WHAT BIG TEETH YOU HAVE

So said Little Red Riding Hood to the big, bad wolf.

Wolves are smart. Ask any trapper. If you want to trap a wolf you have to be smarter. Well a five-year summertime of research has taught some American researchers what trappers already know. But it’s nice to have the scientific research to back it up.

Basically wolves ambush beavers. The Voyageurs Wolf Project of Voyageurs National Park on the Minnesota-Ontario border has discovered that wolves don’t just chase their prey. The wolves study beaver travel patterns then lie in wait. The results of this study, begun in 2015, have been published in the peer-reviewed Behavioral Ecology journal.

As readers are aware, during the winter packs of wolves prey upon deer, elk and moose by running them down. This study has determined that during the summer many wolves hunt alone. It also believes that wolves are aware that beaver have poor eyesight. The researchers set up a cardboard cutout covered with the photo of a wolf and the beaver paid it no heed as recorded by their trail camera.

Beavers apparently do have a good sense of smell which the wolves seem also to know as they set the ambush downwind of where the beaver is anticipated. It seems that 90% of the ambush sites were downwind of a beaver trail indicating that the wolves adjusted their set-up based upon the direction of the wind.

Wolves sometime wait as long as 12 hours; one as long as 30. However, patience and persistence doesn’t always guarantee dinner. In fact the documented ambush sites revealed that wolves were successful less than 25% of the time.

Another discovery indicated that wolf predation on beavers impacts the entire ecosystem by keeping many beaver dams dry rather than flooding nearby forests. It also documented wolves catching fish found in streams and feeding on ripe blueberries. Move over bruins and people.