Wild Wolf Demonstrates Tool Use: First Documented Case of Wolf Using Rope to Retrieve Underwater Crab Trap

Researchers initially believed wolves and bears could not access deep-water traps since these animals do not dive underwater.

A female wild wolf on British Columbia's central coast has been captured on video retrieving a crab trap from the ocean and consuming the bait, representing the first documented instance of tool use by this species.

The traps were placed by the Heiltsuk Nation, an indigenous community, as part of their environmental conservation program to control European green crabs, an invasive species causing harm to local ecosystems.

Kyle Artelle, an assistant professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and study co-author, noted, "The traps were starting to get damaged, and the damage did look like it could have been a bear or a wolf."

Scientists initially dismissed the possibility of wolves or bears accessing deep-water traps due to their inability to dive.

The study revealed that while some crab traps are positioned in shallow waters accessible to terrestrial predators, others are set in deeper waters where they remain submerged even during low tide. "The assumption was it couldn't be a bear or a wolf, because they don't dive. So, who could it be?"

To identify the culprit, researchers installed cameras expecting to capture footage of otters or seals. Instead, they recorded a wolf swimming to shore with a floating buoy in her mouth.

After dropping the buoy on the beach, she grabbed the attached rope and used it to pull the underwater crab trap ashore. The wolf then dragged the trap to shallow water and opened it to access the herring bait.

"We were amazed. It was not what we were expecting, to say the least," Artelle explained, suggesting the wolves might have learned about the traps either by observing humans deploying them from boats or by discovering them in shallow water during low tide before figuring out how to retrieve deeper ones.

"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," he emphasized.

Artelle described the wolf's actions as deliberate and planned, noting that despite the trap being underwater and invisible, she wasn't randomly pulling or playing. She even focused intently on the rope's end, watching for the trap's emergence.

Marc Bekoff, an animal behavior expert and emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, stated, "Future research will answer questions about whether other wolves also learn to use a rope and whether this behavior becomes culturally transmitted within this population."