Peaceful interactions rarely occur between a predator and prey. But researchers in Ethiopia caught wild wolves and monkeys called geladas intermixing without agression.
The seemingly tamed wild wolves just up and walk through the monkey herd, while the monkeys act like the wolves don't exist.
Other carnivores on Ethiopia's Guassa Plateau, feral dogs and servals mostly, hunt the gelada monkeys — it would seem that the wolves would be a natural predator as well. But instead researchers observed the two species happily intermixing for years.
This peaceful interaction could be similar to how dogs were first domesticated by humans. "The gelada case is comparable to what early domestication of dogs might have been like," study researcher Claudio Sillero, of the University of Oxford, told New Scientist's Bob Holmes.
From their observations, they think the mutual friendship helps the wolves hunt, by making rodents easier to spot and catch.
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