Pat Goodmann, Erich Klinghammer, Eckhard H. Hess Institute of Ethology, North American Wildlife Park Foundation/Wolf Park, 4004 E 800 N, Battle Ground, IN 47920, USA

Whether we deal directly with the public or primarily with members of the scientific community, we are all engaged in teaching people about wolves. Past experience indicates that people need to know about wolves to want to conserve them. In our experience at Wolf Park, one of the most appealing activities for visitors is learning even a little bit about recognizing and interpreting wolf behavior. A wolf-to-human dictionary means that beginning students, wildlife interpreters, and experienced researchers, and those with occasion to handle and interact with wolves, have a common language to talk about three important means of wolf communication: body language, facial expressions, and vocalizations. This "dictionary," or ethogram should not only catalog ephemeral, rapidly changing signals such as ear and tail positions, facial expression, direction and intensity of gaze, it should also describe the more complex behaviors, which may take hours or days to run to completion.

More complex behaviors are built out of simple building blocks. Motor patterns may vary in speed, amplitude and vigor. Some may be performed from different basic postures. Sometimes, unless the observer has seen a great deal of wolf behavior, he or she may fail to identify the same behavior as it varies in these attributes. An ethogram which is subject to revision and expansion, as supported by accumulating observations, is a proper place to describe the variation within a particular expressive behavior as well as cataloging the many kinds of expressive behaviors.

The Wolf Park Wolf Ethogram (Ethology Series #3) undergoes periodic revision; sometimes we see something that is new or see a familiar behavior used in a new way. Behaviors are cross referenced, directing readers to related behaviors and contexts in which we have observed them. Our goal is to give us an accurate way to discuss and, we hope, to understand the richness and subtlety of expressive behavior in Canis lupus.