Red in tooth and claw! Shocking trail cam clip shows bear and wolf BOTH attack moose and her calf as they walk through Alaskan wilderness at night
- Shocking footage shows the moment that a bear and a wolf appear to join forces to ambush a moose and her calf
Cameras equipped with censors captured the shocking moment in which a bear and wolf appear to team-up in order to ambush a moose and her calf in the Alaska wilderness.
The incident occurred in three million acre Glacier Bay National Park close to the community of Gustavus in the southern part of the state on the night of August 28, according to the Department of Fish and Game.
The footage begins with the moose and her calf walking through the brush when a brown bear launches an attack from the left. The mother lunges back with a dropkick to deflect the bear away from her offspring.
That’s when a wolf appears from behind the bear and pursues the now unguarded calf.
‘Witness the intense moment when prey and predators come face-to-face in this clip! This camera was perfectly positioned along a popular animal travel corridor, giving us a front-row seat to Mother Nature’s drama,’ Alaska officials wrote in a Facebook post.
‘It’s this fantastic, phenomenal dynamic going on in wild Alaska that makes this place so special,’ conservationist Rick Steiner told Live Science upon seeing the clip.
The clip begins with the moose grooming her offspring
Eventually a bear lunged forward at the pair prompting the mother to react, sending the calf off screen
While the two brawled, a wolf emerged from the darkness and pursued the calf
One Facebook commenter wrote: ‘Dang. Bears and wolves working together??’
‘It does look coordinated… but impossible to now for sure,’ the Alaska Department of Fish and Game replied.
Steiner told Live Science that ‘the bear was certainly aware of the wolf; the wolf was certainly aware of the bear.’
He added that it’s likely that the wolf was ‘shadowing’ the brown bear along with other wolves who are not seen in the video.
In the battle between the moose and bear, Steiner said: ‘I’d put my money on the moose in that one.’ He added that after fending off the bear, the moose would have gone after her calf where she would be the favorite again.
‘An adult moose is a formidable adversary for anything,’ he said.
The wolf and the brown bear are natural predators of the moose. The steered animals are considered wolves’ primary food source.
It’s not clear what fate befell the two moose.
The cameras were set up as part of a study on the wolves’ predatory behavior in the park.
According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, there are between 7,000 and 11,000 wolves in the state. Most live in packs of between 20 and 30 with a hierarchy.
Brown bears on the other hand are generally sole hunters, the main exception for this is when they hunt with the mother of their cubs. There are 30,000 bears in Alaska, around 98 percent of the national population of bears in the US.
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