How Wolves Actually Hunt

Send a wolf pack after a healthy adult elk and eight or nine times out of ten it walks away with nothing. A wolf is slower than most of what it eats, lighter than all of it, and it cannot afford a single injury — so it never starts a fight it has to win. It sets up a situation instead, and lets the prey make the decision. This video breaks down four ways wolves hunt, why each one belongs to a different population, and the study that found the outcome of a bison hunt is determined by the bison. 0:00 The wolf that catches salmon, and the wolf that has never seen one 0:45 What a wolf actually is, physically 1:34 The chase is not the attack 2:36 What happens when the prey refuses to run 3:29 A game of chess that lasts nine hours 4:11 The line from the study that changes everything 4:35 The formation no wolf can enter 5:21 Two hunts on Ellesmere Island, and how both ended 6:02 The population that doesn't hunt at all 7:23 Where all of it falls apart 7:58 How a method goes extinct Which predator should we break down next? Tell me in the comments. Subscribe if you want more of these. Sources: Smith, Mech, Meagher, Clark, McIntyre & Phillips, Wolf-Bison Interactions in Yellowstone National Park, Journal of Mammalogy 81(4), 2000. Dan Stahler, Yellowstone Wolf Project. Darimont, Reimchen & Paquet, foraging behaviour of gray wolves on salmon streams in coastal British Columbia, 2003. L. David Mech, Possible Use of Foresight, Understanding and Planning by Wolves Hunting Muskoxen, ARCTIC 60(2), 2007. US National Park Service, Gates of the Arctic. #wolves #wolfpack #predators #animalbehavior #wildlife #huntdoctrine #yellowstone #bison #muskox #arctic #seawolves #britishcolumbia #apexpredator #natureexplained #animaltactics