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 their tracks. In the old days, there were fairy-tales and folklores that gave firm descriptions that they killed people or say, "The big, bad wolf is out to get you". There are even horror movies that depict the violence fabricated in such creatures like the wolf. In folklore, we have many popular expressions such as "Cry Wolf", A Wolf Pack, and the ever popular saying "A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing", which describes a person who acts friendly, but has evil intentions. These are just a few of the expressions and sayings that contribute to the bad reputation of the wolf. The wolf has been described as evil, a monster, stealer of children, killer of men, stealthily stalking his victims in the night with supernatural powers and malevolent appetites. Many of the perceptions of wolves stem from how the wolf is represented in storiesÐ'--Folklore, fiction, myths, and legends. Many of the prevailing stories depict wolves in a negative way, such as the wolf has the innate ability to disguise himself as little old ladies in order to eat innocent little girls in red capes, as in Little Red Riding Hood. He has the physical power to destroy two-story houses with only a huff and a puff, as in The Three Little Pigs. These are the kinds of fairy-tales handed down from generation to generation which perpetuate the unfounded nonsense that eventually caused the wolf to be nearly extinct. The word "wolf"