WOLVES Did the IMPOSSIBLE on an Alaskan Island in 2013 — What Came Next STUNNED Scientists...
In the spring of 2013, a small pack of wolves swam through the icy waters of Icy Strait in southeast Alaska to reach Pleasant Island, a 20-square-mile uninhabited island roughly 40 miles west of Juneau. Within two years they had wiped out the island's Sitka black-tailed deer population — and instead of swimming back to the mainland or starving, they did something no land predator in the recorded history of wildlife biology had ever done before. They started hunting sea otters. By 2017, sea otters made up 57% of their diet. The 2023 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr. Gretchen Roffler of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and Dr. Taal Levi of Oregon State University documented one of the most remarkable behavioral adaptations ever observed in a large mammal. But here's the twist — the same adaptation that saved the wolves may now be slowly killing them. In late 2020, a four-year-old female wolf was found dead in her den. Tissue analysis at the University of Calgary revealed mercury concentrations 278 times higher than wolves from interior Alaska — levels comparable to polar bears. The mercury comes from coal-burning power plants thousands of miles away, settling into the ocean, accumulating in shellfish, concentrating in sea otters, and ending up in the wolves of Pleasant Island. How does an apex predator survive when its food source is poisoned by industries it has nothing to do with? Drop your thoughts in the comments — I read every one. Subscribe for more stories like this one. #wolves #alaska #seaotters #PleasantIsland #wildlife #MarinePredators #evolution #conservation #wildlifeadaptations #AlaskanWildlife #pacificnorthwest #wildlifedocumentary #mercurypoisoning #predatorprey #EdmundHale
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