{"id":224009,"date":"2025-10-25T04:22:01","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T09:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/coastal-gray-wolves-display-unexpected-hunting-behavior-with-unknown-ecosystem-impact"},"modified":"2025-10-25T04:22:01","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T09:22:01","slug":"coastal-gray-wolves-display-unexpected-hunting-behavior-with-unknown-ecosystem-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/coastal-gray-wolves-display-unexpected-hunting-behavior-with-unknown-ecosystem-impact","title":{"rendered":"Coastal gray wolves display unexpected hunting behavior with unknown ecosystem impact"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/coastal-gray-wolves-display-unexpected-hunting-behavior-with-unknown-ecosystem-impact.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, gray wolves are doing something unexpected: hunting sea otters. This surprising dietary shift appears to have notable implications for both ecosystems and wolf health, but little is known about how the predators are capturing marine prey. Patrick Bailey, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Rhode Island, is researching these understudied behaviors of gray wolves.<\/p>\n<p>Using a creative mix of approaches\u2014including wolf teeth samples and trail cameras\u2014Bailey is exploring how coastal <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/gray+wolves\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">gray wolves<\/a> are using <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/marine+resources\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">marine resources<\/a>, what this suggests about their behavioral and hunting adaptations, and how these adaptations differentiate them from other <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/wolf+populations\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">wolf populations<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>On land, gray wolves are known to play a vital ecological role because of their ability to regulate food webs. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a clear understanding of the connections between water and land <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/food+webs\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">food webs<\/a>, but we suspect that they are much more prevalent than previously understood,\u201d says Bailey, a member of Sarah Kienle\u2019s CEAL Lab in the Department of Natural Resources Science. \u201cSince wolves can alter land ecosystems so dramatically, it is possible that we will see similar patterns in aquatic habitats.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, gray wolves are doing something unexpected: hunting sea otters. This surprising dietary shift appears to have notable implications for both ecosystems and wolf health, but little is known about how the predators are capturing marine prey. Patrick Bailey, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Rhode Island, is researching [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1506,15,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-habitats","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}