This time of year, the sound of a wolf howl piercing the night can really send shivers up your spine. But that call of the wild isn’t meant to scare you; it’s actually a message to other wolves.

Last year, Melissa Pons, a field recordist and sound designer, set out to capture a sound that at one time would have been familiar to almost any European: the howl of an Iberian wolf. There was a ...

Previously, computer programs for recognizing wolf vocalizations have relied solely on analyzing the pitch of the howls. These programs could correctly identify individual wolves up to 76 percent of ...