This is another tragedy akin to what happened at Sea World, so first and foremost my heartfelt condolences to the bereaved friends and family of the victim. But from watching videos of folks interacting with captive wolves,
http://www.godvine.com/Woman-Reunites-with-the-Wolves-She-Socialized-Awesome-1334.html
I believe they are misinterpreting “friendliness” with true sociability. The social impulse comes from the hunt, from being coordinated as a group toward an object of resistance that they can overcome by being in synchrony. Because the woman is energizing the wolves, she is unknowingly “summoning” them to the hunt, they are trying to organize around her but because no actual hunt is going to materialize, for example were she able to lead them off in a search for prey, we can see that the greeting rituals, which are highly constrained and intense stress abatement reflexes, periodically deteriorate into intramural squabbles. This could easily deteriorate into a frenzy with the human being the object of their stress relief by way of the prey instinct. I believe this is what most likely happened to the victim of the wolf attack. The pack is confined to an enclosure, compressed and a mobbing collapses into the woman as the prey object rather than each other. The victim became the object-of-attention for all the pent up energy of the pack. She became “IT” and since they were overloaded with the charge, the wolves had no feeling for her, had no “idea” who she was. The victim was just IT. The object of all their fear/intensity/stress (i.e. “the charge”) and the wolves were now working out of the load/overload mechanics of energy transfer, just like an electrostatic charge. They were no longer in the magnetic, sensual, steady-state means of moving energy as a coordinated whole. This is the distinction between the group and the pack.
I have often wondered about the mobbing and face licking they do; have also noticed the tendency of a few to get into a bit of a scrap during these sessions. Never been able to pin it down, though, so I appreciate the perspective. I knew the thoughts of the person from national geographic were off, sadly so, but I hesitate to suggest an NDT perspective as I still lack much-needed clarity. Always fascinating, Kevin.