Voyageurs Wolf Project captures video of wolf hunting fish in Northern Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - A University of Minnesota and Voyageurs National Park project tracked wolves in northern Minnesota, providing scientists with valuable data on the species.

This week, the Voyageurs Wolf Project released a video of one of the tracked wolves doing something unusual.

The video shows a wolf in the "Bowman Bay" pack hunting freshwater fish.

"Most people think of the wolves as predators that only kill large mammals like moose and deer, but this new UMN research published in Mammalian Biology shows that wolves are highly adaptable predators capable of finding unique food sources," said the U of M in a research brief Thursday.

In fact, the U of M says the Bowman Bay pack spent 43-63 percent of its time hunting fish.

"While fish were not the primary prey over the course of the summer, they were clearly an important food source," the brief said.

PACK MENTALITY

Each wolf has a GPS collar that tracks seven packs every 20 minutes. This gives the U of M more details into the territory of each pack and their behaviors.

What researchers found, besides the fact that one pack hunted fish, was that these packs have clearly-defined territories.

The GPS collars showed 68,000 recorded locations that prove the packs have distinct boundaries with very little overlap.