British animal advocate Anneka Svenska has publicly questioned whether a Danish wolf video is authentic. Two experts and the National Wolf Monitoring say the footage is genuine and not made with artificial intelligence.
DR reported on August 12, 2026 that Svenska had posted twice on social media casting doubt on the recording. The video shows a wolf approaching a runner and baring its teeth in Bunken Klitplantage, a coastal dune plantation in North Jutland.
According to DR, Svenska describes herself as The Wolfgirl and has 2.5 million followers on social media, with nearly 1.5 million subscribers to her YouTube channel Animal Watch. In her posts she also suggested that Danish farmers had fed wolves to make them comfortable around people, information she said she found on Reddit. She further claimed the runner had sought out the wolf three times to gain likes online.
Svenska cited German wolf expert Tanja Askani, who cares for wolves at Wildpark Lüneburger Heide in Germany. In a written reply to DR, Askani said the video is in fact genuine and rejected claiming that it was AI-generated. She said she had pointed to details in single screenshots, especially the animal’s teeth, while noting that poor image quality, motion blur, compression or pixel shifts could explain them.
Askani told DR she had written that the video might be real or might not, and that she had expressed doubt rather than a conclusion. She said she cannot control how Svenska used her post as a source for the AI claim. She maintains the encounter is unusual enough that questions about what happened should be allowed.
Wolf monitoring rejects AI claim
Peter Sunde, professor at the Department of Ecoscience at Aarhus University and part of the National Wolf Monitoring, flatly rejected that the recordings were made by artificial intelligence, DR reported. He said the wolf’s behavior matches how wolves react in such a situation. On the claims about the runner and about feeding, he said the context leading up to the incident must be clarified in the unit’s report on the case.
DR said it has been in contact with the runner, who had no comment on the accusations, and that Svenska did not respond to an interview request.
The original encounter was reported on August 8, 2026 by TV 2, which named the runner as Brian Johansen and said authorities advised people to stay away from the area while the situation was assessed. Experts from DCE at Aarhus University and Naturhistorisk Museum Aarhus concluded for the authorities that it was not a dangerous situation.
TV 2 Nord reported the same day that Johansen said he met an adult wolf and a cub, that the animal came within one to two meters, and that it followed him for about 10 minutes. Politiken quoted a wolf expert who said nothing in the video indicated danger, and that the behavior fit natural defense of a pup.
