Wolves captured hunting bison in Poland’s primeval forest

camera-trap recording – A rare camera-trap video from Poland’s Białowieża Primaeval Forest shows seven wolves attacking a small European bison herd and targeting a newborn calf, with the adults fighting back. Researchers say the footage suggests wolves may eat bison more often than p

At 7.25am in Poland’s deep wilderness, a pack of seven wolves moved in with a purpose that lasted just long enough to change minds.

A camera trap recorded the moment the wolves began hunting a bison herd of 11 individuals in the Białowieża Primaeval Forest. The wolves attacked, distracted the adults, and went after a newborn calf. In the footage, the wolves manage to bite and grab the calf by its neck two times. Each time, adult bison responded—charging with their horns.

The herd then formed around the calf to protect it and chased the wolves away. The skirmish lasted 20 minutes. From the video alone, it isn’t clear whether the newborn bison lived to see another day.

For Robin Wijnands at the Polish Academy of Sciences, the recording landed like a surprise bruise. “My mind was blown,” she said. “I was really surprised because I really didn’t expect wolves to hunt bison, especially when there are so many other prey available in the forest.”

The European bison (Bison bonasus) once ranged widely across Europe but disappeared in nature at the beginning of the last century. wiped out by hunting and habitat loss. Conservation efforts pulled the species back from the brink and reintroduced it into the wild in the 1950s. Today, there are around 9000 individuals living in scattered populations across the continent.

Wolves, meanwhile, have been rebounding across Europe. Their numbers have increased by 58 per cent over the past decade. Still, only a few cases of wolves hunting bison have been documented since bison were reintroduced—making this recording stand out.

Wijnands and her colleague Tomasz Borowik captured the hunt in September 2025 during research in Białowieża, where the first European bison were reintroduced in the 1950s.

Even the people watching the video know how exceptional it is. Oswald Schmitz at Yale University—who wasn’t involved in the observation—said the odds of getting this kind of interaction on camera are slim. “The chance that the camera is placed in a location that captures the wolf-prey interaction is very low. It’s a matter of the camera being in the right place at the right time. So this is a lucky recording,” he said.

That “right place at the right time” matters because the stakes stretch beyond one calf. Conservationists have worried that bison, if their numbers grow too quickly, could damage habitats or farmland and affect other animals. In that setting, predation by wolves could cut in a different direction, the researchers say.

Wijnands doesn’t argue that wolves would suddenly start wiping out bison. “We don’t really believe. even if predation occurs more frequently than we think. that it would steeply decline the bison population. but rather. it could potentially help a bit in stabilising the population. ” she said. She added that the next challenge is learning how often such attacks happen and what they might mean in practice. “It would be very interesting to get a better idea of how often it occurs. and what could potentially be the ecological consequences.”.

The footage doesn’t answer everything. It can’t tell whether the newborn survived, and it can’t measure how common the behavior really is. But it does show a moment of predation that was expected to be rare—and now has hard evidence sitting in a camera trap. waiting for the next field season to find out whether this was an exception or a clue.

wolves European bison Białowieża Primaeval Forest camera trap conservation predation Poland Bison bonasus