Status
Habitat
Range
Group
A thirteen-kilogram animal that treats a frozen carcass as a solved problem.
The skull and jaw are disproportionate to the body for one reason: bone. Wolverines crush frozen carcasses that wolves have abandoned, and a specialised upper molar rotated inward gives them the leverage to do it. The fur is hydrophobic and frost-resistant, shedding ice rather than letting it mat against the skin.
Females den in spring snow, tunnelling into drifts that persist into May. That requirement makes the species an unusually direct indicator of warming: where late-season snowpack fails, denning habitat disappears regardless of how much forest remains. Home ranges can exceed 500 square kilometres, so protection has to be planned at the scale of whole mountain systems.
The open shelf
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