JACKSON, Wyo. — While many scavengers are tied to predators because of the food sources they provide, ravens and wolves have a particularly notable relationship that’s been observed in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE).
“Almost every time we see wolves out on tour, we see some sort of interaction happening between the wolves and ravens,” Tyler Greenly, professional wildlife guide with Jackson Hole EcoTour Adventures, tells Buckrail.
Interestingly, Greenly says that while a lot of people believe wolves and ravens have a symbiotic relationship, meaning they benefit mutually from each other, the relationship is actually one-sided. Ravens follow wolves and feed off of their kills, benefitting from the hard work of the wolves when they hunt. Greenly calls this kleptoparasitism, and he says he’s witnessed this raven behavior antagonize the wolves when the ravens take food the wolves expended energy on to have for themselves.
Kleptoparasitism is not an uncommon phenomenon in the world, but Greenly says that it’s a bit more rare to see it in this area.
“In the GYE, it is a more unique relationship,” Greenly says. “We don’t see it a whole lot in other places in the U.S., but we do see it in other countries.”
According to Greenly, birds will follow wild dogs and lions in Africa to benefit from the carnivores making their kills. He notes this type of relationship seems to happen most often with species in open-country, and seems to be more common with social predators. For example, ravens aren’t kleptoparasitic with mountain lions because the cats bury their carcasses to conceal it from grizzly bears and wolves.
However, despite the lack of a true symbiotic relationship, Greenly does say that wolves are opportunistic animals who can read patterns on the landscape; if there’s a kill that wolves don’t know about, they could notice raven activity that would draw the predator to a carcass.
Greenly emphasizes that this opportunistic behavior is not the result of ravens intentionally communicating where prey is to wolves. The same happens with grizzly bears who see the corvids on a kill.
“It’s just the animals reading each other’s behavior, and that’s allowing them to benefit,” Greenly says.
