What's the size difference between wolves and German Shepherds?Shockingly massive, to the eye. Not so massive on the scale. But in height and length a german shepherd is much closer to the size of a coyote, than it is to a wolf, with adult males reaching about 65 cm or 25 inches at the shoulder. Coyotes also reach 25 inches at the shoulder.
Wolves meanwhile can reach 35 inches at the shoulder.
10 inches difference at the shoulder is massive, 2 inches difference at the shoulder is significant and noticable. If you saw a wolf and a german shepherd next to one another, the difference in size would be staggering.
Some wolves and coyotes for comparison.
There are only a small handful of dogs as tall as wolves. Great danes, irish wolfhounds, and possibly kangals and bully kuttas. If you’ve ever seen a really tall wolfhound or great dane around other dogs you will have noticed how laughably shocking their height is, well a wolf is every bit as tall.
Interestingly though, they don’t weigh that much. Although there are some claims of 200 lbs, these are not verified, and the largest empty stomach wolf reliably recorded after decades and decades of research from populations of the largest wolf subspecies (lupus occidentalis), is around 145 lbs. After thousands of adult wolves measured, there have been about 8 that were over 140 lbs. Most are more like 100–110 lbs, while still being every bit of a huge adult male wolf (those in the above images are likely no larger than 115 lbs).
German shepherds can actually weigh 100–110 lbs themselves, more often 75–90 lbs, but even a huge 110 lbs german shepherd wouldn’t look anywhere near as big as a wolf.
For perspective the other dogs that share the wolves height and actually look as big as them, are much heavier. Most irish wolfhounds are 160–180 lbs and most great danes are 175 to 200 lbs (and kangals and central asian ovcharkas and bully kuttas are sometimes over 200 lbs).
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What's the size difference between Wolves and German Shepherds?----------------------
Comment responses-
(responding to person saying they have a 120 lbs GSD)
It's quite possible your gsd didn't have a weight problem, if it was very large, say 30 inches tall(which is unusual but I've seen it here and there) and very long it could weigh that much without being overweight.
The wolf is the odd duck, TBH, it's freakishly light. The wolf is a marathon runner by design, wolves cover around 30 miles per day patrolling the boundaries of their massive territories and checking on the various animals within them. This is part of the reason they're so tall, the longer stride makes it easier to cover more ground, but in addition to that they have extremely gracile bones and also very light red fibre/slow twitch muscles. Also a very light/thin hide compared to most dogs. Weight minimisation has been a huge factor in their adaptation.
See below the skeleton of a great Dane on the left compared to a wolf in the right, great danes are known for being lanky lean thin dogs but zero in on each individual bone and notice how much thicker it is than the wolf's corresponding bone -
This is a graph from a scientific study called “the dogs of vindolanda" where dog bones were excavated from an ancient Roman village in Britain, they also included bones from other archaeological digs and also modern dog bones, and wolf bones. You can see the wolf bones all grouped way over to the right(meaning they're very long) and bottom (meaning they're very thin) -
1 point difference on the index of femur stoutness is actually a lot, so this is a huge variation. If I'm not mistaken the difference between a leopard and a cheetah is at most about 2 points (wish I was on a computer to find the carnivoran limb robusticity study).
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(responding to someone saying wolves have lbs for lbs more muscle than dogs)
This is simply not true. It’s true that most individual pet dogs have more fat on them than wolves for obvious reasons, but actually wolves are better at putting on fat than most dogs (out of necessity as survivalists who must fast frequently) and also naturally have less muscle mass than many dogs (again out of necessity as marathon runners).
This inclination to always assume wolves are the biggest and baddest and strongest and coolest and meanest and etc etc is not grounded in any science.
I understand the logic behind the assumption - wolves have to run and fight and kill to survive, dogs are sitting on couches getting their bellies rubbed and eating soft food.
The complications with this are -
Wolves have a lot of different demands on their morphology and instincts/drives, some of which are at odds with one another, inhibiting them from fully “maxing out” in a category that may well be of great use for them, but sadly conflicts with a different demand that is also of great use.
For example it would be of great use for a wolf to be as fast as a greyhound and have the stamina of an iditarod husky, but having both is not possible. All the less so when it also needs to be powerful enough to tackle a large moose or musk ox. There are literally thousands of subtle little dilemmas like this in the wolf’s adaptations, and it is the living embodiment of a compromise. Not the “ultimate” anything except wild survivor.
Dogs are not designed to sit on the couch eating soft food and getting belly rubs. This is a relatively new luxury for all dogs barring the “toy breed” lineage. No they instead are designed for specialised roles, some of which were quite rugged, some downright ruthlessly brutal, but all allowed for them to have a relatively narrow focus in their adaptation, unlike the “spread thin” wolf as described above.
The fact a bulldog (not the new dog show contestant but the working dog), for example, didn’t have to worry about running 30 miles a day, allowed for it to have denser heavier bones to withstand high impact collisions with bull horns and hooves, and the ground after being sent sailing 20 feet into the air, and denser heavier muscles to put more explosive power into it’s struggles with large prey.
When a wolf is in a close-quarter battle with a bison or musk ox it would LOVE to have thicker bones and denser stronger muscle, but remember it needed to run 30 miles today, so it can’t afford to. Instead it has to be more careful and not throw itself into fights with perfectly fit bulls with full gusto, it’s not built for that contest.
It uses cunning and long term strategy, managing it’s domain of herbivore populations, monitoring and moving and weakening them as appropriate and finally harvesting them when the time is right. It stays away from the fit bulls in their prime. It detects their vigour and recognises it’s not their time.
For bulldogs the bull’s time is exactly whenever a human says so, and that’s what they’ve adapted to deal with, and crucially, very little else. So they could focus on that task with every fibre of their being. A big advantage.
So the wolf isn’t the ultimate dog in every category, it’s the ultimate versatile generalist, and it pushes that versatility to the limits. But make no mistake, a greyhound accelerates far more quickly, an iditarod husky can run even further, a bloodhound can track a colder scent trail longer and more accurately, a pointer can more keenly detect the exact location of a nearby quail by scent on the wind, a bulldog can more expertly subjugate a higher caliber of powerful beast and better withstand it’s retaliations, and etc and so forth through the ranks of dogdom.
I really think dogs get too disrespected based purely on the fact we are treating them like babies in the modern world, that’s not what they fundamentally are as animals.
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(responding to someone reiterating that dogs are all fat pets)
Why even speak of fat sedentary dogs? I see that as akin to focussing on fat zoo wolves. It’s just not even the real animal in it’s true form. True working dogs are not as rare as you think. Rare compared to pet dogs? Sure, rare compared to wolves? Nope.
And you might say “well the majority of dogs, so…”, but actually, wolves are about 50/50 (300 000 a piece, wild vs captive), and for tigers the vast majority of living tigers on earth are fat sedentary captives, when someone asks about comparing tigers with lions do you say “well most tigers are fat captive zoo animals so…”, no you just naturally talk about the tiger as it is supposed to be.
Dogs shouldn’t really be any different.
And the last interesting bit of information, do you know what kind of dog outnumbers pet dogs? There are 153 million pet dogs in the world, so what could outnumber that? Free roaming feral dogs. 747 million dogs live wild on the planet.
linkNot exactly what you’ve been lead to believe is it? Things are not always as they seem. The vast majority of dogs are wild animals. Wolves and tigers can’t say the same.
And again, of that 153 million pet dogs I can assure you more are out there doing hard work than the 300 000 wolves that live wild. I’d estimate there would for sure be millions of individual working dogs in the world. Might be as low as 5 million of the 153 million owned and cared for dogs, but definitely millions. Vs 300 000 wild wolves.
BTW all the breeds you mentioned, the majority of individuals that qualify as “purebred” examples of those breeds (yes even the exotic breeds), are pets. Real working dogs don’t necessarily fit into a breed (typically don’t), but they do fit into a distinct functional role and a body type and set of traits to go with it, of which there are probably 35 or so (vs the 400 + breeds).
These functional types represent what dogs are supposed to be, to me, the rest are just like zoo animals, not real representatives of their kind.
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(response to continued freak out)
Those feral dogs are mostly of the 30 lbs variety, but the bigger point is illustrating how characterising “dogs” in general as cushy pampered pets is inaccurate. A higher percentage of dogs are wild animals than wolves are. So who is the wuss?
With these facts in mind, insisting on continuing to focus on pet dogs and compare them with wild wolves is simply disingenuous, skewing the game with biased intent.
You LIKE to think of dogs as cutesy babies and wolves as noble icons of the wild and we’ll pry that narrative from your cold dead hands. You WANT to believe that. But it’s not the reality.
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(continued)
It also shouldn’t matter what percentage of dogs we sad humans have in captivity. They’re not supposed to be pets. Domesticated yes, but domesticated does not mean pet, it means they have a specialised role in the hominid social unit, just as a male lion has a specialised role in a lion pride. No difference. When you think of a dog, you should be thinking about specifically what kind of dog in accordance with what type of function, and you should be imagining it is a serious working dog.
Pariah? That’s a 30 lbs dog evolved to scavenge around human settlements. Yes this dog is wolf food if a wolf ever gets a hold of it. (but you better believe it is more cunning, evasive and industrious with it’s ability to slink around and survive with hostile people).
Spaniel? That’s a 30 lbs dog evolved to wind-scent birds and rabbits in thick brush and flush them out. Wolf food. (but you better believe it will detect animals hiding in the bushes that a wolf would be oblivious too).
Collie? Terrier? Pointer? Retriever? Scenthound? Yes all wolf food.
What about dogs that are designed to kick ass at a high level? Boarhound for example? 90–130 lbs dog (as big or bigger than a wolf) evolved to pursue and fight wild boar, not target the old, sick, young or injured wild boar, but the largest prime adult wild boar, and fully engage in a face to face fight by seizing them on the face. Explosive fast twitch muscles strapped around it’s body giving it a far superior power to weight ratio, denser more durable robust bones, a deeper mandible and wider clondyle of the jaw to sustain greater torque from struggling prey, a stronger neck, more pronounced cheek muscles, thicker more durable hide, a higher pain tolerance and enhanced bravery and boldness. No conflicting limitations to it’s focused prowess for combat.
Why would that be wolf food?
In every single category dogs demonstrably range from far below wolf to above wolf. Why would “fighting” be the lone exception? Just because you think wolves are cool and also think fighting defines coolness? How convenient…
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(response to "not all wolves are huge")
Very true and my mistake if I have indicated otherwise. Even in North America and russia the grey wolf species averages around 80 lbs, in the middle east, Mediterranean and south Asia they average 55 lbs. Individuals as small as small coyotes have even been recorded (I think 12 kg or 25 lbs was the smallest wild grey wolf on record).
Generally wolves are subject to “Bergmann's rule” meaning they, for the most part, get larger as they get closer to the north pole, but the biggest are in Alaska, western Canada and Yellowstone national park, a subspecies sometimes called “the Mackenzie valley wolf" or canis lupus Occidentalis. And second are canis lupus lupus or the Eurasian Wolf, which specifically refers to a Russian and eastern European subspecies of grey wolf that also gets very large (though suffers from some very dubious claims). Even individuals from these specific subspecies don't often get over 55 kgs or 120 lbs.
What's true for all wolves though is they are very tall relative to their weight. As are coyotes, in truth.
Arabian and Indian wolves even at 45–55 lbs are still around 26-28 inches tall which is really quite tall. That would be a big dog that probably weighs 75–100+ lbs depending on breed. Even the English greyhound, notoriously thin, also has many weight cutting adaptations like extremely thin skin and light thin bones, even they weigh 60–75 lbs at around 28 inches tall and it's because they actually have heavier denser muscle than wolves and more of it.
The main take away is understanding that looking up weights for wolves and weights for dogs and thinking you can get a mental image comparison going is a big mistake. Their weights are really deceptive insofar as how big they will look for their weight. All wolves look much bigger than their weight would indicate.
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(Response to "what explains this lack of density in wolves?")
Extreme adaptation for covering extremely long distances. Being able to do that as efficiently as possible has been a key driving factor in their evolution. Physiologically it's explained by light gracile bones, light thin skin and light “red fibre" muscle, and not all that much of it.
It's more than just “good stamina for a long distance chase". Wolves need to be understood as more rancher than hunter. Most of the distance they travel is briskly walked as they patrol their territory and check on “their" herds. They are constantly analysing and assessing every individual animal that takes up residence in their territory. They don't just stumble onto an animal and then hunt it, no, they know every individual animal in their territory intimately and know where it will probably be at any given time on any given day. They know where it sleeps, they know where it eats, they know its morning routine, they know how it's stools have been for the last few months and know it's internal health, they know it's skin health from the particles it leaves where beds down and they know it's dental health from the saliva it leaves on the grass it chewed off down by the southern valley creek or whatever.
Sometimes they'll visit a herd just to run it and see how they're all moving, no intention of hunting them, just checking on their gaits and making a mental note of any limps, or maybe just intentionally moving the herd a few kms west because they were getting a bit too close to a neighbouring territory to the east. They juggle all this daily while also “harvesting” appropiate individuals for meat when it's their time. All in all its about 30 miles a day, on average, sometimes a lot more.
Most dogs obviously don't need to do anything like that, even long distance running dogs like scenthounds might track a scent trail for miles but not THAT far, that would be ridiculous. So as a result most dogs can afford to have denser bones and muscle and thicker skin.
With exceptions. Certain herding dogs can actually be expected to cover similar ground to a wolf in a day, kelpies and collies mustering sheep or cattle in the outback have been GPS tracked to cover 50 miles in a day, then you have Alaskan huskies (not to be confused with Siberian huskies, actually a performance bred mongrel) who can cover 100 miles in a day during the iditarod sled pulling race. But these also are very lightly built and small to make it easier, and fed well and bred to have huge cardio systems.
Wolves have to be big and mean enough to kill a musk ox AND able to cover these crazy distances every day. So that's a dilemma in their design which they answered with extremely light bodies, very very long legs and a rigid carriage for an energy efficient gait, and then have big strong skulls and big teeth and strong necks to kill, but also are very selective with what they decide to kill and when. A musk ox will be worked on and weakened in skirmishes over weeks or even months before it is “harvested" (that's after years of analysis and assessment and health checking), and healthy musk oxes don't really have to worry about wolves. So a wolf doesn't need a lot of brute power to out muscle and subjugate powerful vibrant beasts.
There are dogs specialised for just that and they're the bulldog family, many of which are “retired" pets now but historically, and still scattered here and there, were/are expected to launch like a torpedo straight into the fittest prime bull or boar and withstand their violent retaliations and subdue them, and as a result these dogs have extremely dense thick bones and dense white fibre muscles and thick durable hide and etc. They can afford to have all that because they don't need to cover long distances. They just have one job to do.
So dog adaptations are all about sacrifices, strengths and corresponding weaknesses that allow for the strengths, and the wolf is no exception. It's has had to make some sacrifices to be capable of efficiently covering long distances. Huge intelligence has helped it figure out a balance where everything can work.
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