Coyotes and badgers are well-known predators of the American wilderness. What is not well known is that these two species, normally competing for the same prey, sometimes become hunting partners. When working cooperatively, they’re more successful in hunting burrowing rodents, like prairie dogs.
While this hunting partnership is not widely known, Indigenous peoples have long been aware of it, and early European settlers also described it.
Typically, this phenomenon involves one badger and one coyote, which each receive benefits by working together. Badgers are powerful diggers, so the benefit to coyotes is clear: badgers do the work, digging into burrows, and coyotes wait for the prairie dogs to run from the burrow to escape the badger.
The benefit for the badger is less obvious. Perhaps, prairie dogs, attempting to evade the badger, are dissuaded from fleeing the burrow by the presence of the coyote, leading to a successful hunt for the badger. Since this happens underground, it’s difficult to observe.
Collaborative hunting between coyotes and badgers occurs in warmer months., In winter, a badger can dig up hibernating prairie dogs, so it has no need to hunt with a coyote. As spring arrives, prairie dogs become active again and the teamwork begins anew!
Similar inter-species cooperative hunting has been observed elsewhere in nature. In the Red Sea, grouper fish and moray eels work together: the moray flushes prey fish from coral reef crevices and the grouper chases them down. Cooperative hunting relationships may be more common than we realize.
This Earth Note was written by Steve Schwartz and produced by KNAU and the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University.
