A tour guide recently captured a few images of Yellowstone National Park’s rarest mammal, the wolverine, as it sauntered across a frozen road. It wasn’t Hugh Jackman crawling across the road in yellow lycra, but that could have been more typical. On March 5, tour business owner MacNeil Lyons filmed this remarkable encounter via the window of his car while giving a tour of Yellowstone National Park.
“‘Is that a bear?’ replied my guest, precisely what I was thinking… We both believed it was a juvenile black bear going away from us for a split second, but as it turned and peered over its right shoulder at us, there was no denying that it was a Wolverine!” In a Yellowstone Insight Facebook post, Lyons said. He carefully followed the wolverine, realizing he had stumbled into a genuinely amazing chance, and managed to take a few more images of the animal in its natural habitat.
To give you a sense of how lucky this image is, consider the following: According to a National Parks Service assessment conducted from 2006 to 2009, Yellowstone National Park is around 8,991 square kilometers (5,586 square miles) in area and home to just six or seven wolverines. Carl Kemp, who was on Lyon’s tour at the time, recorded the interaction on video. According to Lyon, the wolverine weighed roughly 30 pounds and was intrigued rather than scared, according to Kemp.
Wolverine populations may presently be found in Washington’s North Cascades Range, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming’s Northern Rockies, and a tiny amount of Oregon’s Wallowa Range, as well as Alaska, Canada, the northern regions of certain Nordic nations, and Russia. Getting a picture of one, however, is difficult no matter where you are in the globe since the species is extremely timid and secretive, preferring to avoid human contact at all costs.
Wolverines, like weasels, otters, ferrets, martens, and minks, are members of the same family as weasels, otters, ferrets, martens, and minks. Despite their timidity, they are vicious predators that eat mostly small mammals like rabbits and rodents. During the harsher winter months, they have been known to scavenge huge animals like as caribou and elk. Gulo gulo is the scientific name for the species, which comes from the Latin word “glutton.” The Hungarian name for the lowly wolverine is “rozsomák” or “torkosborz”, which roughly translates as “gluttonous badger,” while the German term is “Vielfrass,” which roughly translates as “devours much.”
