This is the shocking moment when Italian hunters film a hungry wolf carrying the body of a dead dog on a field outside Rome.

Wolves had disappeared from the area around Rome more than a century ago, but there is now a pack in the Castel di Guido Reserve which is inside the municipality of Rome and is part of the Roman Coastal State Nature Reserve.

The footage was apparently filmed by two hunters returning from a shooting trip near Magliana.

The hunters appear to be moving slowly in a car as one of them says: “Wait, I lost it, stop so that I can get it in the frame.”

They can then be heard calling to the wolf which appears to be a lone animal, and which experts say might explain why it had targeted a dog for its next meal.

As it gets closer, one of the hunters can be heard saying: “Don’t shoot him, Carlo!”.

The nearby nature reserve covers over 16,000 hectares and is now known to contain several wolves and experts believe that this wolf has strayed slightly out of the reserve as it appears to be running over a ploughed field.

They added it may well have moved on as it was looking for a new pack according to experts quoted by local media.

Marco Antonelli, of the Italian wildlife organisation Lipu, reminded people that the Wolf is a protected species, and confirmed that the video did indeed show a real wolf.

He added: “There is already some crazy speculation about this video, with some people saying that the dog was stolen off the lead from its owner, but this is nonsense. A wolf will very rarely target a dog and when it does it is mostly either stray animals roaming the countryside or one that has been perhaps tied up in a place close to a nearby wood. But it will only be taken when there is no human around.”