Wolves and hyenas spotted hunting together in the Middle East

A recent report said that researchers discovered a pack of wolves hunting with hyenas, something that has never happened before.

Indian researchers in the Middle East have reported an extremely unusual behavior: a pack of wolves was spotted hunting alongside a hyena , something that has never been reported before.

Normally, different species of carnivores don't really get along. Most of the time, they compete and steal each other's prey. Sometimes, these animals will fight each other, even kill each other, just for the prey. But somehow, this unusually peaceful relationship actually works.

Striped hyenas are native to North Africa, India, and the Middle East. When threatened, they have the ability to raise the hair along their backs, making them appear about 30% larger!

Wolves are highly social animals, but they almost never accept outside species into their pack - even dogs, which have many wolf-like traits, are often chased away or hunted rather than accepted.

Striped hyenas , on the other hand, are the complete opposite of the striped hyenas that live in the Middle East , and are usually solitary. So when researchers found hyena tracks mixed with those of grey wolves, they sensed that something strange was going on.

'Wild animal behavior is often more flexible than described in textbooks,' said Vladimir Dinets, associate professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. 'When necessary, wild animals can abandon their usual strategies and learn something completely new and surprising. That's also a very useful survival skill.'

The hyena may be described as an animal with a "dog-like" body and "cat-like" anatomy, but it is truly a unique creature in its own right.

Scientists have followed their tracks multiple times, including a layer of clear, moist sand that bears the tracks of hyenas and wolves. At first, they thought the hyenas were chasing the wolves (or vice versa), but that was not the case.

In some places, the tracks of one of the three wolves lie on the tracks of the hyena. In other places, the hyena figure lies on the wolf tracks.

Finally, after four years, they discovered that the wolf pack was actually living with hyenas. Beniamin Eligulashvili, a zoologist in Israel, witnessed this phenomenon firsthand and reported that the hyenas were actually traveling with the wolves as members of the pack.

Hyenas are a distinct family within the order Carnivora. The family contains four living species. The spotted hyena, brown hyena, and aardwolf are all native to sub-Saharan Africa. The striped hyena is endemic to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent.

"The hyena did not follow behind the wolf pack, instead it moved in the middle of the pack ," the study, co-authored by both men, said.

This could be beneficial for both animals. The Negev Desert is one of the harshest environments in either animal's range, and both species need all the help they can get.

Wolves are better hunters than striped hyenas (especially in packs). They are also faster and more agile. However, striped hyenas have a more acute sense of smell and a stronger bite – they can break larger bones and tear open the skulls of their prey.

In the desert, food is scarce and they are forced to use every means to hunt with a higher success rate than elsewhere. But how these two species can reach a peaceful "agreement", and how they can tolerate each other, still needs more research to explain clearly.

Striped hyenas are slightly smaller than spotted and brown hyenas and are the least studied. They have broad heads with dark eyes, thick muzzles, and large, pointed ears. Their muzzles, ears, and throats are completely black, but their fur can be golden yellow, brown, or gray with black stripes on their bodies and legs. A long mane of hair grows along their backs. Stealthy hyenas camouflage well in dry, tall grass. The most distinctive feature of a hyena is its legs: its front legs are much longer than its hind legs. This gives the hyenas a distinctive gait, making them appear to be limping when going uphill.

However, the current study did indeed find that there was significant overlap between the territories of the two species in some areas, but this unusual cooperation has not been reported elsewhere.

There are three main hypotheses for this anomaly:

1. First , this is an 'unusual' and unique behavior of a hyena. Although the two observations were made four years apart, it could be the same hyena.
2. Second , striped hyenas may be scavengers of wolf prey, following them to eat the bones and scraps of meat the wolves leave behind. However, this does not explain why wolves tolerate hyenas in their midst.
3. Third , hyenas and wolves may have formed a symbiotic relationship. This symbiotic relationship is also known between other species in nature.

Now, more observations are needed to draw more definitive conclusions and figure out what makes this type of interaction so special, or whether it has occurred elsewhere. Dinets argues that cooperative hunting between predators is rare, but perhaps not as rare as we think. Nature always seems to find a way to surprise us.