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Top 10 Animals After Dark: The Red Wolf
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#5 -- When Red Wolves Roam

By Jessika Toothman

Considered extinct in the wild from 1980 to 1987, red wolves were bred in captivity for a number of years, then reintroduced. Since then they have slowly started a tentative recovery, although their numbers remain small.

Red wolves are terrific hunters, having heightened senses that put those of humans to shame. Their senses of smell, sight and hearing are vastly beyond what we are able to detect. During the hours of darkness, red wolves are active. Ghostly predators, they stalk silently across the land, except when they're letting out the occasional howl — a behavior that is thought to be a means of communicating and bonding.

Sometimes hunting together, sometimes individually, red wolves can go a week without eating but hunt nightly and are typically successful a couple times a week.

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