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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 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.
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