Wolf – Page 3 – Syndication Server

Watch: Yellowstone wolf bites grizzly bear in the butt

A Yellowstone National Park tourist on Saturday captured video footage showing a wolf repeatedly biting a grizzly bear in the rear.

A Yellowstone National Park tourist on Saturday captured video footage showing a wolf repeatedly biting a grizzly bear’s butt.

The distant footage, captured by Gary Gaston in the northern portion of the park, also reveals a bear whose best defense seems simply to sit and become less vulnerable against the quicker wolf.

Gaston told FTW Outdoors that there was a large animal carcass – “probably an elk” – in a nearby thicket, which explains the presence of wolves, bears, and ravens in the same area.

“The bear sat down after it was bitten, then as soon as the wolf walked away it did too,” Gaston said.

As Gaston noted on Facebook, the footage was captured at daybreak at Crystal Creek near Slough Creek. “Crazy wolves, these,” he joked.

–Wolf image courtesy of Yellowstone National Park

Watch: Yellowstone bison rescue calf from wolves on the attack

Guests on a Yellowstone National Park nature tour Saturday witnessed a dramatic predation attempt by wolves on a bison calf that escaped thanks to its larger herd mates.

The accompanying footage, featured on Facebook by Yellowstone Wolf Tracker, shows wolves from the Junction Butte Pack stalking and sprinting after a bison calf that exhibits remarkable speed and agility.

The pace is so frenetic that at one point the smaller bison is nearly trampled by adult bison as they maneuver in an attempt to fend off the wolves. Ultimately, the bison herd tightens ranks and the wolves have little choice but to abandon the hunt.

Yellowstone Wolf Tracker wrote: “We had an exciting morning of wolf watching in Yellowstone today as several members of the Junction Butte Pack tried to take down a bison calf. After the adults ran them off they gave up the chase and went back to the rest of the pack.”

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A post shared by Michelle Holihan (@mtnmichelle)

The footage was captured by Yellowstone Wolf Tracker guide Michelle Holihan and we’ve included her Instagram post showing a shorter version of the chase.

Yellowstone is home to nearly 100 wolves, which prey on a variety of animals, including elk, deer, and bison. They’re most active at dawn and dusk.

The Junction Butte Pack resides in the northern portion of the park.

–Image courtesy of Michelle Holihan

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Yellowstone wolf, alone and injured, shows true grit against coyotes

A lone gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park was hungry and alone, but to feed on a bison carcass meant contending with a pack of coyotes. Video footage shows the confrontation.

A gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park was hungry and alone—and worse, it was nursing an injured front leg, making it difficult to hunt for food.

Fortunately, it tracked down a bison carcass. Unfortunately, a pack of coyotes stood in its way.

With camera in hand, Ron Sterbenz of Yellowstone Video documented the dilemma the lone wolf faced and captured it in video about 1 mile northeast of Elk Creek in the northern tier of Yellowstone.

“He really could no longer hunt and wasn’t near any wolf pack that we could spot,” Sterbenz told USA Today/For The Win Outdoors. “Usually, a wolf can easily dispatch a coyote with a bite, but a lone injured wolf against a pack of coyotes, the odds were now in the coyotes’ favor. This wolf weighed his odds and took the chance to eat.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BFYHFo1z58

Sterbenz had located a bison that had died and was thinking he’d be watching a couple of coyotes and maybe a grizzly bear return to the carcass.

He started watching at 8:17 a.m. and heard howling around 8:30. Nineteen minutes later, the wolf appeared as three coyotes were taking turns feeding on the bison. As the wolf approached, the coyotes attempted to attack it several times, but the wolf successfully defended itself before getting to the carcass.

Sterbenz told For The Win Outdoors the wolf ate for about 15 minutes before moving on.

“We were all rooting for him since we know if a wolf can’t hunt due to an injury it needs to find food somehow or it, too, is doomed,” Sterbenz told For The Win Outdoors. “I did not hear if anyone knew how this wolf was injured and I checked the daily reporting and no one posted a comment.

Also on FTW Outdoors: Momma bear in Yellowstone has ‘paws full’ with misbehaving cub

“After watching him feed safely and then just walking away un-harassed, we knew it bought itself a few more days to survive in Yellowstone. Being alone is bad, alone and injured is even worse, but alone, injured and pack of coyotes nipping at your butt is about as bad as it gets for a wolf.”

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How many wolves can you spot in these photos?

Zoologist Roland Kays on Sunday tweeted a trail-cam image showing members of a Michigan wolf pack in the darkness and asked his followers how many animals they could spot.

Zoologist Roland Kays on Sunday tweeted an image showing members of a Michigan wolf pack in the darkness and asked followers how many animals they could spot.

We’re asking the same question, using the same trail-cam image and two others that show a different number of wolves (see immediately below).

Can you spot the wolves in all three images? (Answers are provided at the end of the post, with red circles showing animals that aren’t as clearly visible.)

The images were captured on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula via motion-sensor cameras monitored by Diana Lafferty, Assistant Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Northern Michigan University.

The top image was captured in September 2020; the other two were captured in 2019.

They show members of the Echo Lake wolf pack, which inhabits a territory that spans about 30 square miles across wilderness and rural communities near Marquette, Mich.

The five-member pack hunts as a social unit and preys on white-tailed deer and smaller mammals.

The top image was captured as part of an ongoing trail-cam research project run by NMU Master’s student Tru Hubbard and Lafferty.

Kays, in his Twitter post, tagged Snapshot USA, a collaborative camera-trapping project he leads at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, along with Bill McShea of the Smithsonian Institution and researchers from other states.

Below are the answers (five wolves in the first image, four in the last two) and we apologize if the animals were too easy to spot.