Apennine wilderness - Brown bears, wolves, history, and mythology

Sibillini Mountains of Marche and Umbria

The Apennine Mountains range in long segments from from Liguria to Calabria, and has been somewhat of a barrier between the Po and Tuscany and the eastern peninsula. The Italian or Apennine wolf enjoys a large range throughout most of the peninsula and a large area in southeastern France. There are several other species of foxes and jackals. The Marsican or Apennine brown bear is extremely endangered, and those few are limited to an isolated pocket of the central Apennines. They're not leaving because of it's isolation, but it's assumed that they could expand without any trouble if their numbers could increase. There are large brown bears in the Italian Alps, but they're not a sub-species, so not considered endangered despite their small numbers.

The Italian wolf is considered the unofficial animal of Italy, partly due to its place in Roman mythology. When looking at some images of Italian wolves, I noticed that there were some which were very large, as we usually think of the wolves in North America, and some were small. I've actually noticed this within the coyotes which I frequently saw in San Mateo County over the years. Most were small and usually a golden-brown color, while once in awhile I observed some which were large and wolf-like... and usually more of a grayish coloring. Also, when looking at a world map of the current wolf range, I see numerous oddities.

First and foremost is that wolves inhabit all of the Arabian peninsula, but inhabit no range in Mexico! How can there not be wolves in Mexico with all of it's diverse terrain, and be commonplace in the largely sandy deserts of Arabia? That really blows me away! I'm sure there are wolves in Mexico, in small wandering bands here and there, but with no actual range. Also, there is a huge range in Canada, but not much in the United States. How can there not be more wolves in the U.S., but they're commonplace in northern Alaska or the entire western half of Greenland? Maybe I could see where there are forests and animals in northern Alaska, and perhaps they can live in dens during the incredibly harsh winters, but what about Greenland? There's nothing but snow and ice!

Felines and canines apparently can adapt to almost any terrain. African lions adapt very easily to the snow, and they grow a thick winter coat and everything. The genetic memory of when they inhabited the tundra is still within them. Also, identical African and Asian leopards can thrive in both blazing hot African savanna or in the winter snows of northern East Asia. Wolves seem to be the same, surviving in mountains, deserts, and ice. When looking at the current worldwide brown bear range, they obviously must have crossed the land bridge from Asia, but are now very uncommon in the United States. They have a large range in the western half of Canada and in all of Alaska.

Although there's something of a reluctance to admit it, expanding Americans simply would not tolerate having such a potentially dangerous animal amidst them. They were once common in California. Also, Europeans and East Asians did the same. I see a couple of odd locations in northern Iraq and northern Japan within that range. The Atlas bear was apparently a brown bear sub-species that inhabited the Atlas Mountain range of northwest Africa, but became extinct due to human activity and hunting. I've read where there were a very small number of scattered Atlas bears and the Barbary lions in northwest Africa a century ago. Oddly, far from being separate, bears and lions have co-existed in many locations throughout history, including Ice Age Eurasia and North America. So at one point not so long ago in the Maghreb, bears, wolves, lions, and leopards actually occupied the same territories.

Fauna in Italy

List of mammals of Italy

The surname "Lupo" is fairly common throughout all of the Italian peninsula, particularly in Piedmont and western Lombardy, and in Sicily, Campania, and Salento. However, the surname "Cantalupo" is unique to Campania, and it translates to "Singing wolf."

 

Apennine wolf vs. Marsican bear

Jackal Films

Wolf trying to steal a carcass from a sleeping bear gets chased away. Captured in the Central Apennines in collaboration with Rewilding Apennines.

 

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Cultural significance (Italian wolf)

According to legend, Rome was founded in 753 BC by Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a she-wolf.

The animal features prominently in pre-Roman, Roman, and later Italian cultures. In Roman mythology, the wolf played a role in the founding of Rome by suckling the twins Romulus and Remus. According to Terry Jones, "The Romans did not see [the tale of Romulus, Remus and the she-wolf] as a charming story; they meant to show that they had imbibed wolfish appetites and ferocity with their mother's milk." The wolf was also considered sacred to Mars, and to see a wolf before going into battle was considered a good omen. The origin of the myth can be traced back to a wolf cult among the neighbouring Sabines. The Sabines had two words for wolf: hirpus (used in religious contexts) and lupus, the latter of which was incorporated into Latin.

Although the Romans did not worship wolves, killing them was likely considered taboo; unlike the Etruscans, the Romans very rarely sacrificed wolves in rituals, and no records have been found of wolves being used in the amphitheatres, despite being more numerous and easily accessible compared to other, more exotic animals used. The use of wolves in Roman folk medicine, while attested by Pliny the Elder, was minimal compared to other animals such as snakes or bears and, contrary to popular imagery, Roman standard bearers did not wear wolf skins, with the only units attested to have worn them being the velites, who were the poorest and youngest warriors using the wolf skins to distinguish themselves. Wolves entering cities or temples were usually only killed when the animal had no means of escape, unlike the case with wasps, oxen, and owls, which were quickly eliminated if they entered sacred areas.

Negative attitudes towards wolves in Italy largely began with the invasion of the Lombards, who zoomorphically described their raids and invasions as wolf raids, bringing wolves into disrepute. The belief in werewolves was still widespread in Italy during the early 1920s, and covering their faces when resting outside at night was once traditional among rural people, as sleeping whilst facing the full moon was thought to transform the sleeper into a wolf. The wolf also featured prominently in Italian folk medicine. Baby colic was treated by tying a sack filled with a piece of wolf gut around the child's neck, while miscarriages were prevented by tying a wolf's intestine around the mother's abdomen. Rheumatism and tonsillitis were treated with wolf fat, while a tooth or tuft of fur was worn as a talisman against the evil eye.

The Romans apparently did not consider wolves overly dangerous to people, with the only references to them attacking people being proverbial or mythological. Although Italy has no records of wolf attacks on humans after World War II and the eradication of rabies in the 1960s, historians examining church and administrative records from northern Italy's central Po Valley region (which includes a part of modern-day Switzerland) found 440 cases of wolves attacking people between the 15th and 19th centuries. The 19th-century records show that from 1801 to 1825, 112 attacks occurred, 77 of which resulted in death. Of these cases, only five were attributed to rabid animals.

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