Vern Evans
We often think of different predators as competing for the same prey, but a new series of wild trail cam videos documented how different badgers and coyotes hunted together as a team. The videos were recorded and shared to YouTube on Friday by Emma Balunek. A wildlife biologist and conservation photographer, Balunek is studying the unique coyote-badger relationship as part of a larger research project with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
One of Balunek’s most recent videos, which she shared Friday, shows the two critters hunting prairie dogs together at a rock pile in northeastern Colorado. The coyote stands guard at the rock pile, occasionally looking over its shoulder as the badger scurries around the rocks and tries to flush out a prairie dog.
The short clip ends before any prairie dogs are caught, but it’s one of several examples that Balunek has recorded with trail cameras in recent years. These cameras have been placed at various sites across New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota. Balunek’s research also incorporates other sites across the West and Great Plains where this unique hunting partnership has been observed, and she is now asking anyone who’s witnessed it to submit their observations through an online form.
“The two species sometimes hunt prairie dogs and ground squirrels together using their complimentary hunting skills,” Balunek writes in a story map summarizing her ongoing research. “Specifically, the badger digs up burrowing animals, while the coyote captures prey that flushes above ground and surveys the surrounding area.”
She says this relationship between the two species isn’t new, and that it was known to Indigenous peoples and even observed by early European settlers. Balunek points in her research to Native American artifacts featuring coyotes and badgers, as well as a traditional Navajo story in which “Coyote and Badger go around with each other, hunting and calling each other cousin.”
Balunek says her goal with the research project is to better understand the circumstances where the two species hunt together. This would add to existing research around the unique relationship. (One past study concluded that coyotes associating with badgers hunted ground squirrels more effectively than lone coyotes.)
“If the badger is normally active at dawn and dusk and during the night but will hunt with a coyote during the day, that’s possible evidence to suggest that the badger is gaining something from this relationship,” she explained in an interview with The Wildlife Society.
Balunek believes that understanding these inter-species relationships can help us expand our knowledge (and appreciation) of North America’s grasslands, which are some of the most imperiled and overlooked ecosystems on the continent.
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“I want to instill an appreciation and greater understanding of the grasslands and its wild inhabitants,” Balunek writes. “In addition, the knowledge we gather about the coyote-badger relationship could ultimately influence grassland management practices, leading to improved relationships between agricultural practices and the grasslands, and the protection of predators and keystone species, such as coyotes and prairie dogs.”
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