Trail Cam Captures the Candid Moment When a Wolf Family Strikes a Majestic Pose

It's hard enough for a skilled photographer to convince an animal to strike a pose, so it doing so on its own is incredible luck. And if it weren't for a trail cam at the non-profit Wolf Conservation Center (WCC) in South Salem, New York, we might have never seen this striking image. In fall 2019, a Mexican gray wolf family gathered for a storybook photo as a group of six lined up on large logs in a majestic “V” formation. Most of the creatures are looking at the camera as if they are following the directions of a photographer. But amazingly, this shot is completely candid with no human intervention.

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When Maggie Howell, executive director of the WCC, looks at the family photo, she sees it as a symbol of the species clawing its way back from extinction. “The Mexican gray wolf or ‘lobo’ is the most genetically distinct lineage of wolves in the Western Hemisphere, and one of the most endangered mammals in North America,” Howell explains to My Modern Met. “By the mid-1980s, hunting, trapping, and poisoning caused the extinction of lobos in the wild, with only a handful remaining in captivity.” Today, 196 Mexican gray wolves remain in the wild in the U.S.