While it may seem more like something from a children’s cartoon, some animals work together. Maybe most famously, this includes coyotes and badgers hunting as a team.
Emma Balunek, a Master’s student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, recently shared this video of the two in the act:
In the video, you can see a coyote on the right. A badger runs from the left to join the coyote in seconds.
Balunek is researching the two animals and has cameras set up in Colorado, South Dakota, Wyoming, and New Mexico.
In an article for the National Park Service, she wrote that coyotes and badgers work well together because badgers can dig below ground while coyotes chase prey above ground. This technique is handy when the pair hunts prairie dogs. She hopes her cameras will share more about the environmental conditions that inspire the two animals to work together.
“My goal is to instill a greater appreciation and understanding of the grasslands and wild inhabitants,” Balunek is quoted as saying. “The project will uplift the prairie ecosystem, bringing attention to all the other animals that also call it home. Coyotes, badgers, and prairie dogs are often misunderstood species, so by painting them in a different light where they work together and are part of a larger connection of species, we can change perspectives.”
While newer technology allows us to see badgers and coyotes in the act, Balunek wrote that the behavior is not new. Indigenous people and early European settlers documented the two doing similar things around 200 years ago.
Have you ever seen the two animals working together? Researchers want to hear from you. Balunek and the National Park Service have launched a form where people can share where and when they saw coyotes and badgers hunting together.