Wolves prefer fishing to hunting

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It is easier for the wolves to catch salmon than track deer

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7595112.stm

Wolves prefer fishing to hunting

Wolves in western Canada prefer to fish for salmon when it is in season rather than hunt deer or other wild game, researchers have found.

Scientists studied the eating habits of wolf packs in British Columbia.

Deer is the staple food of the wolves in the spring and summer but they often injure themselves hunting them.

When Pacific salmon return to the region's rivers to spawn in the autumn, the wolves prefer the taste of the more nutritious and easier to catch fish.

The researchers studied the droppings and hair of eight wolf groups over four years to discover what they ate.

They had expected the wolves to switch to salmon only if deer were in short supply but this was not the case.

"Selecting benign prey such as salmon makes sense from a safety point of view," wrote Dr Chris Darimont, from the University of Victoria, BC, and his colleagues in the journal BMC Ecology.

"While hunting deer, wolves commonly incur serious and often fatal injuries," the researchers said, adding that salmon fishing is much less time consuming than tracking deer in the forest.

"In addition to safety benefits, we determined that salmon also provides enhanced nutrition over deer, especially in fat and energy."
 
I'm sure that if they were having to eat salmon every day for the entire year though, they'd be chasing down and killing the first fawns they stumbled across in the spring too.

Even wild animals like a little variety in their diet.
 
When you think of the energy they spend on chasing deer, it only makes sense that they rather stand in a stream and chomp on the first salmon that swims by.

I was told Atlantic salmon is better tasting then Pacific, any opinions?
 
lone-wolf said:
I was told Atlantic salmon is better tasting then Pacific, any opinions?
Click to expand...

Just tonight I ate some white fleshed spring salmon (much better than the red fleshed variety IMO) I caught off of Sooke last month. I wouldn't say it is "better" than wild atlantic but it is different. I prefer my Atlantic as cold smoked or gravlax anyway.

I would say springs and cohos are the equivalent of Atlantic, sockeye is really good but a little dry if not cooked perfectly (I usually cold smoke it for that reason), Pinks are OK and I make salmon candy out of them. Chum? I never ate one that I caught myself so I won't offer an opinion as I never truly trust bought fish.

Now if we're talking farmed Atlantics then the wild coho and springs are much superior to them.
 
National Geograpic

National Geographic on the same topic.

A wolf hurries from the water with a salmon in its mouth in Canada's Great Bear Rainforest

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080903-wolves-salmon.html

080903-wolves-salmon_big.jpg

Wolves Prefer Salmon to Deer?
Anne Minard
for National Geographic News

September 3, 2008

Move over, grizzly bears. "Fishing wolves" in coastal British Columbia are also looking to snatch some salmon, and will eat the fish almost exclusively when they are available, new research reveals.

Biologists analyzed years of data from gray wolves' feces to monitor what the animals were eating.

The team found that the coastal predators, like many other wolves, rely on deer most of the time in the spring and summer.

But during several months in the fall, the wolves ignored deer to focus on migrating salmon.

"What is unusual is this huge seasonal shift to salmon. They were forgoing deer to target salmon," said study leader Chris Darimont at the University of Victoria in Canada.

Study co-author Thomas Reimchen added in a press release that the results are as much about salmon as about wolves.

"Salmon continue to surprise us, showing us new ways in which their oceanic migrations eventually permeate entire terrestrial ecosystems," he said.

"In terms of providing food and nutrients to a whole food web, we like to think of them as North America's answer to the Serengeti's wildebeest."

Seafood Buffet

Researchers already knew that wolves occasionally eat salmon, because biologists have found evidence of the fish in wolf droppings and had even seen the wolves fishing.

But the "comfortable, orthodox" theory, Darimont said, is that wolves are first and foremost linked to populations of ungulates—four-legged, hoofed mammals such as elk and deer.

"I would say it's pretty much central to most of the wolf literature," he said.

Even the authors believed salmon would be an alternative prey, reserved for times when deer were scarce.

Darimont said he and his team were "absolutely shocked" to find that the wolves seemed to prefer salmon in the fall, when the fish are migrating upstream to spawn.

"The deer are there," he said. "They could persist on deer."

Ecologically speaking, Darimont is most excited about the fact that the wolves' food choice is driven by the abundance of salmon, not the scarcity of deer. On reflection, he added, this strategy makes good sense.

"[Salmon is] safe, it's nutritious, it's spatially constrained. This buffet from the sea comes to them. They don't have to search dozens of kilometers for deer. And it's predictable. Those are some awesome qualities in a resource."

The study, which was published online this week in the open-access journal BMC Ecology, was partially funded by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration.

(National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)

Relics of the Past?

David Mech is a research biologist whose 40-plus-year investigation of wolves in the Great Lakes region (see map) helped fuel the predominant theory that wolves and ungulates are inextricably connected.

Mech said he found the new results interesting but not surprising.

"I would call it more of an exception," he wrote in an email. "This is certainly not the first exception reported."

Mech pointed out that, in the Arctic, wolves often prey on Arctic hares, particularly in the summer. And in Ontario, Canada, wolves have depended on beavers when ungulates were scarce.

"On [Lake Superior's] Isle Royale last year or the previous, wolves ate a lot of apples, as reported by Rolf Peterson," he said, referring to another well-known wolf expert.

"I consider these trite exceptions to the generalization that most of the time, wolves—and even Darimont's wolves—are dependent on ungulates," Mech said.

Still, Darimont sees British Columbia's fishing wolves as relics of a time when the association between wolves and prey other than deer was much more mainstream.

"People forget, but it wasn't too long ago when both salmon and wolves co-occurred over much, much greater portions of North America and even Europe. This fishing wolf would have existed from southern California up to Alaska," he said.

Wolves' fishing behavior was noted in the journals of Lewis and Clark and other early North American naturalists, he said.

"It's like we're stepping back in time and being able to observe how this predator-prey system would have worked and existed all the way down the coast of North America."

Salmon Threats

Darimont, who is also affiliated with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, worries that today's wolf-salmon association is imperiled.

"There's this huge biomass of energy and nutrients"—salmon—"heading back to reproduce for future generations, basically serving a whole ecosystem, feeding bears wolves, songbirds, insects," he said.

But highly efficient coastal fishing boats may take 90 percent of fish before they make it up the river to spawn, he said.

"In the context of conservation, if we are interested in the maintenance of this incredible resource, then we ought to seriously reduce exploitation levels."

Darimont said he personally avoids farmed salmon, because the process threatens natural populations with disease. (Related: "Farmed Salmon Decimating Wild Salmon Worldwide" [February 12, 2008].)

As for wild-caught salmon, he said, "consider that every bite of salmon you take, that's one less for wolves and songbirds … and many of these animals don't have options."
 
:rolleyes:As for wild-caught salmon, he said, "consider that every bite of salmon you take, that's one less for wolves and songbirds … and many of these animals don't have options.":jerkit:

Under that way of thinking, every breath we take is less oxygen for the animals too. Wolves obviously, as stated, have the option of deer. This just gives a more compelling reason to keep wolves in check IMO. They not only screw the hunting but the fishing too.
 
Maybe east coast wolves like salmon also?Labor Day weekend my bud and I did a 20km overnight canoing/salmon fishing trip on the headwaters of the Mirimachi near Juniper,NB.Seen and photoed wolf tracks on a remote riverbank,a rare treat in NB where there are "officially" no wolves?
 
I have watched wolves hunt salmon in a pool on a slough, of course they will eat salmon, good food and no sharp hoofs to worry about.
 
Wolves are opportunistic !

Spawning salmon represent qulity feed - abundant fat & protein with virtually no energy expended. Bears & wolves aren't the only species to benefit from the annual west-coast windfall.
 
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