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Wolves are smart creatures, there is no debate about that. They are among the best hunters in the wild, and they have been at the top of the food chain for thousands of years.
A new study published in the journal Ecology and Evolution now suggests that they have also taken a major step in their development with the ability to use tools.
Using tools is seen as a major sign if intelligence among animals as it requires complex thinking over the course of multiple steps. There is not, however, a clear definition of what is and what is not an example of using tools.
Sure, wolves aren’t out there using a screw driver to build a trap for a deer, but the study does show that at least one group of wolves is engaging in highly complex behavior in order to get their food.
It all started in 2023. People in the Indigenous Haitzaqv Nation deployed crab traps along the coast, near Bella Bella. They were hoping to catch European green crabs both as food and to control the spread of the invasive species.
When they went to check the traps, however, they saw that they had been pulled ashore and the bait had been stolen. It was assumed that this was done by an otter or other animal, but when they set up cameras in May of 2024, they got quite the surprise.
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A female wolf was caught on camera swimming out to the buoy that was tied to a submerged crab trap. She grabbed the buoy and pulled it to land, then pulled on the line until the trap came out of the water. At that point, she went right for the bait cup to eat the herring and sea lion used to attract crabs. The authors of the study write:
“This sequence appears to demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the multi-step connection between the floating buoy and the bait within the out-of-sight trap. The wolf recognized that the buoy was attached to a rope, in turn attached to an unseen trap containing edible bait. She appeared to understand that these components could be pulled in sequence to progressively retrieve the trap from the water and obtain the bait that was presumably within.”
The authors of the study argue that this shows that the wolves are operating the trap in a complex way, engaging in a multi-step process to achieve a goal that is not in sight. Others say that this is not an example of using tools since the wolves didn’t set the trap themselves. The authors, however, argue that the wolves are using the objects in their environment (in this case, the trap line) as tools, even if they didn’t set them, saying:
“By analogy, these very words were typed on a computer whose inner workings the authors do not fully understand, yet we believe (and hope) our use of them suggests that we too possess some measure of higher cognition.”
It is generally agreed that crows, for example, use tools like sticks to push food through tubes. Nobody argues that they aren’t using a tool simply because they didn’t grow the tree in order to get the stick. For all the wolves know, these traps are a natural part of the environment, and they are using them in a complex way.
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