Howling

Howling is a vocal form of animal communication seen in most canines, particularly wolves, coyotes, foxes, and dogs, as well as cats and some species of monkeys.

Howling is generally used by animals that engage in this behavior to signal their positions to one another, to call the pack to assemble, or to note their territory.

[10][11] Wolves howl to assemble the pack usually before and after hunts, to pass on an alarm particularly at a den site, to locate each other during a storm, while crossing unfamiliar territory, and to communicate across great distances.

[18] Howls used for calling pack mates to a kill are long, smooth sounds similar to the beginning of the cry of a great horned owl.

The group yip howl is emitted when two or more pack members reunite and may be the final act of a complex greeting ceremony.

At the age of about one month, fox kits can emit a high-pitched howl as an explosive call intended to be threatening to intruders or other cubs.

Human accounts of wolf behavior are typified by depictions of howling, and this has been incorporated into fictional and mythical representations, such as the werewolf.

Virgil, in his poetic work Eclogues, wrote about a man called Moeris, who used herbs and poisons picked in his native Pontus to turn himself into a wolf.

[30] An examination of Virgil's work notes that "[t]he howling of wolves is portentous; it is cited among the baleful omens at the assassination of Julius Caesar and the advent of renewed civil strife".

[31] In prose, the Satyricon, written circa AD 60 by Gaius Petronius Arbiter, one of the characters, Niceros, tells a story at a banquet about a friend who turned into a wolf (chs.