Wolf pups settle into Highland Wildlife Park

The pups were born on 3 June to first-time mother Ruby at RZSS Highland Wildlife Park.

Now aged four months, the new pups are half the size of their parents.

Keepers have recently named the new arrivals, which are four girls and two boys, Fearn, Eadha, Rose, Cora, Darach and Simon.

Douglas Richardson, Head of Living Collections at RZSS Highland Wildlife Park, said the pups are very energetic.

He said: “The pups are doing very well and have already grown so much in the last few months.

“They are quite boisterous and love playing with their siblings and exploring their 4,500 square metre enclosure.

“It is wonderful to have a full pack of wolves at the Park again.

“Once the wolf pups are older, and following the birth of the next one or two litters, they will move on to other zoological collections to augment existing packs or help create new ones, mimicking the natural dispersal process in the wild.”

The pups are European wolves, found throughout Scandinavia, Southern and Eastern Europe and Western Russia.

European wolves is a subspecies of the grey wolf, a species once found across Europe, most of Asia and all of North America.

Wolves were once the most widely distributed mammal found throughout the northern hemisphere.

But because of hunting, persecution ad habitat loss, wolf populations are now much more restricted.

Wolves used to roam freely in Scotland but were hunted to extinction by the 1740s.

But European wolf populations started to grow after the 1950s when they became a lot less persecuted, and by the 1980s wolf populations began to grow.

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