Animals’ intelligence continue to surprise humans, whether the realization arises due to focused study or observational evidence. As the NY Times writes, “evidence of tool use by octopuses, crows, fish, elephants, crocodiles and insects has dislodged our arrogance that tool use is uniquely human.” (The NYT forgot parrots.) This week’s evidence comes from trail cam documentation of a sea wolf in British Columbia.
In 2021, the Heiltsuk, a Canadian First Nation, began setting crab pots in their traditional waters. to remove invasive European green crabs. The traps were “simple circular, netted frames baited with plastic cups of herring or chopped sea lion” tied to buoys and dropped into deep water away from shore. Often, the traps were found torn apart, still in some water (i.e., not exposed at low tide). Finally, in 2024, a wildlife biologist and a Heiltsuk Guardian set up a trail cam to document what was happening to the traps, expecting to see otters, seals, or mink.
Instead, they saw a wolf who swam out to the buoy and dragged it back towards the shore, exposing the rope that the wolf then grabs section by section until the trap can be torn open by the wolf’s jaws. Finally at her objective—the cup of bait meat—she removed it from the trap, and carried it upright to the shore, set the cup on the pebbles, licked out the seal lion meat, and wandered off.
“The researchers describe the brief footage, featured in a paper published Monday in the journal Ecology and Evolution, as the first documented instance of a wolf using a tool.”
Whether this wolf is a solitary innovator or represents a broader cultural pattern remains a mystery. But William Housty, director of the Heiltsuk integrated resource management department, suspects multiple wolves are involved. “You talk to our crew daily, and every day they’re coming in with bait boxes busted open,” he said.
A descendant of the nation’s wolf clan, Mr. Housty has great respect for the species and is unsurprised by the wolves’ cleverness.
“Sometimes we forget that the species that exist with us, around us, are just as intelligent as we are,” he said.
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