Quite the impressive carnivore lineup lives in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the U.S. Rockies, and sitting on top of its dominance hierarchy, mostly undisputed, are the grizzly bear and the gray wolf. The balance of power between these two – the one bringing great size, strength, and irascibility to the table, the other enjoying strength of numbers and team-player coordination – may tilt one way or the other depending on a given situation.
An example of a run-in going in the wolf’s favour was caught on film this past October. Adam Brubaker, who guides in the Greater Yellowstone with his company Tied to Nature, captured the footage in the northern Hayden Valley, a broad basin just about in the heart of Yellowstone National Park.
In a roughly three-minute clip Brubaker posted online, a good-sized grizzly bear is seen eyeing wolves of the large Wapiti Lake Pack in the Hayden’s sage-strung grassland. (The Wapiti Lakes wolves, by the way, grabbed headlines last March when they made an extended cameo – interfacing with some bison in the process – on Yellowstone’s Old Faithful webcam.)
he bruin rears on its hind legs to nab a better look, then works its way towards the milling-about wolves (to the audible consternation of onlookers watching alongside Brubaker). Once the canids spot the griz, they rush out to confront it. Finding itself surrounded, the grizzly wheels about in a vain attempt to face off the pack, but before too long the darting in-and-out wolves usher the intruder off in a rolling rout. The video ends with the grizzly taking refuge in lodgepole timber, watching the wolves as they cluster together with wagging tails – looking something like a puffed-up football team that came out on top of the scoreboard.
Douglas Smith, Yellowstone National Park senior wildlife biologist and head of the Yellowstone Wolf Program, told East Idaho News that the ravens that can be seen flapping about in Brubaker’s reel suggested there was likely a wolf kill in the vicinity, and he suspect the grizzly was attempting to usurp the carcass. Grizzlies often successfully pirate kills from wolves, but a pack rarely yields without some resistance – and, furthermore, wolves will also readily try to pilfer meat from bears.
“The footage depicts ‘classic’ wolf-bear interaction behavior and is not uncommon to the two species,” Smith said in the article. He noted that such encounters tend to be a matchup between the grizzly’s superior strength and the wolves’ superior numbers and speed, but – as in this incident – aren’t often actually violent. Such routines “are almost ‘ritualized’ or perfunctory,” he said. “Meaning the wolves – like mosquitos – are just harassing the bear out of an area they don’t want it to be.”