B.C.’s Heiltsuk First Nation could not figure out how the traps they had set near Bella Bella to catch the invasive green crabs were being damaged.
So they decided to set up cameras in 2024 to try and solve the mystery.
“Our crews came in and said that, you know, something had been pulling our crab traps and taking the bait,” William Housty, director of the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department in Bella Bella told Global News.
“You normally picture a human being with two hands pulling a crab trap, but we couldn’t figure out exactly what had the ability to be able to do that until we put a camera up and saw, well, there’s other intelligent beings out there that are able to do this, which is very remarkable.”
The cameras captured a sea wolf emerging from the water with a buoy hanging from its mouth.
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The wolf then picked up a line attached to the buoy, pulled a crab trap out of the water and ate the bait inside.
“Our crew have gone through hundreds of bait traps, you know, trying to catch these green crabs and getting intercepted by this pack of wolves, so it’s quite remarkable that they’ve been able to pick up on and be able to do it,” Housty said.
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Kyle Artelle, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in New York, said they first noticed the crab traps in deep water were also being targeted.
“Bears and wolves do swim, but as far as we know, they don’t dive,” he said.
Artelle said when they saw the camera footage of the wolves, they couldn’t believe it.
“Not that we couldn’t believe that a wolf was that intelligent, but we never imagined we were going to be seeing a wolf doing what we see here.”
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He said it could be the first evidence of possible tool use by the animals, depending on how people define tool use.
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“What it is is very sophisticated behaviour,” he said. “What we see is a wolf who is bringing a float to shore, she can’t see the traps there, but she brings the float to shore, she knows that float is attached to a rope, she pulls on the rope, it’s attached to a trap, if she pulls that in sequence she can bring the trap to within her reach, then she can bring the trap to shore and then based on that she can access the bait within.”
“It’s the kind of behaviour that is really familiar to us,” he added. “She is solving the problem the same way that we would.”
Artelle said they don’t know how the wolves learned to pull in the crab traps to get to the bait, but they do believe it is one wolf pack and they may be learning from each other.
Housty said the Heiltsuk Nation has had to adjust its strategy to continue to try and catch the invasive crabs and keep the bait away from the wolves.
“It’s almost like a daily chess game with our crew and the wolves out there and how we are going to get around them today,” he said.
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