Animal totems (wolf, lion, bear etc) do not exclude beast totems (beasts + elephants). Beast totems exculde beast & animal totems.
It was meant as a way of allowing units that got weak totem at start a better one later. But it probably should remove the animal totem.
Wolf, Polar Bear, Griffon and Tiger totem all at once are bit much and I thought I have fixed it a few patches ago.
Not to worry Ahwaric. It was stupid of me to mention it in the bug thread, since my example was from several patches ago.