You may have heard that a wolverine is a kind of bear, but it is not. A wolverine looks like a small bear, yet it belongs to the weasel family, and it is the largest land-living member of that family. Otters, ferrets and honey badgers are its cousins. The wolverine's scientific name, Gulo gulo, comes from the Latin word for glutton. A wolverine's fur is dark brown, with a lighter yellow stripe along each side. Wolverines are sometimes called skunk bears because they look like small bears and give off a strong-smelling musk. They live in cold places in the far north of the world.

Wolverines measure 65 to 105 cm in body length, with tails 13 to 26 cm long and shoulders 36 to 45 cm high. An adult male weighs about 12 to 18 kilograms (26 to 40 pounds), and adult female wolverines weigh about 8 to 12 kilograms (17 to 26 pounds), which is less than males. A wolverine has five toes on each foot, and its large paws work like snowshoes on deep snow. Its claws are long and curved, and they help it climb.

In North America, wolverines live mostly in Alaska and Canada, and they need large areas with few people. Wolverines usually live alone, and people rarely see them because they are few and live in remote places. Wolverines live at low numbers everywhere in their range, because each one needs a very large home range. A male wolverine needs a home range of hundreds of square miles. As of November 2026, a wolverine may travel up to 25 miles in a day in search of food. Wolverines stay active all year and do not hibernate.

A wolverine finds much of its world with its senses. Wolverines have a very good sense of smell, and one account says a wolverine can smell a dead animal lying 20 feet under the snow. Wolverines hear well, but they probably see poorly. They make few sounds, only occasional grunts and growls. A wolverine can be active at any time of day or night, and wolverines can climb trees quickly and are excellent swimmers.

Wolverines mainly eat meat, but they also eat berries and other plant material. All year, they eat small and medium animals such as voles, squirrels, hares and birds. Their teeth and jaws are strong, and a wolverine can eat even bone. Deep snow helps wolverines hunt animals much larger than themselves. Much of what a wolverine eats comes from animals that have already died.

Eating what other animals left behind is called scavenging. Much of what a wolverine eats comes from animals that have already died, so wolverines are scavengers. Wolverines eat many kinds of meat, from ground squirrels and rodents to, sometimes, moose or caribou, but more often they scavenge carcasses left by other predators and store them for later. In winter, wolverines often eat the leftovers of moose and caribou that other animals left behind or that died naturally. They store extra food in holes or under the snow to eat later.

Wolverines mate in summer, but the egg does not start to grow until early winter, so the babies, called kits, are born in the cold months, between January and April. A mother wolverine usually has two to four kits at a time. Newborn kits are blind and weigh less than one pound. Young wolverines are on their own by about five to six months old. A mother builds a den in the snow, a home where she gives birth and feeds her kits milk.

Most wolverine dens found so far are complexes of snow tunnels built next to boulders or rocks. Snow is crucial for wolverines: they use it for dens and for keeping food, and their large paws carry them over it like snowshoes.

Words to know

• scavenge: eat leftovers
• kits: baby wolverines
• den: a snow home