First-Ever Footage of Wolves Hunting Bison in Europe

In Poland, camera traps captured an unexpected predation behavior: a pack of wolves attacking a bison, the largest land mammal in Europe.

Little-documented interactions

Weighing up to 900 kg, the bison of Europe (Bison bonasus) was once widespread across the Old Continent, but widespread hunting and human expansion in the 19th century led to its disappearance in the wild at the very beginning of the following century. It took until the 1950s for it to begin being reintroduced there. Today, populations are estimated at around 9,000 individuals.

However, up to recently, scientists had documented only a handful of interactions between these large bovids and the gray wolf, whose European numbers have increased by about 58% between 2012 and 2022.

While reviewing footage from one of the motion-activated cameras placed in the Białowieża Forest, the cradle of the reintroduction of B. bonasus in Europe, Robin Wijnands of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and colleagues documented the striking attack by a group of 11 bisons on 7 wolves in September 2025.

At dawn’s first light, several canids set out to distract the adults while the rest of the pack targeted a newborn calf, hunted and bitten at the neck at least twice. If, during this roughly twenty-minute assault, the bisons repeatedly repelled the wolves and formed a protective ring around the calf, the footage could not determine whether it survived.

Not necessarily bad news

Because of the abundance of prey that is clearly more affordable at Białowieża, the team did not expect to observe such scenes there. If they suggest that bisons appear more often on wolves’ menus than previously thought, it would not necessarily be bad news for the conservation of these large herbivores.

As the study authors note, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, bisons can damage crops and disrupt the habitats of other declining wild species.

“A higher frequency of this type of predation could even help stabilize their populations in Europe,” says Wijnands, who will soon work on estimating the potential ecological consequences.

It is worth noting that in 2022, the United Kingdom had welcomed its first European bisons in 6,000 years.