What wolves eat

As car­ni­vores, wolves will eat any­thing from a mouse to a moose in­clud­ing grasshop­pers, birds and frogs.  Although wild wolves will oc­ca­sion­ally eat ber­ries, their bod­ies re­quire meat to survive.

As Jack London wrote in White Fang, a story about a wolf-dog hy­brid, “The aim of life was meat. Life it­self was meat.”

Most wolves ob­tain their meat from un­gu­lates such as deer, elk, moose, bison and muskox­en. While it’s dan­ger­ous hunt­ing large an­im­als with horns and hooves, the huge food re­ward is worth the ef­fort and risk of in­jury or even death. On the oth­er hand, it takes a lot of mice to fill a wolf’s belly and the en­ergy ex­pen­ded is of­ten great­er than the cal­or­ies gained.

While most wolves de­pend on un­gu­lates for their susten­ance, some eat a lot of fish. This has been re­cor­ded through­out the world and of­ten in­volves fish trav­el­ling up­stream to spawn.

This wolf caught 15 sock­eye sal­mon in one hour in Brooks River, Alaska. Photo cour­tesy Paul Stinsa

But some wolves rely heav­ily on fish and mar­ine-re­lated an­im­als year-round. In fact, wolves on some British Columbia coastal is­lands primar­ily eat sal­mon, seals and shell­fish, as well as mink and Canada goose eggs. They will even move rocks at low tide to eat tiny mol­luscs called chitons. Wolves on out­er is­lands may sel­dom – if ever – see a deer.

 

Wolves aren’t picky about their food. They may cache some meat and dig it up for din­ner later, as well as scav­enge prey that has died of nat­ur­al causes or been killed by oth­er animals.

They can eas­ily be­come used to the easy pick­ings found at un­se­cured hu­man garbage dumps and will raid camp­sites or break into tents and kayak holds to check out hu­man food. Although they prob­ably won’t eat much of the food they find this way, they will bite into whatever they can ac­cess to check it out.

At times, wolves also kill and eat live­stock and pets, which is the ma­jor source of their con­flict with humans.

Top photo was taken on Ellesmere Island in the high arc­tic where wolves prey on hares and muskox­en. Photo cour­tesy Dave Mech

 

Will wolves howl at the super blood wolf moon?

From an­cient times, Indigenous peoples in North America called the first full moon after the winter sol­stice the Wolf Moon. This was of­ten the cold­est, darkest month of the year, when hungry wolves could be heard howl­ing out­side villages.

The sky will provide a back­drop for some ex­tra drama when 2019’s Wolf Moon takes place the even­ing of January 20 – 21. On that night the full moon will pass  its closest to earth mak­ing it ap­pear lar­ger and bright­er than nor­mal. That adds the su­per to Wolf Moon.

And, de­pend­ing where you are, at some point that night the earth will move  between the sun and the su­per Wolf Moon cre­at­ing a total ec­lipse. The earth’s shad­ow makes the moon ap­pear red, hence the term blood.

A su­per blood wolf moon is re­l­at­ively rare, oc­cur­ring ap­prox­im­ately every three years. But how do wolves re­spond to this lun­ar event?

Photo by John Cavers

Wolves howl, hunt and travel at any time but are most act­ive around dawn and dusk, as well as through­out the night. And wheth­er they’re sit­ting, stand­ing or ly­ing down, they lift their snouts to howl. But, rather than fo­cus­ing on the moon, some be­lieve they’re simply tak­ing ad­vant­age of the ex­tra light it provides.

I know from sleep­ing near the Sawtooth Pack for el­ev­en years that wolves do howl more dur­ing a full moon,” Jeremy Heft writes in the sum­mer 2009 Sawtooth Legacy Quarterly. A wild­life bio­lo­gist, Heft’s worked at the Wolf Education and Research Center in Winchester, Idaho, since 1998. “They tend to be more act­ive then be­cause it’s easi­er to see prey and hunt.”

In the 1970s, wolf re­search­er Paul Paquet ob­served un­usu­al be­ha­viour in a pack dur­ing a sol­ar ec­lipse. The wolves were act­ively wan­der­ing around an es­tu­ary on the BC coast when the moon passed between the earth and the sun. As the light faded, the wolves gathered to­geth­er along the shoreline and gazed in the dir­ec­tion the bright sun had been. They only re­sumed their nor­mal routine when the sun began to reappear.

So it’s hard to say how wolves will re­act to a su­per blood wolf moon. My guess is they may howl earli­er in the night when the moon is bright­est but stop to gaze up­wards dur­ing the dim­ming of light and change of col­our dur­ing the blood phase.

Super blood wolf moon photo by Yu Kato (Unsplash)

Wolf scat and butterflies

Wolves have cast-iron di­gest­ive sys­tems cap­able of hand­ling frag­ments of bone and shell, an­im­al fur and even the in­tact nails from a seal.

These in­tact seal nails were found in the dried up scat of a BC coastal wolf. Photo by Paula Wild

When it comes to food, wolves are op­por­tun­ist­ic. They’ll eat ber­ries and have been known to nibble on hu­man food and garbage. String and rem­nants of clothes have also been found in the scat of camp robbers.

Wolf scat looks sim­il­ar to a piece of cord and usu­ally tapers to a point on the end. An adult wolf’s scat is usu­ally between 25 to 38 mil­li­metres (one to 1.5 inches) in dia­met­er. If it’s runny, the wolf may have re­cently eaten some bloody meat.

Una Ledrew and Dave Ratcliffe were startled when they ob­served chunks of rope in wolf scat near their home. “They were chew­ing on and swal­low­ing ropes of all kinds, plastic rope, big thick rope we use to tie up the skiff,” Ledrew said.

Like the seal nails above, big chunks of rope seemed to pass through a wolf’s di­gest­ive tract nearly in­tact. Photo by Una Ledrew

My guess is the wolves were after the salt left be­hind by hu­man hands but some of the rope had been out in the open for ages. Wolf ex­perts I spoke to were baffled as to why wolves would con­sume rope.

Wolf scat is more than just part of a wolf’s elim­in­a­tion pro­cess; it’s also an im­port­ant part of lupine com­mu­nic­a­tion. Scat is one way wolves’ mark their ter­rit­ory and is of­ten found in con­spicu­ous loc­a­tions such as trail intersections.

These visu­al and ol­fact­ory mark­ers serve as a sig­nal to warn oth­er wolf packs out of their ter­rit­ory or to let fam­ily mem­bers know they’ve passed that way. Wolf scat is also part of nature’s re­cyc­ling pro­gram, en­rich­ing the soil wherever it’s deposited.

But the biggest sur­prise about wolf scat is but­ter­flies. They aren’t in it, they’re on it. Apparently, but­ter­flies love wolf scat due to the high con­cen­tra­tion of nu­tri­ents.  In fact, nu­mer­ous re­search­ers told me, “If you’re look­ing for wolves, look for butterflies.”

Gerard Gorman (www​.probirder​.com) is an au­thor and bird­ing and wild­life con­sult­ant and guide spe­cial­ising in cent­ral and Eastern Europe. He took this photo in Aggtelek National Park in Hungary.

Of wolves and moose

A few weeks ago, a friend urged me to check Return of the Wolf on amazon​.ca “Right now!”

Oops,” I thought. “Some info in the product de­tails must be wrong. And then a sick fore­bod­ing – maybe someone had pos­ted a dread­ful review?

I quickly googled the page and was baffled to see or­ange text pro­claim­ing #1 in Bestseller in Wildlife un­der the title. It took few minutes for the sig­ni­fic­ance to sink in.

I let out a little shriek and im­me­di­ately emailed the link to friends and fam­ily.  At the time I wasn’t sure if rat­ings were based on hits or ac­tu­al pur­chases. I now know it’s the lat­ter. And that rat­ings are re­con­figured hourly.

A little later in the day I googled amazon​.ca and saw that Wolf had slipped to #2. Okay, so I’d had my fif­teen minutes of fame. And to keep things in per­spect­ive, a moose cal­en­dar was #4.

Wolves and moose have a long re­la­tion­ship as pred­at­or and prey. Researchers have wit­nessed single wolves take down an adult moose so it can be done.

But most wolves tackle the 360 to 450 kg (8001,000 pound) un­gu­lates as part of a pack. Even then, it’s es­tim­ated that they’re only suc­cess­ful one to nine per­cent of the time.

It’s dan­ger­ous too as the moose may kick or stomp a wolf with its sharp hooves, bat­ter it with its heavy antlers or use them to flip the can­id end over end.

So, when it comes to a phys­ic­al con­front­a­tion, a healthy adult moose is more than a cap­able match for a lone wolf or even a pack.

But how do wolves and moose fare when it comes to hu­man emo­tions? I’d nev­er thought about it un­til I saw the an­im­als so closely linked on the amazon​.ca best­seller list.

For a couple of weeks I ran­domly checked Return of the Wolf’s status on amazon. The book slipped down to #8 and then ping-ponged to #157 and back up to #22 with nu­mer­ous stops in between. And through it all, the moose cal­en­dar held steady at #4.