Rare glimpse of the ‘fishy’ tendencies of wolves

This video gives a rare glimpse into the “fishy” proclivities of wolves in our area. The video was taken in spring just a short distance from a creek wolves have fished at for many years.

This past spring was the 10th year we have documented wolves hunting and catching fish—a behavior that had not been documented in boreal systems such as ours until our work, in part, because it is a tough behavior to observe.

What is particularly fascinating is that this wolf was not only carrying a fish but carrying two of them. This is interesting because when we captured this behavior on video for the first time in 2018, we observed a wolf fishing, drop them on the creek bank, and wade back in to continue fishing.

I.e., the wolf was not immediately consuming the fish it caught but rather fishing while the fishing was hot, and then once the fishing cooled down, would consume the fish. And this video seems to provide some additional evidence that it might be a widespread strategy wolves use.

Two other interesting tidbits from this video:

1.) The wolf that dropped the fish was a yearling wolf. The wolf that grabbed the fish at the end was a different wolf. More specifically, the breeding female of the Half-Moon Pack and the older sister of the yearling wolf.

2.) Surprisingly, the black bear seemed very perplexed at finding this fish, and just left it alone without even taking a little nibble. We would have expected a bear to readily take a free meal like this but apparently not.

We have collected of detailed information on how, when, where, and why wolves hunt fish in our area. You can read all about that in our scientific article (which is freely-available at the link below)

Freund et al. 2023. The ethology of wolves foraging on freshwater fish in a boreal ecosystem. Royal Society Open Science. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/10/5/230210/66026

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Written by Voyageurs Wolf Project