 Some legends portray the Japanese wolf as being prophetic creatures.In the Tamaki Mountains the location of a tree called “the cypress of dog-howls” is said to be the site where wolves howled immediately before a flood in 1889 warning the villagers, and before the great earthquake of 1923 even though the wolf was extinct by that time.Another belief was the "wolf notification" where a traveller does not return home, then a wolf comes to their home and makes a sad howling that signalled their death.