Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-37829055-20181217033504

As much as I love Frozen, there is one thing about it that just bothers me, and that is its portrayal of wolves. In both Frozen and Olaf's Frozen Adventure, European gray wolves (Canis lupus lupus) are shown as vicious beasts that aggressively hunt down the protagonists. Simply put, real wolves do not act like this.

For the most part, only rabid wolves would chase a horse-drawn (or in this case, a reindeer-drawn) sleigh full of people like the ones in the first movie do. Wolves are scared of humans and wolf attacks on humans are rare; many attacks are typically (but not always) the result of either defensive reasons, rabies, or habituation - not normal circumstances. It should be mentioned that some historically recorded "wolf attacks" (including the infamous Beast of Gevaudan attacks) have been speculated or proven to be the work of not wolves but of wolfdogs, hybrids that have the power of the wolf and the fearlessness of the domestic dog (Canis familiaris). Now then, let me make this clear: I am NOT saying that wolves are cuddly, harmless puppies that would never ever dream of attacking a human; that is just nonsense. Wolves are wild, predatory animals. They can pose a threat to humans and there have been attacks on humans - some fatal - by healthy wild wolves (especially in Eurasia, but also in North America). Some of these attacks have been predatory in nature. The point I'm trying to make here is that wolves are no more dangerous than any other wild animal and that the media should stop depicting them as if they are.

And seriously, wolves hunting down a snowman like they do in the holiday short? Wolves won't waste precious energy hunting a non-nutritious snowman! They would've smelled that Olaf is snow & not prey! Defense better explains their attack, but the characters in the film clearly say that they were hungry. Maybe they just wanted Olaf's fruitcake, as he suspected?

In Norway (the setting of Frozen), European gray wolves are critically endangered, yet the government is constantly trying to cull the population because it basically believes the anti-wolf myths. Wolves already have enough of a bad image, they already have enough enemies against their very existence, and they do not need more of either as the result of Frozen. I will not forget the one time I was in line at a horse show and a little girl was looking at my pins on my backpack; she liked the Frozen ones, but when she saw the "save the wolves" ones I overheard her say to her mother that she hated wolves. Yes, you read that corrrectly: hated. That someone so young has already harbored a hatred for an animal is so sad, and unfortunately I have no doubt that Frozen is partly to blame for this.

So what do you think: is Frozen demonizing wolves too much? I believe it is, and I really hope that Frozen 2 does not have a wolf attack scene. 