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On one of his first trips to study wolves in Ethiopia in the late 1980s, biologist Claudio Sillero observed a highly unusual behavior: these local predators were deliberately licking the vibrant flowers of the red hot poker plant that grows in the country’s highlands.
Relatively few mammals have been documented drinking nectar and this was the first reported case of a large carnivore doing so, according to new research. “I wasn’t quite expecting the wolves had a sweet tooth! They were clearly enjoying dessert,” Sillero, a professor of conservation biology at Oxford University, said in an email.
He and other scientists have informally observed Ethiopian wolves exhibiting this odd behavior over past few decades. Now, a study published in the journal Ecology in November and coauthored by Sillero documents it in detail for the first time and suggests that the wolves may even help to pollinate the distinctive flower.
Sillero and his colleagues followed six wolves from three different packs frequenting the flowers over four consecutive days from late May to early June — the start of the plant’s six-month blooming season. All six animals were reported to have licked the flowers, though the total time spent licking the flower heads varied a lot, from around one minute to 1.5 hours. The endangered predators are regularly monitored as part of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme, founded by Sillero in 1995 following his first few visits to the region.
Ethiopian wolves almost exclusively prey on small rodents — the nectar simply supplements their meat-based diet, according to Sillero. Researchers have explained this dietary choice with “the dessert hypothesis,” a theory that describes how a species will make use of an extra resource that they enjoy, but don’t need, when it is available.
Other animals also enjoy the sweet-tasting nectar of the country’s highland flowers, he added, noting “baboons are very partial to them, mountain goats will go and have a go at them, domestic dogs will also partake.” After watching the local shepherd’s children playing with and licking the flowers, Sillero couldn’t resist trying them himself, describing them as “indeed very sweet and quite pleasant.”
The significant amount of pollen which accumulates on the wolves’ muzzles — and the fact that some individuals were seen visiting up to 30 different blooms in a single foray — could mean the wolves help pollinate the plant by transporting pollen from flower to flower, according to Sillero. It’s the first possible case of a large carnivore acting as a pollinator, the study noted.
Wolf-pollinated flowers?
Red hot poker plants are thought to be largely pollinated by birds, according to Jeff Ollerton, a visiting professor at Northampton University in the United Kingdom and author of the book “Pollinators and Pollination,” who wasn’t involved in the research. “They’ve got quite brightly colored, often red or orange, tubular flowers, and lots and lots of nectar,” Ollerton, a pollination ecologist, said.
He suggested that the plants could also be benefiting from wolf-pollination, but not to a great extent.
“It’s not impossible… if they are pollinators, I think they probably play a much smaller role than the birds,” Ollerton said.
While red hot pokers can grow to 175 centimeters (5 feet 9 inches) tall, Ethiopian wolves measure up to around 60 centimeters (2 feet) in height and 100 centimeters (3 feet 3 inches) in length.
Ollerton said that their smaller size may allow the wolves to access only the lowest flowers, which tend to be the oldest and those “that have either already been pollinated or have ceased to be reproductively viable.”
Nevertheless, “mammal pollination is certainly under-documented,” Ollerton noted. “These observations are just the first step in really understanding whether (the wolves) are pollinators or not.”
Among mammals, bats are considered the major pollinators. However, further work is still needed to find out whether the potential damage to flowers caused by non-flying mammals nectar-feeding outweighs the pollination benefits they provide to the plants.
Future wolf-related research could look at how consistently the predators pick up pollen on their muzzles and how often flowers are visited by each of the different pollinator species, Sillero said.
A flagship species
Endemic to Ethiopia’s Afroalpine meadows and living exclusively in a handful of isolated areas, just 454 adult Ethiopian wolves remain. The species has been most significantly impacted by habitat loss, driven by Ethiopia’s rapidly expanding population, and diseases transmitted from domestic dogs.
Through research and the implementation of various conservation initiatives, the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme has helped to stabilize the wolf population, resulting in the IUCN changing their status from “critically endangered” to “endangered” in 2004.
By engaging the public with exciting research — such as the discovery that Ethiopian wolves drink nectar — Sillero seeks to improve familiarity with the species.
“It’s an obvious model for conservation policy,” he said. With Africa’s rarest canid acting as a flagship species, Sillero hopes that wolf conservation measures will “trickle down into more effective protection to benefit biodiversity and local communities.
