# @science on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DW9QM04FaZj
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/63606197-science-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/7694ff66c5.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-04-10T16:01:05.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Science 🧬 (@science) — https://gondola.cc/science

## Caption

🐺 Up to 90 percent of their diet is seafood.⁠
People usually associate wolf meals with elk or deer, but these guys are practically pescatarians, with salmon accounting for nearly a quarter of their diet. Beyond that, they forage on barnacles, clams, herring eggs, seals, river otters, and whale carcasses.⁠
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They’re excellent swimmers.⁠
Coastal wolves live with two paws in the ocean and two paws on land, Darimont says. When hunting for food, sea wolves can swim miles between islands and rocky outcrops to feast on seals and animal carcasses found on the rocks. “Our farthest record [of their swimming abilities] is to an archipelago 7.5 miles [12 kilometers] from the nearest landmass,” he says.⁠
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🧬 They're about the size of a German shepherd.⁠
They’re smaller in stature than gray wolves elsewhere in the country, another effect of their diet. “Interior wolves are about 20 percent bigger, maybe like a [Great] Pyrenees,” Chris Darimont, science director at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, says. Additionally, they're often reddish brown in color.⁠
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Vancouver Island isn’t the only place they call home.⁠
More populations reside in southeastern Alaska, though overall sea wolves have declined in number over time. “They once roamed all the way down to California in its former temperate rain forests. Now they only go down to just north of Vancouver," he says.⁠
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#wolves #seawolves #wolf #seawolf #biology #nature #animals #science

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## Tags

wolves, animals, seawolf, nature, science, wolf, seawolves, biology

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