I was reading a wikipeida article about the Wolverine and it says
The wolverine is, like most mustelids, remarkably strong for its size. It has been known to kill prey as large as moose, although most typically when these are weakened by winter or caught in snowbanks.
I mean a wolverine is between 50 and 90 pounds, and a female moose is generally over 800 pounds.
I find this hard to believe a wolverine could do much damage to a moose, unless the moose was totally on it’s deathbed to begin with.
I think wolverines generally take weakened moose and calves. It’s surprising what an animal can do if hungry enough. I didn’t think lions would bother full grown elephants, but if they are hungry enough they will try and take one down.
As I’ve mentioned before, I once saw a film of a pack of wolves attacking a moose. It was the sorriest spectacle I’ve ever seen. None of this leaping pack of lean, sinewy hunters with glowi ng eyes selectively attacking its unexpecting prey and harrowing it from a hundred points. The wolves looked like a pack of suburban dogs huddling together atop a small rise over the river in which the moose was unconcernedly wading. They looked as if they’d been told that, if they brought down this one moose, they could go back to their comfortable doghouses. Every so often the huddled pack would manage to jostle one of its down down the rise and into the water, where he’d make a desperate little lunge to try and nip at the moose-s legs (and hope to eventually hamstring it, I suppose). But it wasn’t a very effective lunge, and the moose angrily drove the wolf off. The wolf ran to the back of the line atop the ridge, hoping to eventually push anothere wolf off the eminence so that someone else could lunge at the Moose foot, and risk getting killed by those antlers.
I don’t know why the moose stayed. If it swam to the other side of the river, or just wandered further away from the rise, the miserable wolves would have a harder time of it. After a few minutes of this the captioning explained that the wolves eventually brought the moose down. But it was kind of hard to believe. Sometimes “Nature, red in tooth and claw” is, as advertised, flashy and efficient, but I suspect an awful lot of it is dull, boring, long wear-them-down routine. Maybe, after 24 hours of this, the moose loses concentration and is sleepy, and the massed, hungry, miserable wolves have a fighting change to nip it sufficiently. If so, I suspect wolverines taking down a moose could do it , in concert, in the same way.
I’ve had two encounters with wolverines. In the first, it was observing a large, light colored wolverine circling a protective mother moose trying to get at her calf. The calf was far from newborn, I’m guessing four to five months old. We were in a helicopter above, otherwise I’d have sat transfixed for how many hours it would have taken to see the drama’s resolution.
In the second, a caribou came past us, limping and constantly looking over its shoulder. Knowing something was stalking it, we loaded our guns and waited. Shortly, a dark coated wolvering came ‘loping’ over the tundra. Seeing us (two adults), he came over to investigate and I finally had to fire a shot over his head when he got too close. He then resumed the path the caribou had taken in a steady, deliberate pursuit.
I’m going to assume whatever they lack in size they more than make up for in fearlessness and relentless determination.
The Management apologizes. The Døper who made this post has been sacked.
astro, watching that video of the lions attacking the baby elephant, I kept thinking “Ouch ouch ouch ouch OUCH!” If I were the elephant, I’d roll over hard a couple of times. Smoosh a few lions, they won’t be quite so eager to nibble on you.
I just can’t imagine what the mechanism of death would be. I’m sure a wolverine’s jaws couldn’t do much damage to the (well-protected with muscle) throat of a moose.
Would the wolverine just scratch the shit out of the moose and wait for it to die of infection?
See my post about the wolves. It’s not entirely facetious. I’ll bet wolverines would have the same MO – hamstring the Moose (hamstrings are easy to reach; throats aren’t) and wait for it to expire from lack of food; or at least then, when it lays or kneels down you can can reach the throat and other parts, and it can’t get away.
