It's high time we gave the myth of the "Big Bad Wolf" a rest!

Wolves have been popularly depicted as cruel and bloodthirsty for millennia. It's time we retired the fearsome fable reputation, for science has something different to tell us. Wolves are not solitary plunderers, but form loyal couples that run in tight-knit packs, practicing sustainable hunting and raising their young as a community. Wolves are altruistic, and fiercely defensive of their pack. In this essay as impassioned as it is well-researched, ethologist Pierre Jouventin reminds readers that in Stone Age humans and this ancestor of the modern dog formed an alliance that changed our fate forever.