Incredible Footage May Be First Evidence Wild Wolves Have Figured Out How To Use Tools

Incredible footage from British Columbia shows what may be the first ever instance of tool use by wild wolves. In the recordings, two wolves can be seen pulling on crab trap lines in order to access tasty bait, and while this behavior clearly shows a sophisticated level of cognition, there is some debate over whether it strictly counts as tool use.

The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The behavior was first detected in 2023, when Indigenous Haíɫzaqv Nation guardians deployed the traps along the coast near Bella Bella in an effort to control a European green crab invasion. Baited with herring and sea lion, the traps soon began showing signs of having been raided and damaged by an unknown animal. 

Because some of the traps were completely submerged in deep water, aquatic creatures like pinnipeds or otters were initially considered the most likely culprits. That was until camera traps were installed between May 28 and May 30, 2024, revealing something truly unexpected.

On May 29, a female wolf was filmed swimming out to a buoy attached to a submerged crab trap and dragging the line to shore. The animal then dropped the buoy and continued to pull the line up the beach until the trap emerged from the water, at which point she targeted the bait cup and gulped down its contents.

“This sequence appears to demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the multi-step connection between the floating buoy and the bait within the out-of-sight trap,” write the authors of a new study about the incident. For instance, they explain that “the wolf recognized that the buoy was attached to a rope, in turn attached to an unseen trap containing edible bait. She appeared to understand that these components could be pulled in sequence to progressively retrieve the trap from the water and obtain the bait that was presumably within.”

The researchers have yet to witness another wolf retrieving a fully hidden crab trap, although a second video captured on February 15, 2025, shows a wolf pulling on the line of a partially submerged trap. According to the authors, this behavior probably hints at a “causal understanding” and can be described as “unwaveringly purposeful,” although it’s unclear if these actions meet the definition of tool use.

After all, despite operating a utensil in a complex way, the wolves themselves were not responsible for producing “the proper and effective orientation between the tool and the incentive.” In other words, they didn’t lay the traps, but merely pulled on a rope, and therefore can’t technically be credited with using a tool.

However, the researchers go on to suggest that the sophistication of this particular type of rope-pulling should be recognized as something special, and that perhaps the behavior could be classed as tool use after all.

It’s currently unclear how the animals picked up this impressive skill, although the study authors suggest that they may have learned how to use the crab traps by watching humans operate them. Alternatively, they may have been able to smell the bait, and figured out how to access it via a process of trial and error.

And while the wolves may not know how to construct or lay a crab trap, the researchers insist that their ability to make use of them should be considered as evidence for their remarkable intelligence. “By analogy, these very words were typed on a computer whose inner workings the authors do not fully understand, yet we believe (and hope) our use of them suggests that we too possess some measure of higher cognition,” they write.

The study is published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.