Unlikely friendship between predator and prey stuns scientists
A camera trap set up to study birds in southeastern Peru instead filmed an ocelot following an opossum through the jungle at night. The ocelot, a predatory cat, moved in tandem with the small marsupial.
Researchers at the Cocha Cashu Biological Station initially assumed that the ocelot was hungrily stalking the opossum. A few minutes later, however, the camera caught the pair walking back the way they came. and the opossum was clearly relaxed around its companion.
'They were like two old friends walking home from a bar,' Isabel Damas Moreira, an ecologist at Bielefeld University in Germany, told the New York Times.
Ecologists in other parts of the Amazon had filmed similar interactions between the two species on three occasions between 2019 and 2023.
To understand what was happening, Damas Moreira left strips of fabric infused with ocelot scent in front of camera traps. Opossums visited the strips 12 times, often biting, sniffing or rubbing against them. A puma-scented strip set up for comparison was visited just once.
One theory that the researchers are considering is 'chemical camouflage', where the opossums use the ocelots' scent to hide themselves from bigger predators. In return, the ocelots use the opossums' body odour to conceal themselves from their prey.
Unlike ocelots, opossums are immune to the venom of Amazonian pit vipers. Trailing an opossum might protect ocelots from snakes while they hunt at night, Ettore Camerlenghi, an evolutionary biologist, said. A similar partnership exists between coyotes and badgers in the Mojave desert, where rattlesnakes are a constant danger.
Another possibility is that opossums guide the ocelots to prey that is too big to tackle themselves. When the ocelot has had its fill, the opossum can feast on the leftover carrion.
Diego Astua, an opossum researcher at the University of Pernambuco in Brazil, said the behaviour was all the more remarkable because opossums are solitary animals that rarely socialise with anyone other than their families or mating partners.
He said: 'We are likely to find more and more surprising records like this.'
Camerlenghi said that the chance discovery only happened because of advances in night-time video technology. Still photos alone would have given the impression that the ocelot was hunting the opossum.
He added: 'Science often works like that. You search for one thing and end up finding something else, which sometimes turns out to be even more interesting than what you were originally after.'
Another example of 'hunting mutualism' is between humans and honeyguide birds in Africa and Asia. The birds lead people to beehives, and feast on the beeswax after the humans crack them open.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
12 hours ago
- The Independent
The race against time to save iconic palm trees from tiny bug
& Nayara Batschke Uruguay 's iconic palm trees are facing a devastating attack from the red palm weevil, a 5-centimetre insect that arrived from Southeast Asia in 2022. The pest has already devoured thousands of palms across the country, with half of Montevideo's 19,000 trees now infected. The weevil causes trees to collapse within weeks by boring into trunks and allowing larvae to tunnel and consume internal tissue. Despite initial delays, Uruguayan authorities have now declared the fight against the weevil a "national priority," allocating funds for pesticides and other control methods. There are growing fears that the weevil could spread to native trees in Uruguay's UNESCO biosphere reserve and potentially across the South American continent.
The Sun
a day ago
- The Sun
Lethal 15-FOOT prehistoric croc ‘chomped' gigantic ‘terror bird' taller than a human in shock attack 12million years ago
FOSSILISED bite marks on the leg of an ancient "terror bird" have been traced back to a massive crocodile that roamed Earth 12million years ago, a new study suggests. A "terror bird" - also known as Phorusrhacids - was an apex predator that would have towered over humans at over 9ft tall. 2 Evidence of the tussle was unearthed at the La Venta fossil site in Colombia - one of the most fossil-rich areas in South America. After analysing the fossilised remains, a team of archaeologists concluded that a 15-feet-long caiman was likely responsible for the marks. In the journal Biology Letters, the team suggested that La Venta's largest ancient caiman species, Purussaurus neivensis, was behind the bite. Although it seems like the monster responsible would not yet have been fully grown. Adult specimens of the Purussaurus neivensis could grow up to a whopping 33 feet long. While the flightless "terror birds" had little to fear on land, the new research suggests they were at risk around water. "We have learned that terror birds could also be preyed [upon] and that even being an apex predator has risks," study lead author Andrés Link, a paleontologist and biologist at the University of the Andes in Colombia, told Live Science in an email. But the scene archaeologists have painted requires some imagination. It's always possible that the terror bird simply died near a body of water and became food for a nearby caiman. Without evidence of a caiman with a belly full of "terror bird", the findings represent an anecdotal account of an aquatic apex predator feasting on a land apex predator during the middle of the Miocene epoch some 23 million to 5 million years ago. The terror bird fossil was first unveiled in a study published last year, where researchers suspected a crocodilian creature killed the bird. However, the study's authors had not yet published an analysis of the four tooth marks found on the bone. For the most recent study, the researchers created detailed 3D images of the fossil to get a closer look at the bite mark. The indentations showed no signs of healing - suggesting the bird did not live long after, or was already dead. The size and shape of the marks were also consistent with those delivered by a caiman that was around 15.1 to 15.8 feet (4.6 to 4.8 m) long, according to the study. "In my opinion this study contributes to understanding the diet of Purussaurus, the landscape of fear near the water bodies [at] La Venta during the middle Miocene and the complex ecological interactions in the protoAmazonian ecosystems of [tropical] South America," said Link.
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
Teeth marks suggest 'terror bird' was killed by reptile 13 million years ago
Teeth marks made on the leg bone of a large avian reptile known as a terror bird 13 million years ago suggest an even bigger predator may have killed it, scientists birds were top predators - they could be taller than a human and had powerful legs and hooked, flesh-ripping beaks. Palaeontologists in Colombia matched teeth marks on the fossilised leg bone of one of these fearsome birds to a caiman, or a crocodile-like reptile. 3D digital scans of the bites allowed the scientists to reconstruct what they believe was a "battle to the death" that the terror bird did not survive. The new study, published in the journal Biology Letters, compared the size and shape of the teeth marks to the skulls and teeth of crocodile-like predators in museum provides rare evidence, the researchers say, of an interaction between two extinct top predators at the leg bone the scientists studied was first unearthed more than 15 years ago in Colombia's Tatacoa Desert. When the bird lived in the swamps of that area 13 million years ago, it would have been about 2.5m tall and would have used its legs and beak to hold down and rip at its prey. What the scientists are not able to prove conclusively is whether this particular, unfortunate terror bird was killed in the attack, or if the caiman scavenged its remains. "There is no sign of healing in the bite marks on the bone," explained lead researcher Andres Link from the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. "So if it wasn't already dead, it died in the attack. That was the last day that bird was on this planet - then a piece of its leg bone was found 13 million years later." The Tatacoa Desert is home to rich deposits of fossils from an epoch known as the Middle Miocene. At that time, it was a humid swamp, where river sediments trapped and fossilised the bones of dead animals, resulting in the preserved remains found there today. This particular bone was first discovered about 15 years ago by local fossil collector César Augusto Colombian scientists worked closely with Mr Perdomo, studying and cataloging fossils that he has gathered in his museum. It was when scientists were working in the museum that they realised that this fist-sized piece of leg bone came from a terror bird. That was an exciting discovery - terror bird fossils are rare. But Dr Link and his colleagues were also fascinated by the puncture marks in the bone, which had clearly been made by the teeth of another powerful predator. This new analysis of the marks revealed that they most closely match an extinct caiman species called Purussaurus neivensis, a crocodilian that would have been up to five metres long. The researchers say it would have ambushed its prey from the water's edge, much like crocodiles and caimans do today. "I would imagine it was waiting for prey to to be nearby," said Dr Link. If this was indeed a battle between two apex predators, Dr Link says that provides insight into an ancient ecosystem. It reveals that ferocious terror birds were much more vulnerable to predators than previously thought. "Every piece of a body helps us to understand so much about life on the planet in the past," Dr Link told BBC News. "That's something that amazes me - how one tiny bone can complete the story."
