Wolves Prefer Fish Over Meat

September 02, 2008

The image of a stealthy wolf, fangs bared, viciously chasing down deer and other large, hoofed animals might soon change, if the wolf has anything to do about it.

Chris Darimont from the University of Victoria and the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, Canada, led a team of researchers in studying the feeding habits of wolves in a remote part of British Columbia. Darimont said, "Over the course of four years, we identified prey remains in wolf droppings and carried out chemical analysis of shed wolf hair in order to determine what the wolves like to eat at various times of year."

Darimont and his team determined that wolves do prey upon deer for most of the year but, when salmon becomes available in the autumn, wolves switch to salmon and they don't want to go back to gamier, harder-to-catch deer meat.

"One might expect that wolves would move onto salmon only if their mainstay deer were in short supply," the researchers discovered. "Our data show that this is not the case, salmon availability clearly outperformed deer availability in predicting wolves' use of salmon."

The scientists are now referring to salmon as "North America's answer to the Serengeti's wildebeest" (an animal that many predators hunt).

Overexploitation by fisheries, diseases spread through "exotic salmon aquaculture," and habitat destruction have led to salmon population declines of up to 90% in recent years. Even shark experts I've interviewed have commented about declines experienced by these essential, yet lower-on-the-food-chain, fish. It will be interesting to see if conservation measures can match the growing demand by multiple animals, including humans and now wolves.

If you watch the below two videos, you'll see how fishing can trump hunting. If the bison pack had come to the poor female's aid, all of that wolf stalking energy would've been lost.