I'm at work and don't have my books with me. I would assume an animal like a wolf, dog, or cat could actively use skills like perception or tracking no matter what the rules say. I've been around dogs and cats all my life and have seen them using those skills to hunt prey or just make sense of their environment. And I feel confident I've seen both active and passive uses of said skills. Now that's not to say there are dumb animals out there I've seen plenty of those.
As a GM I try to let common sense rule the table. That means wolves act like wolves and not a trained commando unit.