Wolverines live in a ring around the north of the world, including Scandinavia, Russia, Alaska and northern Canada. They are scarce and secretive. Wolverines have been studied less than many other meat-eating animals. Wolverines live at low numbers everywhere in their range, because each one needs a very large home range. Male wolverines have home ranges of 600 to 1,000 square kilometers and females 50 to 350. A range can reach 2,000 square kilometers in winter. In Europe, a male's home range runs 100 to 500 square kilometers and a female's 100 to 200. As of November 2026, reports of how far a wolverine may travel in a day differ: up to 25 miles, up to 45 kilometers, or as many as 40 miles.
People rarely see wolverines because they are few and live in remote places. Scientists use cameras that switch on by themselves to find them. In winters 2016 and 2017, researchers in Idaho, Montana, Washington and Wyoming searched random 15-km by 15-km cells with cameras and detected wolverines in 59 of 183 cells, or 34 percent. In that four-state survey, 22,641 of 439,834 photos contained a wolverine, and at many stations most of those photos were of the same wolverine passing the camera again and again. From 2006 to 2009, researchers documented seven wolverines in eastern Yellowstone and the national forests next to it. In 2008, a young male tracked by scientists traveled 585 miles over several months, ending in Colorado, the first documented wolverine there since 1919.
Wolverines were nearly gone from Montana in the early 1900s. They have been increasing in numbers and range since, with recovery starting in the northwest of the state. Trapping and predator control reduced the wolverine's range in the lower 48 states by the 1930s, and some recovery has happened since. In North America, wolverines live mostly in Alaska and Canada, and they need large areas with few people. Long ago wolverines also lived farther south in Europe and the United States, but people's activities removed them from many of those places. As of November 2026, a 2017 to 2022/23 count put Europe's wolverines at about 1,300, in two groups: about 900 in Scandinavia, which is stable, and about 400 in Karelia, which is increasing. As of November 2026, the IUCN Red List labels the wolverine Least Concern, its lowest level of worry.
A wolverine looks like a small bear, but 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. Its scientific name, Gulo gulo, comes from the Latin word for glutton. Scientists recognize two wolverine subspecies, the North American wolverine and the European wolverine, which differ mainly in their genes. Wolverines are sometimes called skunk bears because they look like small bears and give off a strong-smelling musk. A wolverine's fur is dark brown, with a lighter yellow stripe along each side.
Wolverines mate in summer, but the fertilized egg does not start to grow until early winter, so the babies, called kits, are born between January and April. Delayed implantation, the wait before the egg starts to grow, lets wolverines have young when food is most plentiful and match the litter size to the food available. A mother usually has two to four kits at a time, and newborn kits are blind and weigh less than one pound. The mother builds a den in the snow to give birth and feed her kits milk. Young wolverines are on their own by about five to six months old. In the wild, wolverines usually live 5 to 7 years, and a few reach 13.
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. A wolverine has strong teeth and powerful jaws, and it can eat even bone. Much of what a wolverine eats comes from animals that have already died. To scavenge is to eat what was left behind. 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 stay active all year and do not hibernate. A wolverine can be active at any time of day or night. Wolverines can climb trees quickly and are excellent swimmers. Frost does not build up on wolverine fur, so people in the Arctic have used it to trim the hoods of their coats. A wolverine's large paws work like snowshoes on deep snow, and its long, curved claws help it climb. Most wolverine dens found so far are complexes of snow tunnels built next to boulders or rocks, and a mother can dig a snow den as deep as about 15 feet. Snow is crucial for wolverines: they use it for dens and for keeping food.
Words to know
- scavenge: eat leftovers
- subspecies: a regional type
- implantation: egg starting growth
- genes: body instructions
- kits: baby wolverines
