A rural official in Japan shows off a mechanical Monster Wolf, invented to frighten away wildlife.
Credit: © Toru Yamanaka, Getty Images

The Japanese motion picture Gojira (1954) introduced one of the most recognizable monsters in popular culture, often called by its American name, Godzilla. In the film, the giant, dinosaurlike monster goes on a destructive rampage through Tokyo. Now, Japan has a new monster—but, unlike Godzilla, this monster protects the country’s people.

This fall, officials in the city of Takikawa—on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido—installed two mechanical wolves near a residential neighborhood in which bears had injured or killed people in recent months. Wild bears in search of food had been entering areas on the edge of Takikawa, walking through yards and rummaging through trash. Rural areas often serve as barriers between the wilderness and urban areas. But, as rural populations shrink, so too does the barrier between wilderness and populated areas.

Each Monster Wolf, as the machines are called, looks a lot like a normal wolf, if you ignore the metal legs and flashing red eyes. A Monster Wolf is 4 feet (1.2 meters) long and just under 3 feet (0.9 meter) tall. Along with its fake fur and bared fangs, the Monster Wolf shares perhaps the wolf’s most distinctive feature, an eerie howl. The Monster Wolf’s head has motion detectors that are triggered when intruders approach. The wolf then produces howling, screeching sounds. Other frightening noises the robot can imitate include a dog’s bark, a hunter’s voice, and gunshots.

The mechanical wolves in Takikawa are not the country’s first. Since the Monster Wolf was created in 2016, more than 70 of them have been installed in communities across Japan. The creations have previously scared off such animals as deer and monkeys, which have been filmed leaping away from the mechanical nightmares. Since the wolves showed up in Takikawa, there have been no bear sightings.

January 6, 2020

The month of January marks the beginning of every new year on the Gregorian calendar. In the Northern Hemisphere, January is the first full month of winter, and it is typically one of the coldest months of the year. (In the Southern Hemisphere, January is known for warm temperatures during the first full month of summer.) Because of its harsh weather, January in the Northern Hemisphere has long been a time of hard outdoor living for people and animals. In North America, some Native Americans referred to the time of year as “wolf moon” because hungry wolves could be heard prowling near their villages. Similarly, the Anglo-Saxons of Great Britain called the first weeks of winter Wulf-monath (Wolfmonth) because wolves came into villages in search of food.

The month of January is associated with harsh outdoor living–and wolves–in the Northern Hemisphere. Native Americans and Anglo-Saxons both named the time of year for the hungry wolves they encountered. Credit: © Shutterstock

Cold and wolf-infested January is named for Janus, the Roman god of beginnings. According to Roman legend, the ruler Numa Pompilius added January and February to the end of the 10-month Roman calendar in about 700 B.C. He gave the month 30 days. Later, the Romans made January the first month of the year. In 46 B.C., the Roman statesman Julius Caesar added a day to January, making it 31 days long.

January may be dreary, but the month’s holidays can brighten the mood.  January 1 is celebrated as New Year’s Day in most countries. Most Christian churches celebrate Epiphany on January 6, the 12th day after Christmas. The holiday commemorates the arrival of the wise men from the East bearing gifts for the infant Jesus. In Latin America, this day is celebrated as Día de los Reyes Magos (Three Kings Day). Children receive gifts on this day, supposedly from the wise men—the magi, or magos. In Sweden, St. Canute’s Day (also spelled Cnut or Knut), is celebrated on January 13. This holiday marks the end of the Christmas season. In Norway, a similar holiday is called Tyvendedagen (Twentieth Day), because it falls on the twentieth day after Christmas. Many Hindus celebrate a harvest festival called Makara Sankranti or Pongal in mid-January. During this holiday, many people bathe in the sacred Ganges River. They give alms (charity), eat newly harvested rice, and eat sweets to symbolize the wish for sweet words throughout the year. In the United States, the third Monday of January is a federal holiday in honor of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday falls on January 15. In Australia, people celebrate Australia Day on January 26.  The holiday commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet, the ships that brought the first immigrants to Australia in 1788.

June 1, 2015

Genetic clues from a 35,000-year-old fossil provide evidence that the dog became our best friend thousands of years earlier than most archaeologists had previously thought. Until recently, scientists believed that dogs—as we know them today—and people had lived with each other for at least 14,000 years. That date made the dog the oldest known domesticated animal. However, this latest research pushes that date back even further. The findings suggest that dogs may have been first domesticated as long as 40,000 years ago.

Scientists know that modern domestic dogs are descended from wolves. Earlier genetic studies of wolves and ancient and modern dogs placed the dog’s domestication in Europe, China, or the Middle East. The oldest archaeological sites where human and dog remains occur together are dated from 11,000 to 12,000 years old. However, archaeologists now suspect that dogs may have been domesticated much earlier.

Geneticist Pontus Skoglund of the Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, analyzed DNA obtained from the fossilized rib of a Siberian wolf discovered in 2010. The fossil was part of a collection recovered by a joint Swedish and Russian team on the Taymyr Peninsula in Russian Siberia in 2010. The frozen permafrost of this region preserves the remains of long-extinct prehistoric animals in such good condition that scientists can extract DNA from the fossilized bones.

Skoglund’s team compared the DNA they obtained from the 35,000-year-old rib bone of an ancient wolf, labeled Taimyr 1, to DNA sequences from ancient and living wolves and dogs. They found that the Taimyr 1 wolf belonged to a lineage that diverged from the ancestors of dogs and existing wolves at roughly the same time that dog and wolf lineages split from each other. From this, they used various techniques to calculate when the earliest dogs split from the ancestors of modern wolves. The results suggests that the two groups split some time between about 40,000 and 27,000 years ago.

Some dogs, including huskies, preserve DNA from a line of wolves that lived 35,000 years ago in the area that is now Siberia. (copyright melis/ShutterStock)

Some dogs today, including Siberian huskies and Greenland sled dogs, still preserve some DNA inherited from the wolf lineage that included Taimyr 1. The researchers involved believe that the first domestic dogs might have been hunting companions for people who settled Europe and Asia during the last Ice Age.

Other World Book articles:

• DNA

• Genetics

• Prehistoric people