My Diet

Before I was born, my mother dug a long tunnel in a snow bank. This is called the "natal den". My mother made a bed of leaves and grasses at the end of the tunnel. My sibling(s) and I were born in March. We were about 5 inches long, had fuzzy tails about 1 inch long, and were covered by fine, white fur. Although we only weighed a few ounces when we were born, we will be almost as big as our parents by our first birthday. For the first several weeks, our only food was mother's milk. Then our mother surprised us by bringing us voles, lemmings, and snowshoe hare for us to learn to eat. We stayed at our cozy den until the snow melted then we would find small crevices and other sheltered areas to sleep in for protection.

Our mother would supply our food quite awhile yet as we watched her hunt. Wolverine's are both predators and scavengers. By the time the snow melted many animals were available for food. Our main diet when food was plentiful was grouse, ptarmigan, snowshoe hares, voles, lemmings, and arctic ground squirrels. Sometimes we eat moose calves and caribou calves, marmot, mink, weasels, ermines, pika, and other small animals.

Wolverines always cache any extra meat to be eaten later when food is scarce. Foxes and other animals also cache their food. Sometimes we steal and eat their cached food, sometimes they steal and eat our food. We depend on our cached food in the winter when food is scarce.

In the winter food is very difficult to find. Sometimes we find weakened animals like caribou or moose which will provide food for several days. Carrion (an already dead animal) is a very lucky find, even though we can't tear off large portions of a frozen carcass and put it in a cache, as we could with fresh kill. Often other animals like wolves, and foxes will find the carrion and claim it. Sometimes there is a confrontation. Unless there is a pack of wolves or a large bear, most animals will leave the food for the wolverine.

We prefer to hunt in the late evening and early morning hours. Wolverines gently pounce on small animals to pin them and then grab them with their teeth. They jump on the back of larger animals, and tear into the animal with the claws and teeth. They must compete for their food with the fox, wolf, bear, coyotes, goshawks, eagles, and owls. Ravens and grey jays scavenge the leftovers.

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