{"id":295522,"date":"2025-11-19T20:07:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T20:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/295522\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T20:07:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T20:07:06","slug":"watch-this-wolf-pull-off-an-absolutely-genius-crab-trap-heist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/295522\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch This Wolf Pull Off an Absolutely Genius Crab Trap Heist"},"content":{"rendered":"

The coast of British Columbia is experiencing a crab problem<\/a>. But trying to control the crab problem appears to have surfaced an unexpected wolf problem\u2014one that reveals the surprising capacity of wolves as intelligent crab thieves.<\/p>\n

Researchers set up remote cameras to catch a mysterious crab thief, but they weren\u2019t prepared for the scene that unfolded almost immediately after installing the cameras. They watched, stunned, as a wolf swam out of the water with a crab trap in her mouth. From the video, it looked as though the wolf had a remarkably good understanding of how the trap worked, making it\u2014potentially\u2014the first documented instance of a wolf interacting with tools.<\/p>\n

A paper published on November 17 in Ecology and Evolution<\/a> presents a formal account of this novel behavior. As of now, the researchers aren\u2019t certain whether such behavior could be widespread in wolves; accordingly, they describe the incident as \u201cpotential\u201d tool use. If confirmed, however, it would add another layer to our understanding of wolf intelligence.<\/p>\n

Canid crab thieves <\/p>\n

European green crabs are notoriously stalwart creatures, wreaking havoc on local ecology. Since 2021, Canada\u2019s Ha\u00ed\u026bzaqv Nation guardians have been setting up crab traps to control the invasive species. But sometime around 2023, they noticed something kept stealing bait from the crab traps, leaving them either completely damaged or slightly torn.<\/p>\n

This attack even occurred for traps deeply submerged, leaving the humans involved puzzled as to the identity of the perpetrator. Wolves were included in the list of suspects\u2014bears, marine animals, and the like\u2014but the researchers were nevertheless shocked by what they saw.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn rapid succession, [the wolf] carried the buoy up the beach, dropped it, descended the beach, picked up the line, and pulled it farther up the beach until a trap partly emerged from the water,\u201d recounted the paper. The wolf then carried the trap further inland and proceeded to chew and manipulate the bait cup until it opened. The whole encounter lasted for around three minutes.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the trap was initially fully submerged and invisible from the shore, \u201csuggesting that the wolf recognized that the buoy was attached to a rope, in turn attached to an unseen trap containing edible bait,\u201d according to the paper.<\/p>\n

A mystery in progress <\/p>\n

So far, the researchers know that there are at least two wolves\u2014the second spotted during follow-up investigations\u2014capable of identifying and breaking crab traps to steal bait. And that\u2019s about all they know. How the wolves learned to do this, or whether all wolves can manipulate tools in this way, remains a mystery.<\/p>\n

The researchers have some guesses. For instance, the Ha\u00ed\u026bzaqv remove traps by vertically lifting them out of the shore. The wolves could have learned from watching the guardians and replicated this action by horizontally dragging the traps onto shore. Alternatively, the wolves may have observed that traps appear during low tide and retrieved the traps later.<\/p>\n

\"WolfStills extracted from remote camera video of a wolf in Ha\u00ed\u026bzaqv Territory pulling an initially submerged green crab trap to shore to access the baited cup within. \u00a9 Paquet et al., 2025 <\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, these wolves reside in a region with minimal human activity. This raises questions as to whether such sophisticated behavior could be \u201cfacilitated by relatively low levels of human persecution,\u201d according to the paper.<\/p>\n

That is, are the wolves convinced that stealing bait won\u2019t lead to retaliation from humans? If so, what implications does this have for wildlife management\u2014especially from an ethical standpoint, if these wolves are much more intelligent than previously believed?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile acknowledging cautions regarding overinterpretation of tool use as indicators of intelligence, the sophisticated intelligence suggested here might evoke reconsideration of common negative perceptions toward this species,\u201d the researchers concluded, adding that they intend to continue studying the region to \u201cfurther elucidate the ecology, dynamics, and biocultural context of wolves here, including some of the questions raised herein.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The coast of British Columbia is experiencing a crab problem. But trying to control the crab problem appears…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[21021,41587,64,63,128,338,1530],"class_list":{"0":"post-295522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animal-behavior","9":"tag-animal-intelligence","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-wildlife","14":"tag-wolves"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295522","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=295522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}