Why Bears Are Terrified of Wolverines

In about an hour and a half, a wolverine called M3 climbed roughly 1,500 metres straight up Mount Cleveland in Glacier National Park. An animal the size of a medium dog. In the same mountains lives a grizzly twenty times heavier. So why do bears step aside for it at a carcass? We look at the largest land-living member of the weasel family, Gulo gulo, and at every way a grizzly could deal with it: fight it, steal its food, outlast it in winter or chase it down. Thick loose skin, a sideways molar for frozen meat, snowshoe paws, frost-resistant fur and food caches that work like freezers. We follow M56's 800-kilometre walk to Colorado, the Lake Tahoe wolverine, Olaus Magnus's glutton of 1555, the Innu trickster Kuekuatsheu and the trappers' devil. Then the real threat: trapping, a few hundred left in the lower 48, the 2023 threatened listing, and snow dens that need snow into May. And the twist: in winter, the mountain belongs to the wolverine, until the snow runs out. Chapters: 0:00 Intro 1:22 Just a weasel? 2:02 Gulo gulo, the glutton 3:13 What if the bear fights it? 4:33 What if the bear takes its food? 5:45 What if the bear waits for winter? 7:23 What if the bear chases it? 8:00 M56: 800 km on foot 8:53 It's not the teeth, it's the math 9:52 Legends, tricksters and trappers 11:21 What's real and what isn't 12:04 The real threat 12:58 Born under the snow 14:24 The twist 15:19 Is there any good news? 15:41 Next: prehistoric eagles Sources: Douglas Chadwick, The Wolverine Way (2010) Copeland et al., "The bioclimatic envelope of the wolverine (Gulo gulo)", Canadian Journal of Zoology (2010) Packila et al., "Long-distance wolverine dispersal from Wyoming to historic range in Colorado", Northwest Science (2017) U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, final rule listing the North American wolverine as threatened (2023) Olaus Magnus, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (1555) #wolverine #grizzly #wildlifedocumentary