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A primatologist has found signs of a canine-primate relationship similar to humanity's domestication of wolves:
In the alpine grasslands of eastern Africa, Ethiopian wolves and gelada monkeys are giving peace a chance. The geladas – a type of baboon – tolerate wolves wandering right through the middle of their herds, while the wolves ignore potential meals of baby geladas in favour of rodents, which they can catch more easily when the monkeys are present. The unusual pact echoes the way dogs began to be domesticated by humans, and was spotted by primatologist Vivek Venkataraman, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, during fieldwork at Guassa plateau in the highlands of north-central Ethiopia.
Even though the wolves occasionally prey on young sheep and goats, which are as big as young geladas, they do not normally attack the monkeys – and the geladas seem to know that, because they do not run away from the wolves. "You can have a wolf and a gelada within a metre or two of each other and virtually ignoring each other for up to 2 hours at a time," says Venkataraman. In contrast, the geladas flee immediately to cliffs for safety when they spot feral dogs, which approach aggressively and often prey on them.
When walking through a herd – which comprises many bands of monkeys grazing together in groups of 600 to 700 individuals – the wolves seem to take care to behave in a non-threatening way. They move slowly and calmly as they forage for rodents and avoid the zigzag running they use elsewhere, Venkataraman observed. This suggested that they were deliberately associating with the geladas. Since the wolves usually entered gelada groups during the middle of the day, when rodents are most active, he wondered whether the geladas made it easier for the wolves to catch the rodents – their primary prey. Venkataraman and his colleagues followed individual wolves for 17 days, recording each attempted capture of a rodent, and whether it worked. The wolves succeeded in 67 per cent of attempts when within a gelada herd, but only 25 per cent of the time when on their own.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday June 10 2015, @03:45PM
Not having your young eaten isn't exactly a strong basis for a friendly relationship.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @03:47PM
Not in suburbia, but out in the wild it's pretty compelling.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @04:07PM
It certainly is a much better basis than _having_ your young eaten ;-)
Besides, not needing to flee (i.e. expending a lot of energy and also being required to find a new food source afterwards) is quite obviously of evolutionary advantage.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Archon V2.0 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @04:41PM
> Not having your young eaten isn't exactly a strong basis for a friendly relationship.
Is it that much different from what humans do? A basic peace treaty with open borders would state something like "We promise to only enter your territory for nonviolent reasons, and to never send in an invasion force to kill your families and take what you deem important. You promise not to try kill us when we do enter for nonviolent reasons."
Really, if the only difference between humans/humans and wolves/monkeys is that we prefer raping noncombatants to eating them, we don't have much room to criticize wolf negotiation tactics.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @05:19PM
we prefer raping noncombatants to eating them
Are you a (Soviet) Russian by any chance?
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 10 2015, @05:51PM
Dr. Peter Venkataraman: Human sacrifice, wolves and monkeys living together... mass hysteria!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by scruffybeard on Wednesday June 10 2015, @04:59PM
I was surprised the article did not touch on this. Perhaps having wolves in the area keeps other predators away.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday June 10 2015, @05:18PM
Even the monkeys know the wolves mostly eat rodents. Probably everything else knows it.
Speaking of that mystery, why do they eat more rodents around the monkeys?
My theory is the monkeys throw food on the ground which attracts the rodents which would lead to a plague of starving hordes of rodents that would scour the earth for food if the wolves didn't eat them to keep the numbers down.
So wolves = less food eaten or ruined by rodents for the monkeys. A good deal for both the wolves and the monkeys. Maybe not so good for the rodents, of course.
Basically you call them wolves but they're really operating under the "farm cat" business model. OK cats heres a nice dry corner of the barn all for you and here's the pail of fresh water I put out every morning, now go kill every grain eating mouse in my field and we'll call it even.
Also other things that eat rodents might be significantly more obnoxious than wolves, like perhaps snakes. I'd rather be surrounded by pacifist wolves than snakes. If the wolves outcompete the snakes and the monkeys prefer to chill with wolves instead of snakes, well...
(Score: 2) by infodragon on Wednesday June 10 2015, @05:23PM
Wolves get a benefit from the snake point... They don't have to look out for snakes, the monkeys do it for them!
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 10 2015, @07:50PM
I could buy that on the theory that monkey eyes are better at finding snakes than canine noses, which sounds believable but could be wrong. I've never heard of dogs being trained to hunt snakes although plenty enough humans hate snakes so if they could learn, someone would have taught them and we'd all know about the Irish Wolfhounds amazing ability at rattlesnake tracking and competitive hunting and all that, the absence of seems to imply dogs can not sniff out snakes.
Also it kind of assumes wolves don't eat snakes but in my experience with domesticated dogs they'll eat anything they can catch and I think a wolf could catch a snake.
Of course snakes might be uniquely effective predators against baby wolves, whereas monkeys might carry their young out of range or something, to there might be more to it than adult dinner time.
(Score: 2) by infodragon on Wednesday June 10 2015, @08:10PM
I don't know the habitat so the following are not so educated guesses... Some snakes hide well and are very poisonous; ground dwelling monkeys are adept at spotting those extreme dangers and there are more monkeys than wolves... Even if a monkey is only 1/2 as effective as spotting the snake, possibly even 1/10, greater numbers are in their favor.
Given that the snakes are probably after the rodents as well and the presence of the monkeys would disturb the snakes it may be the wolves have learned there are no snakes around the monkeys because their mere presence has chased them off. Most snakes flee humans, monkeys would create as much disturbance and probably drive the snakes away as they move in.
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 3, Informative) by EvilSS on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:08PM
It did, in a blurb at the very bottom:
However, the geladas don't seem to get anything from the relationship, since the wolves are unlikely to deter other predators such as leopards or feral dogs, he says. Without a reciprocal benefit, Sillero doubts that the relationship could progress further down the road to domestication.
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:41PM
Good catch, I didn't notice that box at the bottom. Given that, it seems that the dogs have sort-of domesticated the primates in this case. Essentially using them to stir up the rodents, in much the same way as a hunter might use a dog to flush birds out of tall grass.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday June 11 2015, @02:08AM
I'm sure most dog owners would attest to this being the way it worked with early wolves and humans as well. Most dogs do a good job training their owners.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday June 10 2015, @08:15PM
Certainly keeps the rodents away, and maybe a large source of fleas etc.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday June 11 2015, @03:40AM
The bottom of the article says the wolves don't appear to keep other predators away, so there's not much advantage to the monkeys at all.