Wolf - hand puppet for babies by Sterntaler

There is no Little Red Riding Hood without the wolf. The Sterntaler wolf hand puppet is the natural casting for that tale and for ‘The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids’. It comes in grey plush, with a pale muzzle and white fabric teeth in the open mouth. With its movable mouth, the wolf can swallow the grandmother whole.

The grey wolf (Canis lupus) is the largest living predator in the dog family and the ancestor of every domestic dog. Head and body measure roughly 1 to 1.6 metres, and shoulder height runs from 66 to 91 centimetres. Weights usually fall between 13 and 78 kilograms, and animals above 60 kilograms are rare. Wolves live in packs that are simply families: a breeding pair and their offspring from the past few years. Their main prey is medium-sized to large hoofed animals, in northern Europe mainly moose, reindeer and other deer. Long-term studies in Minnesota recorded a maximum age of ten to 13 years in the wild. Newborn cubs weigh 300 to 500 grams and arrive blind and deaf.

Did you know that the howling of a wolf pack carries up to eleven kilometres through forest and as far as 16 kilometres across open tundra? Wolves use it to stay in touch over long distances, for instance to gather the pack again after a hunt. The idea that wolves howl at the full moon is pure folklore – they howl at any hour of the night, and by day too.