Is Joe Rogan's story about Germans and Russians calling a truce to fight wolves true?

Joe Rogan told Colum Tyrrell that German and Russian troops in World War I paused fighting to deal with wolves. An AI search flagged the story as a possible myth, so Rogan pulled up a MeatEater article instead. It cites 1917 reports in the New York Times and other papers. They described wolf packs pushed out of the forests of Lithuania and Volhynia that attacked livestock, two children and soldiers at the front. According to those reports, the two armies agreed an armistice, with their commanders' consent, to fight the wolves.

• The MeatEater piece notes that no official orders or command logs corroborating the truce have been found.
• Rogan said his friend John Dudley killed wolves with a bow after a pack surrounded him on an elk hunt.
• Rogan argued that fairy tales about the big bad wolf reflect a real danger to children walking through woods.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on The Joe Rogan Experience (2026-10-29). Read the whole episode summary →

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