should they follow him. Isengrim the wolf, a character first appearing in the 12th-century Latin poem Ysengrimus, is a major character in the Reynard Cycle, where he stands for the low nobility, whilst his adversary, Reynard the fox, represents the peasant hero. Isengrim is forever the victim of Reynard's wit and cruelty, often dying at the end of each story. The tale of "Little Red Riding Hood", first written in 1697 by Charles Perrault, is considered to have further contributed to the wolf's negative reputation in the Western world. The Big Bad Wolf is portrayed as a villain capable of imitating human speech and disguising itself with human clothing. The character has been interpreted as an allegorical sexual predator. Villainous wolf characters also appear in The Three Little Pigs and "The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats". The hunting of wolves, and their attacks on humans and livestock, feature prominently in Russian literature, and are included in the works of Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Nikolay Nekrasov, Ivan Bunin, Leonid Pavlovich Sabaneyev, and others. Tolstoy's War and Peace and Chekhov's Peasants both feature scenes in which wolves are hunted with hounds and Borzois. The musical Peter and the Wolf involves a wolf being captured for eating a duck, but is spared and sent to a zoo. Wolves are among the central characters of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. His portrayal of wolves has been praised posthumously by wolf biologists for his depiction of them: rather than being villainous or gluttonous, as was common in wolf portrayals at the time of the book's publication, they are shown as living in amiable family groups and drawing on the experience of infirm but experienced elder pack members. Farley Mowat's largely fictional 1963 memoir Never Cry Wolf is widely considered to be the most popular book on wolves, having been adapted into a Hollywood film and taught in several schools decades after its publication. Although credited with having changed popular perceptions on wolves by portraying them as loving, cooperative and noble, it has been criticized for its idealization of wolves and its factual inaccuracies. Conflicts Human presence appears to stress wolves, as seen by increased cortisol levels in instances such as snowmobiling near their territory. Predation on livestock Livestock depredation has been one of the primary reasons for hunting wolves and can pose a severe problem for wolf conservation. As well as causing economic losses,