Want to see endangered red wolf puppies? You’ll soon have a chance in Durham.
Visitors to Durham’s Museum of Life and Science will be able to glimpse the Triangle’s rarest puppies starting in late May.
Sunday, a female red wolf gave birth to a litter of seven pups — four males and three females. All seven are in good health, museum officials said in a Wednesday press release.
Captive breeding is critical to the survival of red wolves, an endangered species. About 270 wolves live in captivity and about 20 wolves live in the wild, on the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in and around Hyde County.
“As we face challenges in the wild population, institutions within Red Wolf SAFE, like ours, hold a significant responsibility. Each pup born is crucial for the species’ survival and offers hope for the broader Red Wolf population,” Sherry Samuels, the Museum of Life and Science’s senior director of animal care, said in the release.
This week’s litter is the first to be born at the museum since 2019, and the sixth ever born there. Previous litters arrived in 1993, 2002, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
The breeding pair included Adeyha, a female wolf who was born in 2014 at the New Zoo in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Officials moved Adeyha to Durham in October 2023 to pair with Oak, a male wolf who has been at the facility since 2022. Oak was born in 2019 at the N.C. State University College of Veterinary Medicine.
The puppies are likely to remain at the Museum of Life and Science until they reach breeding age, typically about two and a half years, Ro Rode, a museum spokeswoman, said in an interview.
At that point, the American Zoo and Aquarium’s American Red Wolf Saving Animals From Extinction committee will likely split the wolves up among the 41 partner facilities with the hopes of producing more puppies and making the species as genetically diverse as possible. That’s particularly important with red wolves because all of the wolves now alive can be traced to 14 wolves that were captured in the early 1970s.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has considered red wolves extinct in the wild since 1980.
Previously, red wolves born at the Museum of Life and Science have been sent to the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York, and the Mill Mountain Zoo in Roanoke, Virginia. After the 2019 birth in Durham, the entire pack of parents and six puppies was moved to Mill Mountain, with at least some remaining at the Roanoke facility.
For now, the puppies and their parents are under regular monitoring for their health. The public will be able to see them for the first time starting in late May, though museum officials cautioned the wolves are a little skittish around crowds and loud noises.
“This summer promises to be filled with excitement as we watch this family grow. Patience and quiet observation will be key when observing our new pups,” Samuels said in the release.
Here’s a timeline of milestones in the attempted recovery of the red wolf in NC
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