[ericthered]

Some of the more niche combat rules can make animals a lot more deadly. There is rule somewhere that lets bites double as grapple attempts, which makes getting back into weapons range hard and lets the animal leverage its superior strength.

Large animals can make slam attacks, which can be impossible to block and are often one sided.

Most animals are faster than people in one way or another. Use this to let them dictate the terms of the engagement. And animals are pretty good about exploiting this (when they aren't doing it, its called "being hunted").

Four adventurers in a cave vs. eight wolves shouldn't be a problem. Its when the wolves are following them home from the crawl, through the wilderness, waiting for them to go to sleep to attack that you run into problems.