Let me start off by saying this: if you don’t follow the blog The Scorpion and the Frog, you are missing out. They post pretty much exclusively new research on animal behavior, and today’s post is all thanks to them. So go check them out!
A few weeks ago there was a post titled Cooperating for Selfish Reasons in which the author discussed recent research on Ethiopian wolves. Apparently some researchers from the University of Oxford were interested in why some Ethiopian wolf pups stayed with their parents to help raise future pups, whereas others left their parents to start their own families, and they found some interesting answers! They kept track of a lot of factors and found that if new wolves stayed with their parents they were more likely to have more, higher quality hunting territory. Keep in mind, of course, that Ethiopian wolves are solitary rodent hunters, and not large mammal pack hunters like grey wolves.
Really, the Scorpion and the Frog blog explains it all in much more detail and much clearer than I can right now (head colds tend to not allow for clear thoughts), so you should really check them out. I just thought this was very interesting information!
The original paper can be found here.
WC
Wolfgang Canidaeus 