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See how this wolf steals fish, a new discovery of animals using tools

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Monday, November 17, 2025

The wolf seemed to know exactly what she was doing.She dove into the water, fetched a fishing float and brought it to shore. She then waded back in and tugged on a rope connected to the float. She pulled and backed up, pulled and backed up, until a crab trap emerged. When it was within easy reach, she tore it open and consumed the bait inside.Subscribe for unlimited access to The PostYou can cancel anytime.SubscribeThe scene, caught on camera on the coast of British Columbia in May 2024, may be the first documented instance of a wild wolf using a tool, according to the scientists who published the footage in the journal Ecology and Evolution on Monday.Although the intelligence of wolves is well known, the discovery adds to an expanding list of animals capable of manipulating tools to forage for food, a trait once thought to be unique to humans.“It’s not a surprise they have the capacity to do this,” said Kyle Artelle, an ecologist with the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry who published the footage. “Yet our jaw dropped when we saw the video.”The discovery also solved a mystery.People of the Heiltsuk Nation in central British Columbia had been puzzled about what was foiling their efforts to capture invasive green crabs along their shores.The crabs are a real problem — they eat through eelgrass that harbors marine life and they devastate the native clam, herring and salmon populations the tribe relies on for food. But the traps people were setting with herring and other bait kept getting damaged. Sometimes, there were just minor tears in the nets. Other times, the entire trap was torn to shreds.Some of the traps were set so deep that, at first, researchers thought the thief must be an otter, seal or other marine mammal. William Housty, director of the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department, wondered whether tourists were tampering with them. The Heiltsuk Nation worked with Artelle to set up a trail camera to record the perpetrator.A day after the camera was installed, it recorded the female wolf in action.The efficiency with which she snagged the bait — in just three minutes — suggested to Artelle that the animal had done this before.“She’s staring exactly at the trap. Every motion she does is perfectly tailored to getting that trap out as quickly as possible,” said Artelle.In February, the team recorded a second video of a different wolf pulling a line attached to a partially submerged trap. The camera shut off before it could show whether the animal had learned to finish the job and eat the bait. But afterward, two traps were seen on the shore with their bait cups removed.The “weight of evidence,” Artelle said, suggests the female wolf or her full pack are responsible for the pilfering.The tribal territory in British Columbia is a rare place where wolves remain unharassed by hunters, potentially giving them time to learn.“We’ve always maintained a very respectful relationship with the wolves up here in the territory,” Housty said. The oral history of his people, he added, talks of a time when humans and wolves could shape-shift between one another.Researchers have seen tool use in captive canines before. Dingoes, for instance, have been observed opening latches and moving small tables to reach food at a sanctuary in Australia. And pets owners are familiar with the inventiveness of dogs, which can carry hockey pucks in plastic flying discs and move chairs to reach food.Biologists are witnessing more and more animals brandishing tools. Crows maneuver sticks in their beaks to collect grub from crevices. Pandas grab bamboo to scratch their bodies. Octopuses wield the severed tentacles of other animals as makeshift weapons to ward off predators.The wolf video raises a philosophical question: What does it mean to use a tool? Does the animal have to make the tool, as crows do when shortening sticks and peeling off their bark so they fit into crannies? Or can we call an animal a “tool user” if it uses an existing tool, as the wolf did with the rope?“I’m speaking to you on Zoom right now. I did not design this computer. I don’t know how it works, but I’m ‘using’ it, right?” Artelle asked.He said he hopes adding wolves to the list of tool-using animals will prompt some people to see them in a different light — the way public appreciation of chimpanzees grew after Jane Goodall discovered the primates dipping blades of grass into termite mounds to eat the insects.It is “an intelligence that is so familiar to us,” Artelle said. “For better or for worse, as humans, we tend to afford more care and compassion to other people or other species that we see most like us.”

Video from the coast of British Columbia may be the first documented instance of a wild wolf using a tool, according to the researchers who published it on Monday.

The wolf seemed to know exactly what she was doing.

She dove into the water, fetched a fishing float and brought it to shore. She then waded back in and tugged on a rope connected to the float. She pulled and backed up, pulled and backed up, until a crab trap emerged. When it was within easy reach, she tore it open and consumed the bait inside.

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You can cancel anytime.

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The scene, caught on camera on the coast of British Columbia in May 2024, may be the first documented instance of a wild wolf using a tool, according to the scientists who published the footage in the journal Ecology and Evolution on Monday.

Although the intelligence of wolves is well known, the discovery adds to an expanding list of animals capable of manipulating tools to forage for food, a trait once thought to be unique to humans.

“It’s not a surprise they have the capacity to do this,” said Kyle Artelle, an ecologist with the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry who published the footage. “Yet our jaw dropped when we saw the video.”

The discovery also solved a mystery.

People of the Heiltsuk Nation in central British Columbia had been puzzled about what was foiling their efforts to capture invasive green crabs along their shores.

The crabs are a real problem — they eat through eelgrass that harbors marine life and they devastate the native clam, herring and salmon populations the tribe relies on for food. But the traps people were setting with herring and other bait kept getting damaged. Sometimes, there were just minor tears in the nets. Other times, the entire trap was torn to shreds.

Some of the traps were set so deep that, at first, researchers thought the thief must be an otter, seal or other marine mammal. William Housty, director of the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department, wondered whether tourists were tampering with them. The Heiltsuk Nation worked with Artelle to set up a trail camera to record the perpetrator.

A day after the camera was installed, it recorded the female wolf in action.

The efficiency with which she snagged the bait — in just three minutes — suggested to Artelle that the animal had done this before.

“She’s staring exactly at the trap. Every motion she does is perfectly tailored to getting that trap out as quickly as possible,” said Artelle.

In February, the team recorded a second video of a different wolf pulling a line attached to a partially submerged trap. The camera shut off before it could show whether the animal had learned to finish the job and eat the bait. But afterward, two traps were seen on the shore with their bait cups removed.

The “weight of evidence,” Artelle said, suggests the female wolf or her full pack are responsible for the pilfering.

The tribal territory in British Columbia is a rare place where wolves remain unharassed by hunters, potentially giving them time to learn.

“We’ve always maintained a very respectful relationship with the wolves up here in the territory,” Housty said. The oral history of his people, he added, talks of a time when humans and wolves could shape-shift between one another.

Researchers have seen tool use in captive canines before. Dingoes, for instance, have been observed opening latches and moving small tables to reach food at a sanctuary in Australia. And pets owners are familiar with the inventiveness of dogs, which can carry hockey pucks in plastic flying discs and move chairs to reach food.

Biologists are witnessing more and more animals brandishing tools. Crows maneuver sticks in their beaks to collect grub from crevices. Pandas grab bamboo to scratch their bodies. Octopuses wield the severed tentacles of other animals as makeshift weapons to ward off predators.

The wolf video raises a philosophical question: What does it mean to use a tool? Does the animal have to make the tool, as crows do when shortening sticks and peeling off their bark so they fit into crannies? Or can we call an animal a “tool user” if it uses an existing tool, as the wolf did with the rope?

“I’m speaking to you on Zoom right now. I did not design this computer. I don’t know how it works, but I’m ‘using’ it, right?” Artelle asked.

He said he hopes adding wolves to the list of tool-using animals will prompt some people to see them in a different light — the way public appreciation of chimpanzees grew after Jane Goodall discovered the primates dipping blades of grass into termite mounds to eat the insects.

It is “an intelligence that is so familiar to us,” Artelle said. “For better or for worse, as humans, we tend to afford more care and compassion to other people or other species that we see most like us.”

Read the full story here.
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The last frontier of empathy: why we still struggle to see ourselves as animals | Megan Mayhew Bergman

Champions of exceptionalism say humans hold a unique moral status. Yet there’s only one species recklessly destroying the planet it needs to surviveAt first light in Massachusetts bay, a North Atlantic right whale threads the shallows with her calf tucked into her slipstream. She surfaces, and the V-shaped breath – two brief feathers of vapor – vanishes in the cold air.The calf is roughly three months old, about the length of a small truck, still learning the rhythm: rise, breathe, tuck back into mother’s wake. They are doing what every mammal mother and baby do: moving toward food and a safer place. Continue reading...

At first light in Massachusetts bay, a North Atlantic right whale threads the shallows with her calf tucked into her slipstream. She surfaces, and the V-shaped breath – two brief feathers of vapor – vanishes in the cold air.The calf is roughly three months old, about the length of a small truck, still learning the rhythm: rise, breathe, tuck back into mother’s wake. They are doing what every mammal mother and baby do: moving toward food and a safer place.Across the same water, a different logic hums. Tankers and container ships steer by timetables set by a faceless executive an ocean away. Boston’s approach lanes have been shifted once to reduce whale collisions, but the traffic still keeps human time: fixed routes, double-digit knots, arrivals measured in profit and delay.I am the river and the river is meSeasonal speed limits exist, yet large vessels routinely ignore them as commerce sets the pace to satisfy us as we collectively demand fast shipping. We should have what we want when we want it, shouldn’t we?Many of us say we love whales, but for this endangered species, already down to only a few hundred individuals, this yielding to human desires can mean vanishing entirely.Every threat they face – speed, noise, nets – traces back to the same root assumption: that our needs matter more than theirs.This belief has a name: human exceptionalism. It is the conviction that humans are not just different from other life, but morally superior to it – and therefore entitled to first claim on space, speed, resources and survival.This belief underwrites what we eat and how we raise it; the habitats we clear for housing, highways and Dollar Generals; the way we extract, ship and burn; the emissions we send into the atmosphere, warming oceans and melting glaciers. Exceptionalism is so embedded in daily life that we barely feel it operating. It is a system constantly humming in the background – efficient, invisible yet devastatingly consequential.It is a sobering thought, for we could use our powerful brains to choose otherwise.Many cultures have modeled another stance. For the Māori of Aotearoa (New Zealand), people are kin with rivers, mountains and forests through whakapapa (genealogy). The saying “Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au” – “I am the river and the river is me” – captures that reciprocity.In Lakota philosophy, Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ – “all are related” – frames animals, plants, waters and winds as relatives rather than resources.In the Kumulipo, the 2,100-line Hawaiian creation chant, life emerges from Pō – the deep darkness – and the humble coral polyp is honored as an ancient ancestor, anchoring a spiritual genealogy that binds people to the natural world.Westerners could admit at any point that we have misread our place in the cosmos and shift toward this older, still living worldview: humans not as commanders of the natural world but as kin, interconnected equals among other beings and systems.This suggestion might sound sentimental and naive in a political moment when even extending compassion to other humans meets resistance. Refugees are being turned away at ports of entry – grim proof of how easily our empathy falters. But new ideas are hard precisely because they threaten the story that keeps our lives coherent. It is natural for our minds to leap to defend old ways before testing new ones.Psychologist Erik Erikson, writing in the shadow of the world wars, described our human tendency towards pseudospeciation – the desire to split the world into “us” and “not us” – in order to justify mistreatment. Pseudospeciation grants us the psychological distance to degrade other beings we deem inferior without troubling our conscience. That psychological distance becomes a powerful permission slip.But humans are capable of self-reflection and growth, and I believe this point in the Earth’s history requires us to use those abilities and begin to question the ways we center human experience. In fact, our very ability to use the best of our social human traits – and advanced scientific knowledge – could alter the course of life on Earth.When I studied anthropology in college, I had a professor with a crooked finger – allegedly from a monkey bite. He challenged us to see our own animal behavior, to recognize the 98.8% DNA similarities with chimpanzees, and the 98.7% similarity with bonobos. He advised us to be suspicious of our alleged altruism, and to be aware of our own animal nature.I remember going out to the bar that semester, watching men and women interact and thinking: oh. Once you start seeing yourself as an animal, it’s hard to stop.The real problem of humanity is [that] we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technologyOnce, eating dinner on my front porch, my two beloved dogs approached me. My shepherd mix, Nemo, tried to steal bread from my plate. “No,” I said angrily, turning my body. I recognized resource guarding behavior in myself, a glorified dog growling over a bowl of food. I had to laugh.And nothing – nothing – connected me with my animal nature more than giving birth to my daughters. In those hours, I understood instinct as something ancient and physical, unmediated by thought. My body knew what to do before I did; I was acting from a primal, powerful place.And so it sometimes baffles me to look at my life, safely ensconced in my climate-controlled home, buying and selling things on the internet, buffered from the weather and the wild, estranged from my origins in the natural world. My comforts arrive at the tap of a screen; the true costs are distant and invisible. As biologist EO Wilson observed: “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”Humans have long been fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea of significant animal intelligence and emotion, or the humility of viewing ourselves as animals.In his lesser-known work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), Charles Darwin argued that human feelings and their outward signs are evolutionary continuities shared with other animals. Those ideas were later pushed aside by 20th-century behaviorism and the taboo against “anthropomorphism”. Only with the rise of ethology (the science of animal behavior) and cognitive neuroscience did Darwin’s continuity thesis regain daylight.Primatologist Frans de Waal long argued that Darwin was right: there is no principled boundary around “human” emotion and intelligence. He named the refusal to see this “anthropodenial”: a blindness to humanlike traits in other animals, and animal-like traits in us.Why are we so unwilling to acknowledge our own animal nature? Perhaps because it would shift nearly all the ways we human animals move in our lives. It would threaten our self-concept.I am ready to admit that humans may not be the sparkling, superior, bright, moral species we believe ourselves to be. We may not have the divine-purpose hall pass we so desperately want to believe in. We may have to admit that in addition to our better social traits we are also greedy, territorial, tribal and violent.After all, there is only one species recklessly destroying the very planet it needs to survive.Now a professor of writing, with no broken fingers to show for it, I have often taught Shirley Jackson’s story The Lottery. In it, a small town gathers for an annual ritual, drawing slips of paper from a box to determine who among them will be stoned to death – a sacrifice so enmeshed in their tradition and identity that no one remembers why it began. The horror lies not only in the act itself but in the town’s calm acceptance of it, the ease with which cruelty becomes customary.One of the aspects my students respond to most is the townspeople’s reliance on tradition: we should stone a person each year because that is what we have always done. The implication for our moment is hard to miss: sometimes the old ways of thinking must change, especially when we know they have helped usher in what scientists call the Earth’s sixth mass extinction.[Human] exceptionalism confuses evolutionary human difference with superioritySome who champion exceptionalism say humans hold a unique moral status and are the only full rights-holders; many ground that in religion, believing we are made in God’s image, and thus given dominion over the natural world. Others point to our brains – capable of abstract reason, language, cumulative culture – as proof that, when trade-offs arise, humans should get priority status.The counterargument is simpler than it sounds. From the jump, exceptionalism confuses evolutionary human difference with superiority. Uniqueness has never equaled higher moral rank. If it did, the bioluminescent lantern fish, or even the 2,400-year-old honey mushroom located in Oregon’s Malheur national forest with its vast, interconnected network of mycelium over 2,000 acres, might be a contender.With this logic, as some point out, if an alien species with superior intelligence and complexity arrived on planet Earth, humans would need to consent to being eaten.If we truly believed in the intelligence of the living world, how might we live differently? What would it mean to build, farm and move across the planet with kinship, not conquest, as our organizing principle? What would a different world – one that works with nature, and not against it – look like?While on assignment to write about Florida panthers and wildlife corridors, I learned that humans actually want better outcomes for wildlife. I met ranchers who leave gaps in their fences so panthers can pass through their land unharmed, and developers who leave borders along the edges of a neighborhood for wildlife passage – people who might never call themselves environmentalists but still act out of a quiet sense of stewardship. Yet, road construction and planning rarely take this bipartisan desire into account.But tides are turning in some places. The Wallis Annenberg wildlife crossing over Los Angeles’s US Route 101 is under construction, while Utah’s Parleys canyon overpass has already cut wildlife–vehicle collisions dramatically, proof that strategic compassion and consideration works.When I asked the environmental writer Ben Goldfarb about human exceptionalism and policy momentum in the United States, he was measured: “I see only faint signs of progress … the political and regulatory mainstream still seems to consider the concept threatening.” Goldfarb acknowledges that the concept of decentering humans still seems to be “political anathema” in the US.“Even the idea of granting the Great Salt Lake the right not to be sucked dry by irrigators was so threatening to conservative Utah legislators,” he told me, “that they passed a law preventing personhood from being granted to any plant, animal or ecosystem.”That is not to dismiss the growing “rights of nature” movement – often led by Indigenous communities – that has made meaningful strides. Goldfarb cites the Yurok tribe’s declaration recognizing the inherent rights of the Klamath River as a crucial step in advancing dam removal efforts. But for now, Goldfarb says, those efforts remain exceptions to the rule; within most political and regulatory circles, extending rights to nature is still treated as a radical act rather than an ethical evolution.Colonialism is … subjugating, and reducing to muteness, an entire universe of beings – animals, trees, volcanoes, nutmegsIn the legal arena, the rights of nature have leapt from thought experiment to precedent. New Zealand’s Whanganui River and Colombia’s Atrato River now hold legal personhood; Spain’s constitutional court has upheld Europe’s first ecosystem personhood for the Mar Menor Lagoon; Canada’s Magpie River enjoys comparable standing through municipal and Indigenous resolutions. These are not a full move toward more compassionate regulations – but glimmers and proof that the concepts are real and growing in influence.Goldfarb, who has written about roadside ecology and the lives of beavers, also offered the path forward for storytellers: “Centering animals as literary characters in their own right is both a way of honoring non-humans and, I hope, enthralling readers.”In his book Is a River Alive? Robert Macfarlane notes how ordinary it is for a company to have rights while a river has none, and argues that story and statute can repair the mismatch. “Our fate flows with that of rivers,” he writes, “and always has.” Writer Amitav Ghosh has been vocal about decentering the human experience, offering that literature can help “restore agency and voice to nonhumans”. In his book of parables, The Nutmeg’s Curse, Ghosh emphasizes the colonial tendencies of humans, writing that “Colonialism is … subjugating, and reducing to muteness, an entire universe of beings – animals, trees, volcanoes, nutmegs.”These currents – court rulings, treaties, charters and a restoried public imagination – show that adopting a more-than-human ethic is not naive; it’s already happening.I began writing this piece the week Jane Goodall died – a coincidence that felt oddly fitting. In the tributes that followed, her words shone with what she had been telling us all along: that peace requires humility, and that we are not above the rest of life.“In what terms should we think of these beings,” she asked, reflecting on the primates she studied, “nonhuman yet possessing so very many humanlike characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes?”Policy will always be contested terrain. And when policy stalls in times like these, we can still move thoughtfully in our own lives: swapping lawns for native plants, skipping pesticides, feeding birds, keeping cats indoors, buying less, backing wildlife corridors, supporting dark-sky ordinances during migration, moving to a more plant-based diet.None of this is heroic, but all of it counts. Each step we take lessens suffering in the world and broadens the circle of consideration – not with perfection, but with sincerity.We are nearly out of time to do so, but not out of choices. The whale asks for more space. The river asks for standing. The tern asks for habitat and room. We can give it.Illustrations by Jensine Eckwall

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Small Alligator Rescued in Boston After Slithering Into the City's Heart on Social Media

Wildlife officials say a small alligator spotted along the Charles River in Boston this week has been rescued and delivered to safety

BOSTON (AP) — It wasn’t a croc — there really was an alligator on the loose in Boston.And the story of the city's slithering saurian appears to have a happy ending. The small alligator, spotted along the Charles River in Boston multiple times this week, has been rescued and delivered to safety, wildlife officials in Massachusetts said Thursday.The approximately foot-long crocodilian startled a few people and became an instant star on social media after confused onlookers took videos of it slithering away from sight. But the animal is not native to Massachusetts, and couldn't possibly survive the harsh New England winter, so the search for the wayward gator was on.A local wildlife educator captured the critter on Wednesday night, and it's now awaiting a permanent home, officials said.Harvard University graduate student Whitney Lieberman was among the residents who caught a glimpse of the exotic visitor. She said she notified wildlife authorities when she saw the creature while she was jogging to work.“Yeah, I did a double-take. For a second, I had to check myself — alligators are not native to Boston waterways, right?” Lieberman said. “I texted my co-workers because I had a morning meeting: ‘Hey guys, this is a good excuse to be late for work. There is an alligator right in front of me and I don’t know what to do.'"The animal was in jeopardy due to the chilly temperatures on the Charles, which was 51 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) on Thursday. Alligators prefer temperatures above 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius). They are cold-blooded and can't regulate their own temperature, so they enter a dormant, energy-saving state called brumation to survive colder temperatures.Joe Kenney, who runs a wildlife education business called Joe's Craz-zy Critters, captured the alligator, the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife said in a statement. The state has temporarily authorized Kenney to keep the alligator while it evaluates the best long-term placement for it, the department said.The wildlife department said the alligator's appearance is still being investigated, but added it was most likely a pet that escaped or was intentionally released.“MassWildlife is working in close collaboration with the Environmental Police to find a safe home for this alligator as an educational animal with a permitted facility. This incident serves as an important reminder that it is not legal to keep alligators or any crocodilian species as pets in Massachusetts,” state herpetologist Mike Jones said in a statement.Alligators have a history of occasionally showing up in urban areas far from their native ranges. One, dubbed Chance the Snapper, turned up in Chicago in summer 2019 and was eventually trapped. Another one showed up on the Charles River in the Boston area in 2010.Whittle reported from Scarborough, Maine.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

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What we’ve done to the salmon

This story is part of a series supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which received a grant from EarthShare. The last few decades have seen, arguably, the most sweeping transformation in how humans produce meat, and it has nothing to do with chickens, pigs, or cows. It has to do with fish. Traditionally, the vast majority […]

Farming salmon is bad at any stage of the fishs’ lives. This story is part of a series supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which received a grant from EarthShare. The last few decades have seen, arguably, the most sweeping transformation in how humans produce meat, and it has nothing to do with chickens, pigs, or cows. It has to do with fish. Inside this story Over half of the world’s seafood now comes from fish farms, which resemble underwater factory farms. Chickens, pigs, and cows were domesticated over thousands of years, but fish have been domesticated in under a century. It’s created serious welfare issues, especially for salmon. Salmon are carnivorous and migrate thousands of miles. On farms, they’re reduced to swimming in small tanks and eating pellets. Fish farming has taken over the seafood sector, but some experts argue that it’s moved too fast, and we need to better understand welfare issues. Traditionally, the vast majority of fish that people consume has come from the ocean. But in 2022, humanity hit a significant milestone: Seafood companies began to raise more fish on farms than they caught from the sea. And they farm astonishingly large numbers of fish — in tiny, cramped enclosures that resemble underwater factory farms.  It amounts to the fastest and largest animal domestication project that humanity has ever undertaken.  For most of the land animals we eat today, domestication — or, as French fish researcher Fabrice Teletchea defined it, the “long and endless process during which animals become, generations after generations, more adapted to both captive conditions and humans” — has taken place over thousands of years. “In contrast,” a team of marine biologists wrote in the journal Science in 2007, the rise of fish farming “is a contemporary phenomenon,” taking off on a commercial scale around the 1970s.  By the early 2000s, humans were farming well over 200 aquatic animal species, virtually all of which had been domesticated or forced into unnatural conditions in extreme captivity over the course of the previous century, with many in just the prior decade. To put it another way, the marine biologists wrote, aquatic domestication occurred 100 times faster than the domestication of land animals — and on a vastly larger scale. Today, some 80 billion land animals are farmed annually, while an estimated 763 billion fish and crustaceans are farmed each year, a figure projected to quickly grow in the decade ahead. What’s more, this attempt to speedrun domestication occurred even as a clear scientific consensus emerged in recent decades that fish can suffer and feel pain. The revolution in how humans produce seafood has enormous implications for our relationship with species we’ve barely given any thought to. To understand why, consider America’s favorite fish to eat, and one of the most difficult to farm: salmon.  Like farming tigers Salmon farming is a relatively new industry, and it emerged largely in response to manmade problems.  Over the last century, overfishing — combined with industrial pollution, climate change, and heavy damming — has decimated wild Atlantic salmon populations. By 2000, the species gained protection under the Endangered Species Act after it was nearly driven to extinction in the US, effectively banning the commercial fishing of Atlantic salmon. Salmon populations in Europe, along with Pacific salmon populations on the West Coast of the US and beyond, have also experienced significant declines.  To take pressure off depleted wild populations, seafood producers began to scale salmon farming in the 1970s, with ample help from governments in the form of R&D, grants, state financing programs, and more. It’s proven to be a smashing commercial success. Last year, salmon farming companies — which are most concentrated in Norway, Chile, and the UK and export their product around the world — produced 2.8 million metric tons of the fish, or around 560 million individual salmon. They’re typically raised in tanks on land until they’re a year old then transferred to nets and cages floating in the ocean just offshore to be fattened up and eventually slaughtered (they’re supposed to be rendered unconscious prior to slaughter, with either electric stunning or a club to the head, though some aren’t successfully stunned). About one out of every five are shipped off to the US, where “young affluent consumers love to eat salmon,” according to the Norwegian company Mowi, the world’s biggest salmon producer. This taste for salmon and the farming industry it has necessitated has, in just a few generations, dramatically transformed what it means to be a salmon. In the wild, salmon live incredibly complex lives and embark on epic journeys. But on farms, they can’t do any of that.  According to Becca Franks, an assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University, salmon farming has created grave welfare problems by denying the animals the ability to engage in two of their essential natural behaviors: migrating and hunting.  In the US, Atlantic salmon begin their lives as eggs buried a foot under freshwater riverbeds in Maine, where they remain for six months until they hatch and emerge in search of food. At a few years old, they migrate hundreds of miles northward into the salty Atlantic ocean, then hundreds of miles further out into the Labrador Sea, near Greenland. There, they quickly put on weight — feeding on krill, herring, and crustaceans — which they’ll need for the long journey home that they make after a couple years of dining out at sea. Following scents and using the earth’s magnetic field, Atlantic salmon swim over 1,000 miles back to their home streams to spawn the next generation.  The salmon’s life cycle inspires more awe and reverence than most species in the animal kingdom, but on farms, they’re reduced to swimming in tiny circles for years and subsisting on small, manmade pellets. Their “welfare is harmed through loss of agency and choice,” Franks told me in an email. She likens salmon farming to trying to farm tigers.   Sophie Ryan, CEO of the Global Salmon Initiative — a coalition of salmon farming companies — challenged the idea that domestication has harmed salmon. “They have been domesticated over more than 50 years — similar to cattle or poultry — and have been selectively bred to thrive in a farm environment,” Ryan told me in an email. “Their nutritional needs, swimming patterns, and energy use are different from wild salmon, because their environment and purpose are different.” The selective breeding that Ryan speaks of has been used to make farmed salmon grow twice as fast as their wild counterparts, which has led to a number of serious health issues: heart problems, spinal deformities, high levels of deafness, and increased risk of an early death. They’re also more aggressive than wild salmon. To boost growth even further, salmon farms keep their lights on up to 24 hours a day, which makes the fish eat more and can damage their retinas. And in a concerning twist, the domestication of farmed salmon is hurting wild salmon. Since the 1970s, tens of millions of farmed salmon have managed to escape and compete for resources with wild salmon and even mate with them, leading to “genetic pollution” that has resulted in a hybrid line of salmon.  “We may now need to recognize a new biological entity — Salmo domesticus,” biologist Mart Gross wrote in a 1998 paper, “and treat it as an ‘exotic’ when it escapes into the wild.” Some research has found that these hybrid fish have lower survival rates. That means that the farming of salmon, which was intended to give wild salmon populations a break, created a new challenge for them. “Escape prevention is a top priority, with ongoing improvements in net strength, mooring systems, and real-time digital monitoring,” Ryan of the Global Salmon Initiative said. “Where escapes do occur, companies are required to report them and work with regulators to assess potential impacts on wild populations.” Franks considers fish farming a form of “captive dewilding”: the process of modifying animals to conform to captivity and to the harms that befall them as a result. And the reality of that captivity can be incredibly cruel. Fish farms up close In 2019, animal rights activist Erin Wing worked undercover with the group Animal Outlook for four months at a salmon hatchery in Maine operated by Cooke Aquaculture, one of the world’s largest salmon farming companies. Wing documented workers culling diseased fish by hitting them against the sides of tanks multiple times; fish thrown into buckets still alive, left to suffocate or be crushed to death by other fish; fish born with spinal deformities; and fish dying from nasty fungal diseases that ate away parts of their faces. “Over the years, you kinda get desensitized,” one employee told her.  In response to Wing’s investigation, Cooke Aquaculture CEO Glenn Cooke said in a statement that the company would re-train employees at the Maine facility. “We place animal welfare high in our operating standards and endeavor to raise our animals with optimal care and consideration of best practice,” Cooke said, adding that “what we saw today is most certainly not reflective of these standards.”  Wing, who has spent her career investigating factory farms, is skeptical of industry standards. “There are these [animal welfare] industry standards that are in place, and there are these guidelines, but at the end of the day, there’s not really any enforcement,” Wing told me. “So these farms will make up whatever rules they want that will work for them, for their workers, and then they’ll operate as they see fit. And that usually results in a lot of these animals suffering needlessly.”  Some of the suffering stems from putting farmed animals in the ocean, as crowding hundreds of thousands of salmon together in open waters attracts sea lice — tiny, painful parasites that feed on the salmon’s skin and can even kill them. In 2023, almost 17 percent of Norwegian farmed salmon died before they could be slaughtered for meat, largely from infectious diseases and injuries. To combat the scourge of sea lice, salmon farmers had, for years, dumped chemicals into the water to kill them, along with antibiotics and other chemicals to protect the fish from a range of fungal and viral diseases. These pollutants, combined with vast amounts of animal waste generated by the salmon, fall to the ocean floor and pollute marine ecosystems. That, in turn, contributes to what Franks calls “environmental dewilding,” or the process of modifying natural water bodies with artificial infrastructure — in this case, fish farm pens and cages — and polluting them. Sea lice have since developed resistance to these chemicals, so, over the last decade, salmon farmers have switched to other methods — including subjecting salmon to high heat — which can cause pain, injuries, and death.   The International Salmon Farmers Association and the Global Seafood Alliance didn’t respond to interview requests. Not just salmon  If we accept that farming salmon is bad for them and the environments in which they’re raised — and that we should protect dwindling wild populations — then we’ll have to accept eating a lot less salmon. We’ll also have to reconsider the ethical implications of farming many other fish species. Fair Fish, a team of fish welfare researchers, has compared the natural behavior and welfare needs of nearly 100 fish species with the conditions they experience on farms. Out of the 100 analyzed species, only two — tilapia and carp — have “the potential to be farmed in somewhat decent conditions,” according to João Saraiva, who researches fish ethology at the Centre of Marine Sciences in Faro, Portugal, and runs the nonprofit Fish Etho Group. But that doesn’t mean that they actually are; both tilapia and carp farms tend to be overcrowded, with poor water quality and high rates of disease. (Saraiva has worked with Fair Fish on its analyses but is no longer involved in the project.)  By contrast, he said, salmon is “way down on the list,” meaning it’s especially hard for farms to meet their basic welfare needs.  Fair Fish’s research demonstrates how little attention the fish farming industry, and the governments that helped it take over the seafood sector, has paid to the simple question of how its captives experience being farmed. It also illustrates the damage we can do when we flatten “fish” — an incredibly diverse group of species — into a monolith.  Franks said industry and government need to pump the brakes on the expansion of fish and crustacean farming, which is currently the world’s fastest-growing agricultural sector, noting, “I think we should not be farming any new species of fish or crustaceans and putting in transition programs for folks already farming those species to move towards seaweeds and bivalves.” The latter is a class of invertebrate animals that includes scallops, oysters, and mussels, which Franks said have far fewer environmental and welfare concerns than farmed fish and crustaceans (whether bivalves are sentient or can feel pain remains an ongoing scientific debate).   She’s one of the few academics studying fish farming willing to go there, to suggest that we ought to fundamentally rethink how we produce seafood and how much of it we consume. “I think there is a huge reluctance to even broach the possibility of shifting diets away” from animal protein, said Franks. When the global fish farming boom took off, many in the field had good intentions, and it looked good on paper; a way to boost the global food supply without further exploiting oceans. Plus, fish tend to have a lower carbon footprint than farmed land species (though higher than plant-based proteins). But few questions were asked about what it would mean, ethically and environmentally, to rapidly domesticate, then confine and slaughter, hundreds of billions of animals annually with distinct needs — let alone the capacity to feel pain.  Researchers like Saraiva and Franks are trying to convince the world to catch up with what we now know about fish and to further expand our knowledge. As consumers, we can help, and we can start by thinking twice about the salmon on our plates. 

Animals
Activism
Climate

Housing secretary tells Labour MPs to vote down planning bill amendment

Amendment restricts protection for animals to allow faster house buildingHousing secretary Steve Reed has told Labour MPs to vote down an amendment to the new planning bill intended to protect British wildlife and its habitats from destruction.The amendment, which was passed with a large majority in the House of Lords, restricts the most controversial part of the draft bill by removing protected animals such as dormice, badgers, hedgehogs, otters and nightingales, and rare habitats such as wetlands and ancient woodlands, from new rules which allow developers to sidestep environmental laws to speed up house building. Continue reading...

Housing secretary Steve Reed has told Labour MPs to vote down an amendment to the new planning bill intended to protect British wildlife and its habitats from destruction.The amendment, which was passed with a large majority in the House of Lords, restricts the most controversial part of the draft bill by removing protected animals such as dormice, badgers, hedgehogs, otters and nightingales, and rare habitats such as wetlands and ancient woodlands, from new rules which allow developers to sidestep environmental laws to speed up house building.Under the draft legislation proposed by Labour, developers will be able to pay into a national “nature recovery fund” and go ahead with their project straight away, instead of having to carry out an environmental survey and to first avoid, then mitigate damage, before putting spades into the ground.Experts say this is a regression on decades-old environmental law and it has been criticised as “cash to trash” by ecologists and environmental groups.The Lords’ amendment would mean the nature recovery fund is restricted to impacts from water and air pollution, meaning developers would still have to take the usual measures to mitigate damage to wildlife and habitats.Reed has recommended rejecting the amendment when the bill returns to the Commons on Thursday for the final stages before being passed into law.In a letter to MPs some of the UK’s biggest nature charities, including the Wildlife Trusts and RSPB, say the government rollback of environmental law “lacks any rigorous scientific or ecological justification.“There is no credible, published, or well established evidence that this model can simply be scaled or replicated for multiple species nationwide without risking serious ecological harm, legal uncertainty, and increased costs for both developers and land managers,” the letter reads.The Guardian revealed this week how the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and housing minister Matthew Pennycook have met scores of developers in the past year over the planning bill. Reeves has not met a single environmental organisation or the body for professional ecologists, while Pennycook has had just four meetings with such groups, compared with 16 with leading developers.A spokesperson for the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “The planning and infrastructure bill will remove barriers to building vital new homes and infrastructure and this amendment is an unnecessary limit on the benefits which the nature restoration fund will create for both nature and the economy. There are already safeguards in our legislation to ensure environmental delivery plans are effective for the environment, as we get Britain building again and deliver the homes we need.”

Animals
Government
Pollution

I discovered a new Australian native bee, but there are still hundreds we need to identify

The discovery of a horned native bee that pollinates a rare plant highlights how little we know about Australian pollinators.

The female of the species has devil-like black horns, and a taste for extremely rare pollen. But until now, this Australian native bee has never been officially named or identified. My discovery of Megachile (Hackeriapis) lucifer, underscores the lack of knowledge and investment in Australia’s unique native bees. Whilst considerable funding and attention has been focused on the introduced European honey bee, Apis mellifera, there are still hundreds of native bees that are yet to be identified and named. How was this bee found? This fascinating new megachile (or leaf cutter) bee was first discovered while on a surveying trip in the Bremer Ranges in the goldfields region of Western Australia in 2019. I was conducting surveys for pollinators – such as bees, other insects, flies and wasps – of a critically endangered plant called Bremer marianthus, or Marianthus aquilonaris, which is only known in this region. Sadly, as is common for many threatened plant species, the pollinators for this straggly shrub with blue-tinged white flowers were completely unknown. One of the native bees collected on this visit immediately caught my attention because the female had large devil-like horns protruding from her clypeus – the broad plate on the front of a bee’s head. When I investigated, it was clear this wasn’t a species that had been found before. Whilst some native bees have horns or prongs, none have the large and slightly curved horns of this one. Comparing it with museum specimens, along with DNA barcoding, confirmed this species was new to collectors and to science. DNA barcoding also revealed a male native bee I had collected at the site was her partner, but he lacked horns. This is the opposite of the situation in much of the animal kingdom, where the males are more likely to be amoured. Bringer of light When you discover a new species, you have the honour of choosing a name. The first new species of native bee I “described” (or scientifically identified) in 2022, Leioproctus zephyr, is named after my dog, Zephyr. For this new species, the horns meant the name Lucifer was a perfect choice. Lucifer is also Latin for “light bringer”, and I hope this new species brings to light the wonders of our native bees. Australia has more than 2,000 species of native bees. They help keep our ecosystems healthy and play a crucial role in pollinating wildflowers. We need to understand native bees This new native bee, Megachile lucifer, is only one of an estimated 500 native bees that are not described. Far more attention has been given to the introduced European honey bee Apis mellifera. Whilst the honey bee is important for crop pollination, this species is not threatened, and can in fact harm our native bees. The truth is honeybees compete with native animals for food and habitat, disrupt native pollination systems and pose a serious biosecurity threat to our honey and pollination industries. Currently, there no requirement to survey for native bees in areas about to be mined, farmed or developed. Even if they are found, any species that has not been officially identified it has no conservation standing, which is one reason why taxonomic research is so important. Protect the pollinators Megachile lucifer was collected on a flowering mallee plant that attracted thousands of native bees and other insects. In subsequent years of surveying this site, the mallee was not flowering, Megachile lucifer was not seen, and far fewer insects were recorded. With no monitoring of native bees, we also don’t know how their populations are faring in response to threatening processes, like climate change. More interest and investment into the taxonomy, conservation and ecology of native bees, means we can protect both them and the rare and precious plants they pollinate. Kit Prendergast received funding from the Atlas of Living Australia, with a Biodiversity Mobilisation Grant and Goldfields Environmental Management Group Grant. The surveys were conducted as an ecological consultant, subcontracted to Botanica Consulting, who were commissioned by Audalia Resources Limited.

Animals
Climate
Conservation

Suggested Viewing

Sentinels of Silence? Whale Watching, Noise, and the Orca

Does whale watching protect or harm whales? This film explores heated controversies over whale watching, boat noise, and orca conservation in Washington State and British Columbia. Whale watching companies claim that they serve as "sentinels" protecting the orca from unwary recreational boaters, ferries, and ships. A number of local conservationists and scientists have argued that whale watching boats crowd and harass whales, while adding noise to the orcas' immediate environment that makes it difficult for the social species to survive. "Sentinels of Silence?" uses dramatic imagery, peer-reviewed science, and interviews with conservationists, scientists, and industry officials to bring a fascinating chapter in the orca conservation story to light. In December, 2020, three months after Sentinels of Silence? was released, the Washington State Fish and Wildlife Commission made an historic decision to more closely regulate whale watching companies' activities around the Southern Resident Killer Whales, citing noise and harassment as factors.

Animals
Conservation
Documentary

Reboot

Humans have exploited Earth to the point where it is no longer possible to live on it. Their only option is to relocate to Mars. When the last group of people has boarded the spaceship for the red planet, the Earth can finally breathe easy. Like an expressionist painting, Reboot depicts a world in which the absence of our species is the only chance nature has to recover its lushness and flourish once more.

Animation
Crisis
Cosmos

Wild Florida's Vanishing Call

A moving, powerful inside look at what has happened to the wild, rarely seen, real Florida. A compelling, emotional soundtrack carries the viewer through the past destruction of wild Florida habitats, to beautiful scenes of Florida's rarely seen native wild animals, including the most endangered cat in North America, the Florida Panther, and ends with a positive message encouraging the viewer to work to protect Florida's wildlife and habitat before it is too late.

Animals
Nature
Music

Jetty Cats

Jetty Cats explores contemporary animal rights issues through a focus on a feral cat colony that has survived on a rocky, seaside jetty in Southern California for decades. There is an ongoing debate over feral cat colonies involving advocates who support the trap, neuter, and return -- or "TNR" -- model of management, and those who argue that trapping and euthanizing the cats is more humane. This documentary’s point-of-view supports the TNR model and the related “no-kill” animal shelter policy, and features an exclusive interview with Richard Avanzino, the "Father" of the no-kill movement.

Animals
Government
Activism

Plants, Pollinators & Prayers

Inspired by the decline of monarch butterflies in the Midwestern prairie, a gardener, educator, and pastor transform a rural church’s backyard into a sanctuary for pollinating animals, an educational garden for the community, and a sacred space for spiritual contemplation.

Plants
Animals
Culture

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