The Ethiopian wolf is a reddish-brown solitary hunter only found in the highlands of Ethiopia.
“For now, the population is more or less stable,” says Sandra Lai, senior scientist at the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme and an ecologist at the University of Oxford. “But less than 500 individuals remain.”
Recently, Lai and her colleagues discovered something new about these creatures — the animals occasionally consume the nectar of a plant called the red hot poker.
In other words, the carnivorous Ethiopian wolf may also be a pollinator.
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These flowers are loaded with nectar. “You can see children drinking the nectar,” she says. “I tasted it. It’s very sweet. And when you do it, you have pollen all over your face.”
Lai had heard anecdotally that wolves were slurping up nectar from these flowers, and she wanted to see if the rumors were true. Do they go from flower to flower like a busy bee? Her team decided to follow the wolves.
FoundingFrog
Article URL : https://www.npr.org/2024/12/06/nx-s1-5214776/a-wolf-walks-into-a-flower-and-appears-to-pollinate-it