Wildly beautiful

[Richard D]

Photographer Documented The Friendship Between A Grey Wolf And A Brown Bear



https://whatzviral.com/photographer-documented-the-friendship-between-a-grey-wolf-and-a-brown-bear/

[hedda_foil]

1. Thanks. Here's another pic from your link.

[StarryNite]

2. Thank you for posting this!

Wolves are so misunderstood.

[2naSalit]

8. +1

[Botany]

3. "It seems to me that they feel safe being together," Lassi adds.

Thanx for posting! Any dog owner can spot the wolf's play displays. I love the picture
of them playing in the water as she is looking back him and running.

We have so much more to learn about animals.



“No-one can know exactly why or how the young wolf and bear became friends,” Lassi continued. “I think that perhaps they were both alone and they were young and a bit unsure of how to survive alone…It is nice to share rare events in the wild that you would never expect to see.”

[2naSalit]

7. It's quite unusual...

I spend a lot of time observing animal behavior, wildlife in particular. This could be the result of two young predators finding each other and helping each other survive. They are both carnivores so they have a kind of mutualism that works for them, most likely, when it's time to eat. I would love to see how they hunt together.

In Yellowstone NP, bears quickly learned to follow the newly re-introduced wolves around and when they were on the hunt, especially. The bears learned to hang back and let the wolves do the hard work of killing whatever they were after, then the bear(s) move in and take over the carcass. There's usually dispute and it comes out as a 50/50 in terms of who ends up in possession of the prize. Sometimes they share, I have witnessed that so I know it happens, and other times it's a rather bitter dispute. The sure thing is that predators, like wolves and bears, do a cost/benefit analysis for each kill episode... they evaluate the energy cost of making the kill for the amount of nutrition/energy they will gain, if it's too much work, they'll take a pass. Bears go into hibernation when the cost of obtaining food gets too high, bears in zoos don't hibernate because they are fed all through the year. Wolves don't hibernate and become more generalist about what they eat at times. The bear population in the park started doing much better, health-wise, a couple years after the wolves were returned.

Now I have to go to the link and see what other pictures reveal.

[Botany]

12. And sometimes those thinking beings like "the company" too.

Last edited Sun Oct 20, 2019, 03:25 PM - Edit history (1)

The place in Ohio where I get my labs also provide some lab pups to zoos for Cheetah cubs to
grow up w/. Since in the wild Cheetahs have 2 or 3 cubs at a time they grow up socializing
but in captivity they only have one cub @ a time and their chances of making adulthood was
slight but once they started pair up a cheetah cub with a young lab they started thriving.


BTW I am sure you already know this but one of the big reasons why the bears started doing better
when the wolves were brought back was that they changed the elk behavior. The elk had become like
big cows and they would hang out along the creeks in aspen groves and they would feed on the young
aspen clones that came up from the tree's roots. And overtime the aspen groves (some of which are >
500 old) would thin out to a point that they no longer shaded the creeks nor did they drop "bugs & stuff"
into the water on which the cutthroat trout fed on. Once the wolves came back, the elk moved on, and
the streams were shaded by the aspens which cooled the water and dropped critters into the water
for trout dinners and as the cutthroat started coming back the bears started eating the trout and they
had less interactions w/people.

BTW if you can post the picture of the wolf doing her best "butt scoot" through the water with her
eyes wide open looking bake her bear pal. That is pure play behavior.

[2naSalit]

13. Haha!

You just about quoted points I used to make in my ranger talks about wolves! And when I was an advocate/lobbyist before that.

Elk are roving ungulates and they won't rove without predator pressure if there's cottonwood and aspen sprouts to munch on. It's why most of the river valleys in the park looked more like a golf course than a riparian area, but that all changed, in the Lamar Valley first, after the wolves were back on the scene after a couple years. Yup, I know a lot about that.

[Botany]

14. I have hunted for years ... doe ungulates .... but Trump's go ahead on killing bear cubs and ....

... wolf pups in their dens was done out of pure cruelty and to piss off the liberals.

[2naSalit]

15. Indeed...

don't get me started. I've retired and it's all I can do to cope with what's going on now. My friends who were the federal managers of these species when I was active told me they would resign their positions and lose their pnesions before they would allow the killing of pups/cubs in dens. the asshole gov. of one state even ordered them to kill an alpha female (wolf) and allow her pups to starve and they refused. Some of us sued and the killing didn't take place at that stage but I think the state ended up "removing" that pack after a time because of cows.

I go "picture hunting" and will probably start marketing some of my images, some are as amazing as those in the OP. But I see about as much when I don't have my camera with me, I live in a very wildlife rich environment which I will do what I must to protect it while I'm still alive. And when I eat meat, it's usually wild game given to me by my friends who do hunt so I intend to be here for a while because I try to live within my environment as part of it not as an intruder.

[RainCaster]

4. Two apex predators, not in competition

We have so much to learn.

[patphil]

5. Amazing picture, thank you.

[Bayard]

6. Amazing

Thanks for posting.

[IronLionZion]

9. The Jungle Book is real

[2naSalit]

10. Thanks for posting those!

My two favorite mammalian species!

[Nitram]

11. Wow! What an amazing story. Thanks for posting!

[Fla Dem]

16. No words, just amazing.

[Duppers]

17. Loved it so much that I've had this pic on my desktop

For a few yrs.

And this is amazing:
"Each evening after a hard of hunting the pair shared a convivial deer carcass meal together at the dusk in the wilderness."

[jimlup]

18. That is awesome

wow!