Wolverine Digs Out Casey Anderson: America the Wild Snow Scene

Naturalist Casey Anderson lies buried in a snowdrift, and a wolverine tunnels in after him, flinging snow aside until it reaches him. The scene comes from America the Wild, Anderson’s National Geographic wildlife series, and it shows off exactly what the wolverine is built for: powerful digging through deep winter snow.

The America the Wild wolverine scene

America the Wild premiered on National Geographic on 11 March 2012 and ran for two seasons, following Casey Anderson as he tracked and filmed North American wildlife. The very first episode, “Wolverine King”, sent him into the frozen backcountry of Alaska and British Columbia in search of one of the continent’s most elusive animals.

In the clip “Wolverine to the Rescue!”, Anderson is deliberately buried in a snowbank before the wolverine goes to work. It is a staged demonstration for the cameras, but the digging is completely real, and it shows how quickly the animal can move snow with its broad, clawed front feet.

Video: Wolverine to the Rescue! | America the Wild (published by Nat Geo Animals).

Wolverine facts: size, range and strength

The wolverine (Gulo gulo) is the largest land-dwelling member of the weasel family, Mustelidae. It looks like a small bear with a bushy tail, which explains old nicknames such as skunk bear, carcajou and quickhatch.

• Size: body 65 to 109 cm long, plus a 17 to 26 cm tail; 36 to 45 cm at the shoulder
• Weight: males usually 11 to 18 kg, females 8 to 12 kg
• Range: boreal forest, subarctic and alpine tundra, with the largest populations in northern Canada, Alaska, the Nordic countries and Russia
• Home range: a male can roam more than 620 km²; females typically use 130 to 260 km²

Wolverines are famous for strength far beyond their size. They can kill prey many times larger than themselves, and in tests of carnivore jaw joints the wolverine had the highest bone compressive strength of all the species measured.

Why wolverines depend on deep snow

Snow is central to a wolverine’s life. In winter and early spring it lives largely as a scavenger, travelling long distances across snowy landscapes to find carcasses of animals such as moose and mountain goats, and following wolves or lynx to their kills. Digging into snow to reach buried food is everyday work.

Snow also shelters the next generation. Females dig dens in deep snow around February and raise their kits there until weaning in mid-May, so the species needs places where spring snowpack lasts late into the season.

Wolverines and climate change

That dependence makes the wolverine vulnerable to warming. The National Park Service notes that the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has warmed by about 0.3 °F per decade since 1894, and that by 2050 spring snowpack suitable for denning may survive only in parts of the Southern Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada and certain areas of Yellowstone. Outside Alaska and Canada, wolverines already live in small, isolated populations, and in November 2023 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed those in the Lower 48 states as threatened.

For other animals at home in deep snow, watch a fox hunting beneath snow, or read an actual avalanche-rescue story from the backcountry.

Related reading

• Gordon Buchanan’s Close Encounter with a Polar Bear
• Juneau the Dog and the Rescue of Skier Leonard Somers
• A Moose Pushes Through Deep Snow in Gaspésie
• A Red Fox’s Headfirst Pounce into Snow
• Samsung’s EcoBubble Bear Advert in a Snowy Setting
• Animals in Snow: Winter Photographs, Food, Rest and Movement
• Rupee and Joanne Lefson’s Trek to Everest Base Camp

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