The discovery that wolves in Voyageurs National Park hunt freshwater fish came in 2017 and was reported in the Duluth News Tribune, New York Times, USA Today, National Public Radio and other outlets in 2018, when the first videos emerged.

“At that time, we thought this was a rare behavior that a few unique wolves figured out because there were no other accounts of such behavior,” the Voyageurs Wolf Project notes in the YouTube description to the montage above. “However, we have realized by studying wolves year in and year out that this behavior is not nearly as rare as we thought. Rather, the behavior very hard to document, and only occurs during ~2-3 weeks in spring (not very long!). Despite the cryptic nature of this behavior, we have documented wolves in multiple different packs fishing — and have even documented lone wolves catching fish — since our initial discovery in 2017.”

Most of the footage is from trail cameras, but some is from the first-ever camera collar put on a wild wolf. The Voyageurs Wolf Project is focused on understanding the summer ecology of wolves in the park.