Story By: Joseph Golder / newsX
This extraordinary footage shows a wild wolf hauling a crab trap out of the sea in what scientists have said could be its first recorded case of tool use in animals.
The female wolf was filmed emerging from the water with a buoy in her mouth before dragging a baited crab trap to shore in a remote coastal area in the Canadian province of British Columbia on 29th May 2024, with the findings published this month (November 2025).
The footage was recorded after crab traps used by an indigenous environmental programme to control invasive European green crabs had repeatedly been found damaged, emptied of bait and dragged from their position.
Motion cameras set up near some of the traps captured the wolf at mid-to-high tide carrying the buoy ashore before returning to grab the rope and haul on it.
By pulling the line, she brings the fully submerged trap to the surface, drags it into shallower water, tears at the netting, removes the bait cup and eats its contents within minutes.
Ecologist Kyle Artelle, an assistant professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and co-author of a study in the journal Ecology and Evolution, said the behaviour showed “problem-solving exactly the way humans do it”.
He said the wolf appeared to understand the link between buoy, rope, hidden trap and bait, adding that a person trying to reach the trap from shore “would have done the exact same thing”.
Another wolf in the area was later filmed pulling a line attached to a partially submerged trap that was later found on the beach with its bait cup removed. Though researchers said it was not clear if it could also retrieve fully submerged traps.
Some experts cited in reports agreed that the actions were highly sophisticated and could qualify as tool use because the animal used an external object to achieve a goal.
Others, including Central Queensland University psychology lecturer Bradley Smith. Argued it was “not a traditional or advanced example of tool use” and should probably not be defined as such.
The authors said the scenes added to growing evidence of complex cognition in canids and were made possible by year-round wildlife monitoring in the region by Indigenous Guardians working with researchers.
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