MAIKAN
- Gender: Male
- Birthdate: 04.05.2016
- Origin: Russia
- Related to: Taima, Tekoa
- Meaning of his name (Native American): wolf of the woods
... appearance
Maikan has become the largest and most powerful of our three "Russians". According to his nickname, he is wiry and muscular. This becomes particularly apparent during summer, when the fur is less fluffy. In contrast to most other wolves at the Wolf Science Center, Maikan has a relatively high proportion of brown coloring in the coat
... character
Maikan is the pack leader in his little, two-member bachelor pack. Most of the time, he is pretty confident and does not need to show who is the boss. However, if Etu is too pushy and annoying, Maikan rebukes him in a quite noisy way.
In daily life, Maikan has two faces. When he is training with his hand raisers, he acts similar to a Malinois (Belgian Shepherd). He is highly motivated and tries to obey any orders in no time and without any mistakes. It is hardly surprising that our animal trainers sometimes feel like police officers on duty while working together with Maikan. As a consequence of his over-motivation, Maikan tends to roughly grab the food out of the trainers´ hands. That is the reason why we only train him with dog dry food. With any better rewards, for example meat, Maikan would probably be so greedy that he would simply forget his good manners towards our hands.
However, with unfamiliar objects, Maikan´s second face comes to light. The shy wolf fears anything he does not know. When he walks through the park and for example realizes that a trash bin was moved to a new position, Maikan jumps backwards and it needs ages and tons of food to convince him to pass the spooky object. But not only during walks, also during Scientific tests an enormous amount of patience and time is needed to help Maikan to overcome his fear of apparatuses, cameras, or other test equipment. Especially movable objects scare our neophobic wolf (neophobia is the fear of anything new). Just to tell another anecdote from daily life: Maikan was the first wolf in the history of the Wolf Science Center who was afraid of a pumpkin. It took a very, very long time until he could approach this orange monstrosity.
... in puppy age
Maikan was the bravest of the three little "Russians" and has certainly adapted the fastest to his new home. From a very early age he wanted to be the boss and was not always very gentle with his pack members. Until one day they had enough and bullied him quite badly. From that day on, he was suddenly "saintly". Well not quite ... He was still bursting with energy and "amusing" ideas.
If something did not suit him, he would clearly state it. With increasing age, he luckily became more balanced and calm, because as a puppy he was a real rascal. For example, he always helped to destroy the mattresses. On the other hand, he could be very clingy and desperately wanted to sleep in bodily contact with us humans.