{"id":292520,"date":"2025-11-18T12:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T12:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/292520\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T12:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T12:05:11","slug":"cameras-capture-b-c-sea-wolf-raiding-crab-traps-in-first-possible-tool-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/292520\/","title":{"rendered":"Cameras capture B.C. sea wolf raiding crab traps in first possible \u2018tool use\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

B.C.\u2019s Heiltsuk First Nation could not figure out how the traps they had set near Bella Bella to catch the invasive green crabs were being damaged.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So they decided to set up cameras in 2024 to try and solve the mystery.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur crews came in and said that, you know, something had been pulling our crab traps and taking the bait,\u201d\u00a0William Housty, director of the\u00a0 Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department in Bella Bella told Global News.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou normally picture a human being with two hands pulling a crab trap, but we couldn\u2019t figure out exactly what had the ability to be able to do that until we put a camera up and saw, well, there\u2019s other intelligent beings out there that are able to do this, which is very remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cameras captured a sea wolf emerging from the water with a buoy hanging from its mouth.<\/p>\n

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The wolf then picked up a line attached to the buoy, pulled a crab trap out of the water and ate the bait inside.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur crew have gone through hundreds of bait traps, you know, trying to catch these green crabs and getting intercepted by this pack of wolves, so it\u2019s quite remarkable that they\u2019ve been able to pick up on and be able to do it,\u201d Housty said.<\/p>\n

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Kyle Artelle, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in New York, said they first noticed the crab traps in deep water were also being targeted.<\/p>\n

\u201cBears and wolves do swim, but as far as we know, they don\u2019t dive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Artelle said when they saw the camera footage of the wolves, they couldn\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot that we couldn\u2019t believe that a wolf was that intelligent, but we never imagined we were going to be seeing a wolf doing what we see here.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He said it could be the first evidence of possible tool use by the animals, depending on how people define tool use.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat it is is very sophisticated behaviour,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we see is a wolf who is bringing a float to shore, she can\u2019t see the traps there, but she brings the float to shore, she knows that float is attached to a rope, she pulls on the rope, it\u2019s attached to a trap, if she pulls that in sequence she can bring the trap to within her reach, then she can bring the trap to shore and then based on that she can access the bait within.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the kind of behaviour that is really familiar to us,\u201d he added. \u201cShe is solving the problem the same way that we would.\u201d<\/p>\n

Artelle said they don\u2019t know how the wolves learned to pull in the crab traps to get to the bait, but they do believe it is one wolf pack and they may be learning from each other.<\/p>\n

Housty said the Heiltsuk Nation has had to adjust its strategy to continue to try and catch the invasive crabs and keep the bait away from the wolves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost like a daily chess game with our crew and the wolves out there and how we are going to get around them today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"B.C.\u2019s Heiltsuk First Nation could not figure out how the traps they had set near Bella Bella to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,168201,75,128,168200,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-292520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bc-sea-wolf","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-sea-wolf","14":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}