A wolf fishing: new rare footage
Some amazing footage of the breeding female of the Windsong Pack hunting fish over the past few days. All this wolf has done over the past few weeks is fish and spend time with her pups, who are starting their young lives as pescatarians it seems!
The footage is particularly neat because it shows her lying down on a small island in the middle of the river to wait-in-ambush for fish. As she waits, her ears are constantly flickering and twitching as she tries to detect fish breaking the surface of the water.
Cueing in on the sound of fish splashing in water appears to be one of the primary ways wolves hunt fish in our area.
In one sequence, she catches a fish just as it goes down a rapids. She briefly kills the fish and then carries it away. Her GPS-collar data shows that shortly after her catch she went back to the den, presumably to provision the pups.
And Wolf O4D, the breeding female, is not alone in her fishing ways. We know of 3 other packs that have been hunting fish over the past few weeks.
This is now the 7th year we have documented this behavior and every year we see document more individuals from different social groups fishing…all of which indicates fishing is a widespread behavior of wolves in northern Minnesota and likely similar boreal ecosystems!
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