Is This The First Recorded Use of a Tool by a Wild Wolf?

Crab traps along the coast of British Columbia started showing mysterious damage. What was going on?

First tool use by wild wolf?

The Heiltsuk Nation, an Indigenous group, had set them up to capture destructive, invasive European green crabs. Sometimes the traps were destroyed. Other times their nets had been torn. Whoever raided the traps always went after the plastic bait cups, which held bits of herring or sea lion carcass. It looked like the work of wolves or bears, but many of the compromised traps stayed submerged during the low tide, so maybe sea otters?

To find out, scientists, in partnership with the Heiltsuk Guardians, a group that monitors the territory and conducts their own research, set up a camera pointed at an underwater crab trap in May 2024. The camera captured a wolf nabbing bait from a crab trap. In a new study describing this behaviour in the journal Ecology and Evolution, the researchers suggest that the incident might be the first reported tool use by a wild wolf.

Whilst there is no dispute as to the use of tools by chimps (see "exceedingly rare" footage of a chimp using a tool), NatGeo says that there is disagreement in the scientific community about whether the wolf’s crab trap hack counts as tool use. Some argue that the creature has to fashion the tool itself for it to qualify as “tool use.” But humans use tools, such as computers, that they don’t personally build.

You decide. Here's a video that shows what the wolves have been up to....