It’s been watched over 40 million times, and it gets cited in wolf debates from Gardiner to Glendive like it’s settled gospel. The original viral video — “How Wolves Change Rivers” — leaned hard into the concept of a trophic cascade: wolves return, elk move differently, riverbanks recover, rivers literally shift course. The problem, as actual Yellowstone researchers have pointed out for years, is that the science is considerably messier than a four-minute animated video can capture. A video that fact-checks the most widely-shared wildlife clip in internet history is genuinely useful context for those conversations. The wolf debate in this state deserves better than a viral clip with half the story.