Kira Cassidy is a researcher at the Yellowstone Wolf Project.
Her focus is on the social lives of wolves.
In recent years, she's observed the crucial role an alpha female plays in the pack.
We all bring our own kind of lens to our work. and I think, uh, in the early years, because it was a pretty male-dominated field in carnivore biology, they were pretty focused on what the male was doing.
And then the more we've been able to watch wolves, especially in Yellowstone, where they're so visible, the more we're looking a bit more closely at the role of the females.
She's leading a lot of what the pack does, a lot of the travel, deciding on a lot of the hunts.
She's picking the den sites, so that's kind of the center of activity that the pack will spend sometimes four or five months raising their pups.
Kira's work in Yellowstone began in 2007, just around the same time an astonishing female wolf appeared in Lamar Valley.
No one had seen anyone like her before.
The '06 female was a larger-than-life character.
