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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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When the wolves enter the gelada monkey herd, they alter their behavior to show the monkeys they aren't aggressive. Normally wolves run in a zig zag pattern or make rapid movements when searching for rodents. But when around monkeys they slow down to a more sedate stalk even when hunting.

And even more surprisingly, the wolves in the study don't try to eat the baby geladas — an easy-to-get meal.

There's always exceptions to the rule, of course, and during their observation period the researchers did observe one altercation: One of the wolves attacked a baby monkey. The adult geladas quickly mobbed the wolf, which dropped the baby monkey unharmed and ran off.

Primates have been observed to form associations with other animals, but, the authors write, these relationships are rare and often fleeting. In contrast, the gelada's relationship with the wolves is pretty stable — the researchers observed it over the course of years — and it doesn't appear to be ending anytime soon.

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