An ingenuous wild wolf mimics a human as she goes fishing in a world first captured on film.
Extraordinary footage shows a hungry female beast stalking the wastelands of British Columbia, Canada, skillfully pulling a crab trap out of the water to eat bait inside.
The never-before-documented act is the first time a wolf has used human tools to such clever effect.
The accidental discovery came after traps set to stop the spread of European green crab, an invasive species ravaging local ecosystems, were being damaged.
Researchers working on an environmental programme were convinced it was not the work of bears or wolves because some were set deep and neither species can dive.
Motion-triggered cameras were set up to unearth the mystery and revealed a staggering surprise.
Kyle Artelle, assistant professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, said: “We were amazed. It was not what we were expecting, to say the least.
“Folks who are lucky enough to spend time around wolves know they’re super smart, so the fact that they’re capable of doing highly intelligent things, in and of itself, isn’t surprising. But this kind of behaviour has not been seen before.”
Video captured the remarkable moment a wolf swims to shore with a buoy in her mouth before dropping it on the sand.
Next, she grabs the line attached to the buoy and gently pulls it until a trap emerges from the water. The beast continues to haul it to the shore before chewing her way into a canister holding a piece of herring which was being used as bait.
One theory is that wolves might have learned about the traps by watching humans drop them from boats. If this is true the learned behaviouir demonstrates a remarkable and previously unthinkable level of intelligence and understanding.
Prof Artelle said: “She isn’t randomly pulling. It doesn’t look like she’s playing. Anyone with a dog knows what it looks like when they’re playing. This is very focused. She is being perfectly efficient. She’s even staring at the end of the line as if in anticipation of when that trap is going to show up.
“The question that it raises for us is: Might this behaviour develop here because the wolves aren’t so preoccupied with having to look over their shoulders?
“It’s a sequence of behaviours that ultimately gets her towards that goal. It’s problem-solving, and it’s problem-solving exactly the way humans do it. We would have done the exact same thing if we were trying to access that trap from shore.
“We recognise that we have likely only scratched the surface in terms of understanding this incredibly complex species relative.”
The Heiltsuk territory is one of the few parts of the world where wolves are not heavily hunted or trapped.
The European green crab traps were set by the Heiltsuk Nation, an indigenous people from the Central Coast of British Columbia whose name means “to speak and act correctly”.
The project was launched to study the ecology, behaviour, and biocultural context of coastal wolves living in Canada’s westernmost province to inform conservation in the territory.
