Just a few years ago, we didn’t even know about this, because it’s simply very difficult to observe wolves in the forest. And there were no video recordings at all. And yet here we are: a wolf nibbling “berries,” and in a Polish forest at that!
Why is this so unusual? Because research on berry diets comes primarily from North America. From Europe, it’s sporadic and scattered. We know that in Italy, wolf wolves eat apples (Meriggi’s study, 1991); in Germany, wolf scats have been found containing rose hips, apples, pears, plums, blackberries, and rowanberries, as well as corn (Wagner, 2012); and the same was true in Greece. In Poland, the presence of berries and plants was sporadic.
From hunger. Researchers from the Voyageurs Wolf Project in the US have concluded that in late summer, it’s harder to hunt certain animals (the calves have already grown, and beavers mainly spend time in the water and munch on aquatic vegetation), so some wolves are at risk of starvation.
Unfortunately, and they’re probably unaware of this, berries and plants won’t satisfy their hunger, as wolves’ digestive tracts are adapted to digesting meat. It is unable to extract nutrients from plant foods in significant quantities.
This is confirmed by Dr. Robert Maślak from the University of Wrocław:
“Wolves do include plant foods in their diet, but they are always of marginal importance.”
