- Video captured a wolf pup running with a wooden signpost in its mouth in Yellowstone National Park.
- The adolescent wolf was one of six playing in an area where bears were eating a carcass.
- Wolf pups can be "extra mischievous" when separated from their parents.
There are debates about how wolves first started down the long path to domestication some 15,000 years ago.
Some researchers think they did it to themselves, scavenging near human camps and getting increasingly comfortable. Others think humans may have been more deliberate about it, taking pups from dens and training them to be companions from a young age.
But what if it was just fetch?
Earlier this week, a wolf researcher in Yellowstone National Park posted a video she captured of a young male member of the Junction Butte Pack — one of the largest and more visible wolf packs in the park — running across a road with what appeared to be a large wooden stick in its mouth.
No regular stick for fetch, of course, but rather something appropriately wolf-sized.
It was a full, wooden sign post — complete with a warning to stay away from bears — that the pup managed to pull up out of the ground.
Taylor Rabe, the world wildlife technician who caught the footage with both her phone and a higher quality camera, wrote that six of the pups were separated from the pack’s adults.
“This happens often, especially when the pups are interested in sticking around an area for a longer period of time,” she wrote on Instagram. “Usually it has to do with something extra smelly, like an old carcass, or maybe something really fun, like a pond full of salamanders.”
That makes sense given the sign the pup was playing with alluded to just such an element in the area.
“This is a closure sign from Yellowstone’s Bear Management team that was set up to warn visitors to stay out of an area due to an active carcass with grizzly bears on it,” Rabe wrote. “Clearly this pup had better things to do with it 🥹 ."
The distance from their elders, Rabe pointed out, will often lead to the young wolves, which are nearly a year old now, to behave in “extra mischievous” ways.
Are wolves having a moment?
The legal battles of wolves in America continue with past efforts to protect them facing off against legislative action that would remove various species classification as “endangered.”
There are several bills working their ways through Congress that would reduce protections for wolves in the contiguous United States.
Earlier this year, the Pet and Livestock Protection Act introduced by Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wisc., passed the House and is sitting in the Senate. It would remove Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves.
“The science is crystal clear on this issue: gray wolves should no longer be on the endangered species list,” Boebert said in a statement.
“We can no longer put farmers and ranchers in harm’s way by using taxpayer dollars to protect a species that has been fully recovered and that is destroying their livestock. It is time for the federal government to get out of the way and allow state and tribal wildlife agencies to manage this species.”
Some research, though, shows that there is broad support for wolves to keep their protections. One study done by Michigan Technological University — there is a large population of gray wolves in the Midwest — found that 78% of Americans want the wolves to retain their status under the Endangered Species Act.
The Enhancing Safety for Animals was put together by Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., would limit protections for the Mexican gray wolf. The bill advanced through the House Natural Resources Committee and awaits a vote in the full House.
No one knows how or if the wolf pulled the closure sign out of the ground, but the video is clear that the pup successfully crossed the road and was on its way back to its parents. With a little space and comfort to play, however, Rabe wrote, it “found this really fun, and interesting toy as he made his way through the valley.”