Strangely, wolves in Ethiopia love to eat nectar.

Wolves in Ethiopia lick red poker flowers. They are the first large carnivore in the world known to feed on nectar.

There is a species of wolf that loves sweets.

A wolf licks a bright red poker flower in Ethiopia. (Photo: Adrien Lesaffre).

New photos show Ethiopian wolves (Canis simensis ) feeding on the nectar of Ethiopian red hot poker flowers (Kniphofia foliosa). Carnivores are rarely seen feeding on nectar. Researchers say this may be the first large carnivore to act as a pollinator, although more research is needed to confirm its role.

'These findings highlight that we still have a lot to learn about one of the world's most threatened carnivores ,' said study co-author Sandra Lai, an ecologist at the University of Oxford.

The red and yellow flowers of the Ethiopian red poker produce sweet nectar that attracts many pollinators, including insects and birds. In previous field studies, the researchers occasionally found wolves licking the flowers, so they set out to study the behavior more closely.

In the new study, published in the journal Ecology, researchers tracked six Ethiopian wolves from three different packs for four days. While most of the wolves visited just a handful of flowers, one visited 20 flowers and another visited 30 flowers in a single foraging session.

A wolf licks a red poker flower in Ethiopia. (Photo: Adrien Lesaffre).

When wolves visit a red poker plant, they often lick the mature flowers at the bottom, where they have the most nectar. In doing so, their snouts are coated with pollen. This means the wolves can spread that pollen to other flowers, the researchers wrote in the study.

However, it is unclear whether wolves are effective pollinators. Nectar is not a major part of their diet, so more research is needed to determine how often wolves visit flowers. And there is no evidence yet that a wolf can transfer enough pollen to another flower to be an effective pollinator.

'I first learned about the nectar of the Ethiopian red poker when I saw shepherd children in the Bale Mountains licking the flowers ,' said study co-author Claudio Sillero, a conservation biologist at the University of Oxford. 'I tasted it right away – the nectar had a pleasant sweet taste. Then I saw wolves doing the same thing, and I knew they were enjoying it, tapping into this unusual source of energy . '