We all know the basics of the food chain. Plants use sunlight, water, and soil to grow. Herbivores are the myriad animals that eat plants. And carnivores are the animals that eat other animals.
We focus a lot on the big, magnificent carnivores, from lions and tigers to grizzly bears to great white sharks to killer whales.
What doesn't get mentioned much, however, is that most of those carnivores don't have high rates of hunting success. When lions go after a meal, their success rate is reportedly as low as 10%. Same for many other carnivores, such as wolves.
That might explain why carnivores regularly take the easy route and steal kills from other carnivores. Grizzly bears take food that wolves kill. Bald eagles steal fish that were caught by ospreys. Lions steal the kills of several animals, including those of the African wild dog, 50-pound predators that hunt in packs and live in the southern parts of Africa.
Wait a minute. 500-pound lions rely on prey that was taken down by 50-pound wild dogs?
Yup. It turns out that African Wild Dogs - a distant relative of domesticated dogs - are very intelligent and have a highly complex social structure. They do everything cooperatively, including coordinating their hunting activity.
While wolves commonly hunt in packs of 4 to 6, African Wild Dogs hunt in packs of 20 or more. They have a sophisticated hunting strategy and they communicate among each other during the hunt.
As a result, their hunting success rate is 80%, one of the highest success rates in the animal kingdom.
Enjoy the beauty and smarts of these animals, because it's estimated that they will be extinct in the not-too-distant future. Why? Because, like so many carnivores, they require lots of uninterrupted territory. And that territory is being fragmented by human development.
You can read more about these wild dogs here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_wild_dog
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