their pet dogs or even learn to communicate with them. We more or less get away with that, societally, because dogs are insanely good-natured. Dogs give us so much 'for free'. I think without that, like when people just keep wolves as pets, I think things look a LOT dicier.

wilderness?

there's no wilderness... it's all somebody's backyard.

True, but 28 years ago they were reintroduced into Yellowstone. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRv5NTNU/

Some dogs, notably rottweilers, make similar vocalizations even when relaxed. Search for 'rottie rumble’ to find clips with examples.

I don't know anything about wolves really, but with dogs, most individual components of body language are pretty ambiguous. For example,

  - many dogs will rapidly wag their tails just before getting into a vicious fight (it doesn't just mean 'happy')
  - dogs will generally bare teeth as a warning/threat, but some will also show their teeth as a greeting (Google 'heeler smile')
  - some stress/calming signals (e.g., pulling ears back or lowered tail) can occur as normal parts of safe, mutual play

To get a sense of what a dog is feeling and how it might act, you really have to integrate all of its body language into a single context.

All of that is to say that if someone who works at a respectable wolf habitat/rescue tells me that a growl-y vocalization from a wolf is not always aggressive, I don't have a hard time believing that.

(I'd love to learn more about wolf body language and how it differs from that of domestic dogs!)

Agree in theory, my read on that particular situation is that the human was shading arrogant/taunting, and the male was a bit jealous verging towards pissed.

My dog has played a few times with a rescue mutt (bit of rottie in there?) who growls pretty loud in the heat of the moment. Was frightening to hear, but shes not aggressive at all.