{"id":538843,"date":"2026-03-14T00:19:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T00:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/538843\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T00:19:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T00:19:20","slug":"wolves-kill-and-ravens-remember-where","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/538843\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolves kill\u2014and ravens remember where"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Ravens<\/p>\n

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image:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two ravens soar above a wolf pack in Yellowstone. This type of short-distance following is common, but prolonged following is extremely rare.<\/p>\n

view more\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Credit: Daniel Stahler \/ YNP<\/p>\n

When a wolf pack runs down its prey, the first on the scene is often the raven. Even before the predators have had time to dig in, the ravens are already in line, waiting to take advantage of the odd scrap of meat that becomes available. The speed with which the scavengers arrive at wolf kills is uncanny, and people had an explanation for how: ravens must be following wolves.<\/p>\n

But a new study that tracked ravens and wolves in Yellowstone National Park over two-and-a-half years shows that the scavengers use a far more sophisticated strategy. Ravens can remember where wolves are most likely to make kills and will return to those areas from far away. \u201cThey can fly six hours non-stop, straight to a kill site,\u201d says Dr Matthias Loretto, the study\u2019s first author.<\/p>\n

Published in Science, the findings suggest that ravens use spatial memory and navigation to find food scattered over the landscape. \u201cRavens can cover large distances by flying, and they seem to have a good memory, so they don\u2019t need to constantly follow wolves in order to profit from the predators,\u201d says Loretto.<\/p>\n

The study was led by the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (Germany), together with several other international institutions, including the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (Germany); School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington (USA); and Yellowstone National Park (USA).<\/p>\n

Putting a legend to the test<\/p>\n

The study focused on Yellowstone National Park, where wolves were reintroduced in the mid-90s after a 70-year absence. The park\u2019s wolves are monitored by tracking collars, which are attached to a quarter of the wolf population in any given year. Dr. Dan Stahler, a biologist from Yellowstone who has tracked the park\u2019s wolves since reintroduction, says that ravens appear to seek out the company of wolves: \u201cYou see them flying directly above traveling packs or hopping close behind wolves as they take down prey.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the ravens, it\u2019s a profitable foraging strategy, as the wolves invariably produce food that the birds can scavenge. \u201cWe all assumed that the birds had a very simple rule; just stick close to the wolves,\u201d says Stahler. But the assumption was untested. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know what ravens were capable of because nobody had ever put them at the center; nobody had taken the scavenger\u2019s point of view,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

To gain a complete picture of raven behavior, the team attached tiny GPS tracking devices to 69 ravens, \u201cwhich is just an insane number,\u201d says Loretto, who started the research while at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. \u201cRavens are so observant of the landscape that they don\u2019t step into traps easily,\u201d he says. To trap the birds for tagging, researchers meticulously matched the trap setup with the surroundings. For example, traps set near campsites had to be disguised with rubbish and fast-food bait, \u201cor else the ravens would suspect that something was off and wouldn\u2019t come near it,\u201d says Loretto, now a scientist at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.<\/p>\n

In addition to tracking ravens, researchers included movement data from 20 of Yellowstone\u2019s collared wolves. They monitored the animals during winter, when ravens most often associate with wolves, recording GPS locations at intervals of up to 30 minutes for ravens and up to one hour for wolves. They also included data on where and when wolves killed prey, primarily elk, bison, and deer.<\/p>\n

Remembering profitable landscapes<\/p>\n

Over two-and-a-half years of tracking, researchers found only one clear case of a raven following a wolf for more than one kilometer or more than an hour. \u201cAt first, we were puzzled,\u201d says Loretto. \u201cOnce we realized that ravens are not following wolves over long distances, we couldn\u2019t explain why the birds still arrive so quickly at wolf kills.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a detailed analysis of the movement data, the pattern became clear. Rather than tracking predators directly over long distances, ravens repeatedly revisited specific areas where wolf kills were common. Some individuals flew up to 155 kilometers in a single day, moving along highly directional paths toward places where a carcass was likely to appear\u2014even though the exact timing of a kill is unpredictable.<\/p>\n

When it comes to location, wolf kills cluster in particular landscape features, such as flat valley bottoms, where wolves hunt more successfully. Ravens were far more likely to visit areas with a history of frequent wolf kills than areas where kills were rare, suggesting that they learn and remember the long-term \u201cresource landscape\u201d created by wolves.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe already knew that ravens can remember stable food sources, like landfills,\u201d says Loretto. \u201cWhat surprised us is that they also seem to learn in which areas wolf kills are more common. A single kill is unpredictable, but over time some parts of the landscape are more productive than others \u2014 and ravens appear to use that pattern to their advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n

A broader insight into animal intelligence<\/p>\n

The authors don\u2019t rule out that ravens still follow wolves over short distances. \u201cTo find wolf kills locally, ravens likely use short-range cues, like monitoring wolf behavior or listening to wolf howling,\u201d says Loretto. But at a broader scale, the pattern is clear: memory first, cues second. Ravens use spatial memory and navigation to decide where to search in the first place, sometimes across tens or even hundreds of kilometers.<\/p>\n

Senior author Prof John M. Marzluff of the University of Washington adds: \u201cWhat our study clearly shows is that ravens are flexible in where they decide to feed. They don\u2019t stay tied to a particular wolf pack. With their sharp senses and memory of past feeding locations, they can choose among many foraging opportunities far and wide. This changes how we think about how scavengers find food\u2014and suggests we may have underestimated some species for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Method of Research<\/p>\n

Data\/statistical analysis<\/p>\n

Subject of Research<\/p>\n

Animals<\/p>\n

Article Title<\/p>\n

Ravens anticipate wolf kill sites across broad scales<\/p>\n

Article Publication Date<\/p>\n

12-Mar-2026<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"image:\u00a0 Two ravens soar above a wolf pack in Yellowstone. This type of short-distance following is common, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":["post-538843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}