Wolves Score: From Milan to Mongolia, Who’s Really Counting the Carnage?

Wolves Score: A Global Tally of Teeth, Trade, and Tabloid Panic
By your correspondent, filing from the last bar with Wi-Fi before the tundra begins

The phrase “wolves score” ricochets around the planet like a bullet with commitment issues. In Milan it means last-minute heartbreak at San Siro; in Astana it’s the nightly body-count of livestock that didn’t read the memo about staying inside the fence. In Washington, if you whisper it near the right think-tank, a junior analyst will bolt upright and start quoting Clausewitz at the coffee machine. Everywhere else, it’s a handy Rorschach test for whatever we fear most: financial predators, climate predators, or actual predators with fur and a Spotify playlist of elk screams.

Let’s start where the money is. The Mongolian Stock Exchange—yes, it exists, and no, the yaks don’t ring the opening bell—tracks a “Wolf Index” measuring how many herders are driven into cashmere debt by lupine losses. When wolves score, nomads pawn their satellite dishes; when they don’t, Beijing gets cheaper sweaters. Global capitalism, ever the helpful undertaker, turns carnivore predation into quarterly earnings. Meanwhile, in Frankfurt, a bored quant packages the cashmere volatility into an ETF called LUPUS-21. Somewhere in a glass tower a trader buys it, convinced he’s hedging against “tail risk,” blissfully unaware the tail still has teeth.

Slide west and the scoreboard changes language but not arithmetic. In Rome last week, Lazio ultras unfurled a banner reading “LUPO NON RINGRAZIA” after Wolverhampton’s latest Europa League ambush. The irony—Rome’s own she-wolf suckled the empire that once nailed pacifists to billboards—was lost in a fog of cheap beer and cheaper nostalgia. Still, the international takeaway is clear: whether you wear a helmet or a halo, someone’s always counting how many throats you ripped out before extra time.

Now for the truly international bit: Siberia, where the permafrost is thawing faster than a teenager’s self-esteem. Russian scientists recently attached fitness trackers to 200 wolves to see who’s been snacking on reindeer. The data feed—tagged “Wolves Score” in Cyrillic and broadcast on Telegram channels—doubles as a crude early-warning system for anthrax outbreaks when the tundra coughs up defrosted carcasses. NATO analysts, never ones to waste a good panic, have begun modeling the same collars for “hybrid threats,” because nothing says twenty-first-century warfare like outsourcing your security budget to a canid with a step counter.

Smaller numbers, bigger metaphors. In Israel, conservationists argue that wolf packs in the Golan Heights are a barometer of regional détente: fewer poisoned carcasses, the theory goes, means Hezbollah is busy elsewhere. In Iran, clerics debate whether lupine intrusion constitutes “religious nuisance” or divine commentary on the price of lamb. Everyone, it seems, wants the wolves to pick a side, preferably the one that photographs well on Instagram.

And then there is the existential ledger, the one we don’t tweet. According to the IUCN, the global wolf population hovers around 200,000—roughly the same number of HNWIs (High Net Worth Individuals) who could personally sponsor a wolf each and still have change for a second passport. The wolves, to their credit, have not yet unionized or issued NFTs. They simply keep scoring: a sheep here, a myth there, occasionally a seat at the United Nations if the delegation from British Columbia remembers to bring the plush toy.

What does it all add up to? A planet-wide reminder that every score—whether in goals, gore, or gigabytes—is a zero-sum receipt for someone else’s loss. We tally wolves because we can’t tally ourselves without blushing. And when the final whistle blows, whether on the pitch or in the permafrost, the wolves will still be there, keeping count with eyes that never learned to blink at spreadsheets.