Eerie moment biker films mysterious 'giant' creature: 'It knew we were there'
Watching the animal in its natural habitat was exciting, but Meredith was also acutely aware she was a long way from help if 'something bad happened'.
A mountain biker has opened up on the eerie moment she filmed a mysterious creature running along a mountainside, and how it repeatedly "looked back" at her knowing it was being watched.
Footage taken by Meredith Eades, 39, has been viewed more than 21 million times and sparked debate over the creature's identity. She recounted to Yahoo News she felt "terrified" as she filmed the animal on August 1.
She'd been hoping to see a bear as she rode across the Chilcotins, a frontier range in British Columbia, Canada, with friends. Instead she spotted something rarer — a “giant” lone wolf.
“You’re literally in the middle of nowhere. If something bad happened, you’d need to get a helicopter to come rescue you,” she said.
“It knew we were there and kept looking back. I assume it was highly aware that we were in its territory.”
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I wasn't looking for wolves. Then when I saw one it was terrifying.Meredith Eades
Millions fascinated by 'giant' wolf video
The video titled "GIANT lone wolf spotted while biking in the backcountry" is over 90 seconds long, a rare length on the fast-paced TikTok social media platform, and has attracted more than 10,000 comments. You can watch the clip below, but please pardon the minor swear words Eades does understandably drop when she spots the wolf.
Viewers have delighted in watching the tiny speck Eades filmed moving across the lens of her heavily zoomed-in iPhone video. Some have even spotted tiny moments of interest.
“He stopped and looked back at you,” one person wrote. “And circling you,” another suggested.
'Watching wild animals more exciting than visiting zoos'
Fear wasn’t the only emotion that ran through Eades’ mind as she filmed the wolf. Seeing such a “unique” creature in its natural habitat also left her feeling amazed.
“When I see animals in the zoo it kind of breaks my heart a little bit. Then when you see one in its natural habitat it’s just so cool,” she said.
“In the wilderness, if this wolf wanted to eat me, it would eat me. It creates this element of – holy crap – I’m insignificant in this wild environment.”
How big was the wolf?
Paul C. Paquet is a leading Canadian biologist known for his large carnivore behavioural research. He told Yahoo it was hard to estimate the size of the creature from such a distance.
“Having watched and filmed wild wolves in a myriad of environments and circumstances over the last 50 years, this sequence appeared rather normal to me, keeping in mind that videos can be visually deceptive,” he said.
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To help us understand what the video may have recorded, Paquet was able to share his observations about wolves in British Columbia in general.
“A large male wolf in the Chilcotin region would likely weigh around 55 kilos with an empty stomach, 2.4 metres in length from nose to tail, 84 cm in height at the shoulder. That is the largest I have confirmed,” he said
“Of course, others might be larger.”
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