A camera collar gives an inside look at a wolf's world.
Wolves have been making a spectacular comeback here in North America over the last 20 or 30 years. The predators were once hunted nearly to extinction and have no re-established foot holds in many of the areas of their former native range. One of those areas is the Voyageurs Ecosystem in Minnesota.
It is there that the University of Minnesota is working on a research project to better understand the unique habits of these animals. One of the ways they are accomplishing this is with a project to monitor the animals via the use of GPS-equipped collars.
They have also taken things one step further by adding a small camera to the collar. The researchers have already uploaded one piece of unique footage to their YouTube channel. This collar footage gives a firsthand look at life through the eyes of a wolf on an average day.
This was fascinating to watch. The researcher's notes on the video note that this animal, known as V089, is a lone wolf without a pack. According to the project, they had only documented wolves fishing once from a completely different pack. This footage clearly shows that many wolves are quite proficient in catching fish as it killed and ate at least three fish during this experiment.
"Based on the amount of time this wolf spent in this spot, it is clear this wolf killed more than 3 fish. However, the collar only took videos for 30 seconds at the beginning of every hour of daylight meaning we only got 7 minutes of video footage each day (14 hr of daylight x 30 second per hour). 7 minutes of footage a day is not that much. Luckily, we still captured some really neat stuff," the description reads.
The project's website notes that they especially interested in learning about the habits of wolves during the summer months. More specifically, they want to understand more about what they hunt and what they kill and when.
No matter your position on wolves, whether you love them or hate them, the footage is fascinating to watch and gives an inside look into one of the most famous predators in all of North America.
For more outdoor content from Travis Smola, be sure to follow him on Twitter and check out his Geocaching and Outdoors with Travis YouTube channels.
