Lone Wolf

I was pleasantly surprised to see a copy of Lone Wolf sitting on the shelf at the library right there out in the open. A Jodi Picoult book can be hard to come by.  She is such a popular writer.  This, like all her other books, was well written.  Like the others it contained a long courtroom scene about a conflict in society - this one was about organ donation and end of life wishes.  In this story a wolf scientist named Luke has a traumatic brain injury in a traffic accident.  The question is when is it appropriate to turn off the ventilator on a man in a vegetative state to harvest his organs?  What if his relatives disagree on whether it is appropriate to pull the plug?  Mixed in with that story is information about wolves.  Honestly, I question the wolf information in this book.  Is it true, as Picoult claims, that various members of the wolf pack are  restricted to different sections of meat?  Some are allowed to eat the movement muscle, others the stomach contents, and the alpha members of the pack get the heart and the liver.  Picoult claims that the chemicals in the various parts of the meal affect the behavior of the wolves.  Alpha wolves stay alpha wolves because of the meals they eat. She says that wolves who, due to starvation, are forced to eat salmon, loose all social structure.  The wolf pack societal structure falls apart and the wolves stop acting as an organized pack.  The author also stated that the alpha female, before she conceives, knows how many pups she will have, what gender they will be, and what rank in the wolf pack each will have.  Seriously? I find that hard to believe.  How can any of us know what is in the mind of a wolf?  I have a few friends who know wolves quite well because they volunteer longs hours at the Wildlife Science Center.  I plan to run these wolf ideas past them and get their opinion.  I am doubtful of some of the wolf information in this book but it was an entertaining read.