Direwolf

Direwolves
Information
Type	Mammal
Status	Majority north of the Wall Minority south of the Wall Believed extinct south of the Wall (formerly)
Diet	Carnivore
Habitat	Forests Mountains
Range	Beyond the Wall The North The Riverlands

"It's a direwolf...tough old beast."

―Ned Stark

Direwolves are an unusually large and intelligent species of wolves. A grey direwolf on a white field is the sigil of House Stark.

Range

Direwolves are held to be near-mythical in most of the south of Westeros. Inhabitants of the North acknowledge that they are a real animal, but they are very rarely encountered there. There are some rumors of them living in the Wolfswood near Winterfell, but these are unconfirmed. There may have been larger direwolf populations in the North in past millennia, but centuries of human encroachment on their territory have pushed their range back to the furthest north.

There have been confirmed sightings north of the Wall by the Night's Watch who guard it. The wildlings who live beyond the Wall claim that direwolves can be found in greater numbers in the Haunted Forest to the north of the Wall. By the reign of King Robert Baratheon, no direwolf had been sighted south of the Wall - even in the Stark lands of the North - in over 200 years.

Eddard Stark and his sons Robb and Bran, his "bastard" son Jon Snow and his ward Theon Greyjoy find a dead female direwolf; it died after giving birth, and her five pups huddle by the corpse for warmth. Eddard advocates killing the pups out of mercy, but Jon convinces his "father" that this is an omen: the direwolf is the symbol of House Stark, and Eddard has five trueborn children. Eddard agrees that his children can have the pups, but only if they raise them themselves with no help from the servants. Just as the party leaves, Jon finds a sixth pup, an albino runt of the litter. Theon mockingly points out that this one belongs to Jon.

When Eddard travels south to King's Landing to serve as Hand of the King, he brings his daughters Sansa and Arya along with their pet direwolves, Lady and Nymeria. These are the first direwolves to be seen so far south in hundreds of years. After Nymeria attacks Prince Joffrey, Arya drives her away to escape execution for attacking Joffrey; in her place, Lady is killed by Eddard at Robert's command. Nymeria has been traveling the Riverlands ever since where she leads a pack of gray wolves.

The other direwolves remain with their masters until they are killed, with the exception of Jon's direwolf Ghost, who is still alive and by Jon's side.

Biology

A year-old juvenile direwolf, already taller at its shoulder than a man's waist.

An adult direwolf is as large as a small horse, and can rip a man's arm from its socket. Even a juvenile direwolf is quite capable of killing a man by ripping out his throat. Physically, they are not simply larger versions of wolves, but have slightly different proportions than their smaller cousins; their heads are larger with a leaner, more pronounced muzzle, their legs are longer in proportion to their body, and they have proportionately larger teeth that are often used to crush bones. They are typically gray to almost black, sometimes with a lighter underbody or reddish tints. Some are light gray and white or reddish tan or mixed red and gray. A few are true albinoes. They mostly have golden to green eyes with some having hazel, amber or albino red irises.

Behavior

Direwolves are loyal to their masters and will attack anyone who threatens them. Arya's direwolf Nymeria attacked Joffrey after he threatened her with a sword, while Bran's Summer killed a would-be assassin in Bran's bedroom. They will also come to the aid of those they know are loyal to their masters, since Ghost defended Samwell Tarly and Gilly, both friends of Jon, from Night's Watch bullies, and later prepared to fight alongside Davos Seaworth, Eddison Tollett and a handful of Jon's loyal brothers against the Night's Watch mutineers who betrayed and murdered Jon not long before.

At the Battle of Oxcross during the War of the Five Kings, Robb's direwolf Grey Wind plays a vital part in Robb's victory, killing several Lannister sentries and panicking their horses. During the Battle of Castle Black, Ghost killed numerous wildlings, among them at least one Thenn.

The Stark direwolves

Template:DirewolvesFamilyTreeThe six Stark children adopted six orphaned direwolf cubs found in the Wolfswood. They are as follows:

Alive

• Ghost, adopted by Jon. One of the only surviving direwolves. An albino with red eyes and the runt of the litter. Ghost followed Jon during his service with the Night's Watch at the Wall and beyond. Fought at Winterfell against the Army of the Dead during the Battle of Winterfell. Lost its ear and received a couple scars in the latter war. Currently travelling north of Castle Black with Jon and Tormund.
• Nymeria, adopted by Arya. One of the only surviving direwolves. Fearing for Nymeria's life, Arya chased her away after she attacked Joffrey to defend her owner. She is now leading a wolf pack in the Riverlands, being the first direwolf seen that far south (other than Grey Wind) in many centuries.

Deceased

• Lady: adopted by Sansa Stark. Put down by Eddard in place of Nymeria for biting Joffrey, under the order of Robert, at Cersei Lannister's urging. Lady is the first direwolf of her litter to have been killed.
• Grey Wind, adopted by Robb. Accompanied the main Stark army as it marched south, used by King Robb as a ferocious war dog. Killed at the Twins by Frey men with crossbows during the Red Wedding, after which both he and Robb were decapitated and his head sewn onto Robb's corpse. Grey Wind is the second of his litter to have been killed.
• Shaggydog, adopted by Rickon. Easily distinguishable by black fur. Likewise fled Winterfell with Rickon. After separating from Bran's group, Rickon, Osha, and Shaggydog fled to the Last Hearth to seek refuge with the Umbers. Shaggydog was later killed by the Umbers when they betrayed Rickon to Ramsay Bolton; Ramsay apparently skinned him to use his fur as a carpet, and his head presented to Jon and Sansa prior to the Battle of the Bastards. Shaggydog is the third of his litter to have been killed.
• Summer, adopted by Bran. Fled Winterfell with Bran following the castle's Sack of Winterfell. Accompanied Bran and his companions Beyond the Wall to the cave of the Three-Eyed Raven, where he was later mauled to death by wights, buying time for Bran to escape. Summer is the fourth of his litter to have been killed.

Behind the scenes

Nymeria, portrayed by an adult dog in Season 1.

Ghost, played by a real wolf in Season 2, digitally resized to look even bigger

• In Season 1, the production team used adult dogs to stand in for the juvenile direwolf puppies. Northern Inuit (Utonagan) Dogs from Mahlek Kennels were used. In interviews they have stated that this was done to allow the audience to grow attached to them, which would have been more difficult had the dogs been created by special effects. As the direwolves continue to grow, however, more special effects are going to be used.
• When Season 1 wrapped up, the dogs used as direwolves were offered to the young actors who played their owners in the show. Sophie Turner (Sansa) took the dog who played Lady. Isaac Hempstead-Wright (Bran) wanted to take Summer, but his family already had two dogs at home.
• In Season 2, real wolves were used to portray the adolescent direwolves. Using a variety of camera tricks and techniques, the shots were augmented to make the wolves appear larger, and then composited with the background and actors for the final shots. The result is that in Season 2 the direwolves are played by real-life wolves that have been super-sized in post-production.
• In Season 5, Ghost is the only direwolf that appears. Since he is supposed to be older and larger, the production team wanted to use a full-sized trained wolf named Quigley to portray him (in "The Wars To Come" and "The Gift"). Quigley's trainer Andrew Simpson owns about 30 wolves and is based in Calgary, Canada. The production team had been reaching out to him since Season 1, but he was busy training wolves for other film projects. In earlier seasons, they had hoped to have one of his wolves transported to Northern Ireland, but by Season 5 they decided it would be easier to simply fly out to Canada to film the scenes they needed with the wolf in a Calgary studio.
• It wasn't possible to translate "dire wolf" into German, so the species was named "Schattenwolf" in the German dub, meaning "shadow wolves" . This name was possibly chosen because there's also an animal species in Westeros called Shadowcats.

In real-life

The name dire wolf (Latin:  Canis dirus ) is given to an actual species of Pleistocene megafauna that once existed on real-life Earth, like the mammoth and sabertooth cat. Dire wolves inhabited the Americas, from 1.8 million years ago to about 10,000 years ago.

Note that the name of the real-life animal is spelled as two words, "dire wolf", but that the name in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels is consistently spelled as one word, "direwolf".

The large Pleistocene mammals went extinct when the last ice age ended, roughly 10,000 years ago. Large herbivores such as mammoths died out due to climate change (and possibly hunting by prehistoric humans), and carnivores such as dire wolves died when their food sources disappeared. Dire wolves and mammoths were adapted to the ice age climate, their size maximizing heat retention and strength but at the cost of speed. In the warmer climate following the ice age, smaller but faster animals thrived that didn't need to make these tradeoffs for cold weather. Not only did dire wolves' old large prey such as mammoths die out, but they were being out-competed by smaller, faster, and smarter grey wolves. Dires and Greys are more like cousins than grandpa / grandson; Grey wolves are not descendant from the dire wolf, but both share a common ancestral species that they split from: big-game specialists dire wolves, and more generalistic grey wolves. Dire wolves, however, were not the largest wolves. Currently, extant subspecies the Yukon wolf (Canis lupus pambasileus) and the Northwestern wolf (Canis lupus occidentals) were approximately the same size as the dire wolf.

Gallery

Summer as a pup in "Winter Is Coming".

Summer defends a comatose Bran in "The Kingsroad".

Sansa Stark and Lady on the Kingsroad.

Summer looking over Bran in "What Is Dead May Never Die".

Summer and Shaggydog accompany Bran Stark in his escape from Winterfell, in "A Man Without Honor".

Summer and Shaggydog escaping the sack of Winterfell in "Valar Morghulis".

Grey Wind face to face with the captive Jaime Lannister.

Grey Wind at the Battle of Oxcross.

The dead mother of the six Stark direwolves.

Summer

Summer and Shaggydog

Shaggydog

Grey Wind during a Winterfell feast in Season 1.

In the books

In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the biology and behavior of direwolves are the same.

By the point the books reached, the status of the Starks' direwolves is:

• {Lady}: killed by Eddard at Robert's command.
• {Grey Wind}: killed by the Freys at the Red Wedding.
• Summer: currently with Bran at the cave of the three-eyed crow.
• Nymeria: leads a pack of wolves at the Riverlands.
• Ghost: currently with Jon at Castle Black.
• Shaggydog: recently reported to accompany Rickon and Osha to the isle of Skagos. It is unknown whether he is alive.

See also

• Direwolf on A Wiki of Ice and Fire
• Dire wolf on Wikipedia

References

Template:Creatures