Field research takes on a new meaning when applied to Jim and Jamie Dutcher. The married couple lived with wild grey wolves in the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho for six years to thoroughly study the wolves' behavior. The couple will be showing their video Living with Wolves tomorrow afternoon in Kane Hall as part of a larger Burke Museum event called Meet the Mammals.

The Dutchers lived in a tented camp inside of a 25-acre enclosure with the wolves. Their goal was to examine the wolves as they naturally act in their environment.

"To get close to wolves in the wild and study their social behavior is almost impossible, because if a wolf senses it is being watched it will alter its behavior," Jim Dutcher said.

The Dutchers raised the wolves as young pups, bottle feeding them and then releasing them into the wild when they were old enough. These wolves subsequently had their own pups within the six-year study period, to make a total of 11 wolves.

"What it did was took away the fear. The wolves were never pets. We gave them names to keep them straight for ourselves, but by having the trust, we could watch them interact with one another," Dutcher said.

The Dutchers' main goal in relation to their video is to promote the welfare of wolves in American wilderness areas.

"We want to create an awareness of wolves and de-vilify them and take away the myths of them being vicious evil animals," Dutcher said.

Dutcher also points out the benefits of reintroducing wolves into national park areas.

"Wolves feed on the slower, older, sicker animals, leaving behind stronger elk to reproduce and perpetuate their species," Dutcher said. "The wolf is the only animal that does that."

Hunters would like to see the wolf population diminished so that the overall numbers of elk will increase.

The Dutchers' program in Kane Hall is in affiliation with a larger event going on at the Burke Museum. This event, Meet the Mammals, is free for UW students and staff and will include skeletons, skins and skulls of many species of mammals. Generally speaking, a mammal is an animal with a backbone that produces milk for its newborns.

The impetus for the event is to showcase the great diversity of mammal species around the world.

"The idea is what's evolved over the last 50-60 million years is a greater variety than what existed with the first mammals living on land and, following the time of the dinosaurs, the mammals diversified into all these many different species," said Jim Kenagy, the curator of mammals at the Burke Museum.

The Seattle Aquarium will bring and assemble a complete Orca skeleton as part of the event. Twenty mammalogists will be at the event to educate and entertain visitors.

"We'd love to have our own students," Kenagy said. "There's no [home] football game Saturday, so this is something great to do in the afternoon."

[Reach reporter Andrew Doughman at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]