Hi, I'm Jess Keating, and you're watching
Animalogic: Second Nature. There was an idea called pack hunting.
The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable animals
to see if they could become something more.
To see if they could work together,
when they were hungry enough, to take down prey so much larger
than themselves.
Pack hunting, some assembly required.
[♪♪♪] [male announcer]
In these designs for living,
there are impressive parallels everywhere
in this truly wonderful world. Pack hunters are some of
the most successful hunters on the planet.
And hunting in groups has a tone of benefits.
It allows for prey larger than the predators to be targeted.
Kills can be defended from other predators and scavengers,
and usually every participating member in a successful hunt
gets a guaranteed meal. Pack hunting is almost
exclusively seen in social species
and there are six key elements needed
when hunting as a group. [man] One, two...
five, six. [Jess]
The group will often hunt together.
Group members target the same prey animal.
There is a division of labour during the hunt,
meaning that different hunters have different roles.
They use signals to coordinate with one another,
they react to each other's movements,
and any prey caught is shared among the pack members.
Pack hunting usually only happens in environments
where food is relatively scarce
and it's near impossible to catch enough food by yourself.
[man] The hunter's perennial problem is
"Do I wish to hunt or be hunted?"
The most majestic pack hunters are the kings and queens
of the savanna. Lions.
These ferocious felines dominate the savanna
and they're the largest cats that hunt in packs.
Cheetahs, too, hunt cooperatively,
but they're much less coordinated.
In lion prides, the females do most
of the hunting, while the bulkier males defend their catches from predators
and scavengers. During the hunt there are
two major roles, the wings and the centres.
The wings flank the prey from left to right,
keeping them running in the right direction
all while slowly boxing the prey in.
The centres chase the prey from behind,
intercepting them between the wings.
In a pack of seven,
the wings will have overtaken the prey by the end of the hunt,
leaving the surrounded on all sides.
Much of their prey are either too fast for a lion to catch
in a straight up sprint, in the case of springbok
and zebra, or too bulky, in the case
of wildebeest, for a single lion
to successfully kill. And so the pride hunts together.
When the females have done the hard work,
the males roll in to feast.
This may seem unfair, but without the much larger
males to defend their kill, their prey is often stolen
by hyenas. [Hyenas cackling]
Lion prides may reign over the
plains, but the more sophisticated
pack hunters are the chimpanzees.
[male announcer] This chimpanzee is obviously up to something,
and this cat knows it. And he knows she knows.
Into the jam. [Jess]
Not all chimps are pack hunters,
and whether or not they choose to team up
is entirely dependent on geography.
Chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania
rarely hunt cooperatively, as they're able to easily
catch prey alone. While Chimps found in Tai
National Park on the Ivory Coast team up almost exclusively.
Chimps are much more successful pack hunters than lions, wolves,
and cheetahs,
but this is possibly due to the fact that they're omnivorous.
Since they don't rely on meat exclusively,
they will only target prey if they are very certain
that their hunt will succeed. Other pack hunters don't have this luxury.
And their prey of choice, colobus monkeys.
Yeah, don't get attached to this cutie. He's about to die.
Colobus monkeys are about
a fourth of the weightof a chimpanzee. Their light bodies allow them to
hang out on branches too thin to support a chimp.
Meaning that escape from an attacking chimp is easy,
provided there are lots of trees.
So the chimp needs to use its pack
to corner the colobus monkey to prevent its escape.
To do this they have an elaborate set up.
There are four roles within chimp packs.
The first are the drivers.
These chimps are the ones to initially approach
the colobus monkey and drive it in the direction
of their trap. The second are blockers.
These prevent the colobus monkeys
from taking the easy escape routes,
forcing them in the direction the chimps want them to go.
Behind the colobus monkeys are the chasers.
These chimps use short burst
of speed to drive the
colobus monkeys forward until they meet the ambushers.
These chimps hide in the trees waiting for the chasers to drive
the colobus monkeys to them where they pounce. [♪♪♪]
These chases are incredibly difficult to pull off
and they require some rather intricate planning.
Keep in mind that all of this is happening
on multiple plains of activity. These chases take
the monkeys forward, backward, and up and down
through the trees, and the chimps need
to plan accordingly. Chimps don
t start hunting like this until they're about
eight years old, and the most effective ambushers
This is the most complicated role
and requires the chimp to make a lot of accurate predictions
about their prey's movement. Chimps, and lions as well,
often specialize in their selected roles
and on subsequent hunts they will usually fall
into the same role. Africa's home to the majority
of pack hunters, and one of the most effective
is the African wild dog. [male announcer]
Generations of canine instinct plus months of training
all for a fall season, but it's worth it.
[Jess] These cooperative hunters roam the African savanna
and they use these numbers to their advantage.
They can take down prey up to ten times their size.
Their primary strategy is to get their prey on the run
where they're more vulnerable. If their target stands their
ground for over five minutes,the pack of dogs will likely leave it be.
These pack hunters can
The dogs have several lines of pursuit.
So if their prey veers off course
in an attempt to out manoeuvre their pursuers,
there's always a dog ready to intercept.
When targeting calves, the most important step is to
separate it from its mother.They do this by harassing the mother
while the rest of the pack attacks the cub.
When attacking warthogs,
different members of the pack will attack different parts
of the warthog's body simultaneously,
biting at their weakest points. Their face, neck, and genitals,
anything that they can tear off to bleed the warthog to death.
They primarily hunt impalas, but they get the most out
of their hunt when they bring down
something bigger, like a wildebeest.
In the oceans, it's bottlenose dolphins
that dominate with their pack hunting.
And their most effective strategy is rather creative.
The driver dolphin will herd a school of fish into a sandbar,
while the rest of the pack, called the barriers,
will form a circle around the fish.
The driver will slap the water with its tail,
enclosing the fish in a ring of silt,
preventing them from being able to swim away.
The fish will attempt to get out of the silty ring by jumping,
only to be caught midair by the surrounding barrier dolphins.
Dolphins also tend to specialize in their roles,
with the driver often being the same dolphin on every hunt.
Some crocodilians have been observed
using a similar cooperative strategy.
Alligators have also been seen herding fish into shallow water
where they're much easier to catch,
especially when the fish
jump out of the water in an attempt to escape.
Once they've had their fill, the gator will leave and allow
the other gators to have a bite. [man]
There are an estimated throughout the world,
each possessing a number of engineering skills
that qualify him as a master craftsman.
Of all of the creatures you'd expect to hunt cooperatively,
spiders are probably at the very bottom of the list.
Though unfortunately for your sanity,
there are several species of social spiders.
Anelosimus eximius are found in the rainforest
of South and Central America, and they live together
in colonies They work together,
they build together, but most importantly,
they hunt together. Spun off the top
of their giant webs are long loose strands of silk
that extend to nearby trees and bushes.
These make perfect traps for any passing insects.
When the spiders feel the vibration on their webs, the pack descends on
their newly caught meal. They sedate their prey
with venom, wrap them in silk,
and bring them back to the colony for all to share.
[man] Eventually, only the empty shell is left.
In the sky, several bird species use pack hunting to
dominate their prey. Aplomado falcons usually hunt
cooperatively with their mates when they're targeting
more elusive prey, like other birds or bats.
They have two main hunting strategies.
The pair of falcons fly parallel to their prey,
closing in and leaving it no room to manoeuvre
before striking. If their prey is perched,
the female will flush the prey out
and the male will be waiting to kill it.
Harris hawks, on the other hand, hunt in groups of up to six.
They hunt using a leap frog strategy.
The pack will split into two groups
and they will leap frog each other
from perch to perch looking for prey.
This way when they find
something to eat, like a rabbit,
they can flush the rabbit toward the other group, cornering it.
Their numbers also allow them to swap members out to rest.
When one of the hawks gets tired chasing the rabbit,
it will tag out and another hawk will take its place,
allowing them to rest while their prey gets exhausted.
And now the most iconic pack hunter, the wolf.
Wolves are highly social animals and form packs of up to
These packs will stalk their prey for hours,
sometimes even days before striking.
Wolves are large predators,
and their big numbers mean they need to take down large prey,
preferably caribou, moose, or a bison.
Making a stealth approach is key to their success,
as their prey are very big, very fast,
and they can spot predators from a great distance.
When they're ready to strike, the pack chase down
and surround their prey. Younger wolves will hang back and learn.
Faster wolves may run circles around the prey to confuse it
while the biggest wolves go in for the kill.
Like wild dogs, they target the face,
neck, genitals, and rump, killing the animal
by bleeding it to death. computer simulations
to study wolf hunting techniques,
and they found that there are two simple rules
that wolves follow when hunting.
One, they must move towards prey
until a minimum safe distance to the prey is reached.
And two, once they're close enough,
they move away from the other wolves
that are also at a close distance to the prey.
This ensures that the wolves surround prey
and means that regardless of the prey or the situation,
each wolf can function as part of a successful unit
with no real communication or hierarchy within the unit.
Pack hunters are some of the most efficient hunters
in the world. So what should we
talk about next? As always, be sure to leave
a note in the comments, and don't forget to subscribe
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every other week. Thank you so much for watching.
In the skies, the queen of the skies,
we don't like birds that are girls.