Why the Wolf Has a Bad Reputation
People in today's society have learned to love the wolf and see it as a gentle and beautiful creature. It has taken along time for the wolf to get the respect it deserves. Throughout history, the wolf has gotten a very bad reputation. It started in fiction where the wolf was represented as an evil, conniving carnivore that would prey on livestock, or would become infested with rabies and attack people. But that's just the start of it; we can blame werewolves, folklore and fairy-tales, or even the wolf's behavior and characteristics for how we imagine them to really be. Wolves have more of a reputation due to folklore and even get their bad name more so from the werewolf. But there are times when the wolf's features have that haunting effect on us. From art posters to art in literature, we don't always show the wolf's good side. When the wolf is portrayed as something evil, all we see are big, yellow, glow-in-the-dark eyes that seem to be hypnotic if we look at them long enough and a snarling mouth baring these long, ferocious fangs. The wolf's fangs can be quite intimidating for they can reach two and a quarter inches in length; they are strong, sharp, and slightly curved. We not only see the wolf, we hear the wolf also. A wolf howling at the moon is often locked into our imaginations. A wolf howls and most people listen with fear, some even grab their guns. This is what we call "Fear of the Unknown". If the weather conditions are right, a wolf's howl can be heard up to ten miles away, and can last from one half a second to about eleven seconds. An ancient misconception of the wolf's howl is that, although the howling wolves were far away, people firmly believed the wolves were howling at their particular door. This is where the popular phrase, "Let's keep the wolf from the door," came about. In fairy-tales and folklore, the wolf is a favorite character. It is a known fact that people fear wolves and that by the site of one, they freeze in