Swedish study seeks to understand what wild wolves eat
What kind of prey do wild wolves eat while out on the prowl? That’s a question researchers in Sweden are trying to answer by feeding captive wolves a controlled diet.
At Järvzoo, in the town of Järvsö, central Sweden, researchers fed a pack of captive wolves just one type of meat at a time – moose, deer, reindeer. Then they collected and will test the carnivores’ droppings in a lab to hopefully develop a DNA profile from it that could give them a clearer picture of what kind of diets wild wolves in Sweden have.
Scientists hope the DNA profiles gathered from the wolf scat at the zoo will help them analyze more than 6,000 scat samples collected over the past 15 years or longer from wild wolves in Sweden.
Related stories from around the North:
Canada: Northern Canadians want caribou calving grounds protected, WWF says, Radio Canada International
Finland: Finland’s wolf population up 10 percent, Yle News
Norway: Polar bear shot dead after attacking person on Svalbard, The Independent Barents Observer
Russia: Walruses attack, sink small navy craft in Arctic Russia, The Independent Barents Observer
Sweden: Sweden’s wolf numbers slide, illegal hunting blamed, Radio Sweden
