Headline : Wolves with a taste for nectar? How we discovered the first large carnivore that pollinates flowers

Read more from the original article on here at theconversation.com.

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No. of Paragraph 22

Every year in the highlands of Ethiopia, when the rain returns after a parched dry season, a dazzling sight unfolds. Vast fields of a plant known as the Ethiopian red hot poker revive from their crinkled, withered state, and bloom into fiery torch-like flowers. From June to November, these bright blossoms offer a precious resource: a profusion of sweet nectar.

Among the humming flash of sunbirds and insects drawn to the flowers, an unusual visitor appears: the Ethiopian wolf. Approaching a cone-shaped flower head, it licks the bottom, lapping up nectar and looking quite visibly pleased. As it moves from flower to flower, its muzzle becomes dusted with pollen. Can a wolf actually be a pollinator?

The Ethiopian wolf is a slender canid about the size of a large dog, with a reddish coat, white markings on its throat and chest, and a black bushy tail. It lives only in Ethiopia, in a few areas of high-altitude “sky islands” that emerge above the tropical forests below. With fewer than 500 alive today, it is Africa’s most endangered carnivore.

I’m part of a team of scientists, working under the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme, who have detailed this surprising nectar-feeding and the wolf’s potential role in pollination. We recently published our findings in the journal Ecology.

Read more from the original article on here at theconversation.com.

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