What precisely is so universally appealing about the direwolves of Game of Thrones? To put it another way, recall anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss’ observation that animals are not only good to eat, they are “good to think.” What are the imaginary direwolves “good to think” about? (Warning: Spoilers ahead, and with apologies to those who don’t follow the books or the TV series!)įirst of all, these creatures are good to think about the bonds of siblingship. (Several years ago, traveling through Cuba, I was asked by young Cubans about elaborate plot points concerning the direwolves of Game of Thrones, which they had been watching on digital files passed hand to hand on USB drives.)
#Dire wolf pack series#
We surmise that they were never domesticated by humans the ancestors of modern dogs were gray wolves.Īs a sociocultural anthropologist, I’m fascinated by how this extinct species inspired Martin and the creators of the modern HBO series to develop a mythic creature that has “populated” the global cultural imagination. For some reason, it appears they were unable to survive by hunting smaller mammals, food sources which were able to sustain other wolf species. Paleontologists and zoo-archaeologists continue to debate the causes of these mass extinctions were they driven by climate change, or by increasingly efficient human hunting, or some combination of these and other factors? It seems reasonable that as the megaherbivores disappeared, the pressures on dire wolves increased, leading ultimately to the entire elimination of the species. They died out during the mass extinction wave of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene that claimed many of the megafauna in North America, a wave of species loss which corresponds with the era that saw the peopling of the Americas. The biggest mystery surrounding Canis dirus is the cause of their extinction, a little more than 9,000 years ago. Although no dire wolf remains have been discovered in Michigan, they have been found in southern Indiana and paleontologists surmise they easily could have resided here. Many dire wolves remains have been recovered from the La Brea tar pits near Los Angeles, California four hundred skulls are dramatically on display at the museum there. Painting in the Hall of Evolution at the MSU Museum Depicting a Dire Wolf (Our mural painting shows a solitary dire wolf, stalking a Megatherium giant ground sloth, alongside a Smilodon saber-toothed cat.) We assume that like their modern day relatives, they hunted in packs and had a complex social structure. For tens of thousands of years, their primary competitor appears to have been the saber-toothed cat ( Smilodon fatalis) and the American lion ( Panthera atrox). Their remains have been found in a great range of elevations and environmental settings, which suggests that they were highly adaptable and efficient hunters. They don’t appear to have significantly hunted smaller animals such as deer. Paleontological evidence indicates that they primarily hunted “megaherbivores,” large non-meat eating animals including giant ground sloth, mastodon, yesterday’s camel, western horse, and bison. Their teeth and jaw size suggest a more powerful bite force than any present-day wolf species. Their heads were larger than those of modern wolves. They had a robust build and were a little larger and longer-limbed than present day grey wolves, although they certainly weren’t as big as the pony sized animals of Martin’s fertile imagination. Martin’s books and the fantasy television series? They ranged successfully over the area that is now the United States, and as far south as present day Mexico and Peru. What do we know of actual dire wolves, as opposed to the fanciful creatures that populate George R.R. We don’t have a precise date on the specimen (which just might be a cast) but we know that dire wolves lived from the late Pleistocene era into the early Holocene era, roughly 125,000–9,500 years ago, primarily during the most recent Ice Age. A dire wolf ( Canis dirus) cranium and mandible are on display near the end of our Hall of Evolution. Dire Wolf skull in the Hall of Evolution at the MSU MuseumĪs the global mega-series Game of Thrones has reached its conclusion, visitors to the MSU Museum have been delighted to learn that dire wolves actually existed and that one ‘resides’ in the Museum itself.
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