“You Go Over, I Go Under”: Studying How Coyotes and Badgers Hunt Together

Coyotes and American badgers sometimes team up to hunt prairie dogs and ground squirrels, each bringing a skill the other lacks: the badger digs underground, and the coyote gives chase above it.

Indigenous people and early European settlers described this partnership at least as far back as the nineteenth century. Even so, little research has examined when and why the two carnivores work together.

A camera study

Emma Balunek, a master’s student at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, set out to find answers. She placed grids of cameras at five field sites in Colorado, South Dakota, Wyoming and New Mexico, including Valles Caldera National Preserve, to study the conditions that shape the partnership:

• distance to large prairie dog colonies;
• human disturbance;
• time of day; and
• season.

From the cameras’ photos and video, and other footage, she planned photo stories, short videos and a StoryMap to draw attention to the grasslands — an underappreciated and endangered habitat — through this unusual pair.

Why it matters

Balunek hopes the work will build appreciation for the grasslands and the animals that live in them. Coyotes, badgers and prairie dogs are often misunderstood, she explains, and showing them as partners within a larger web of species could change how people see them and the prairie they share.

The project also gathered citizen science reports: visitors to Valles Caldera and elsewhere who saw a coyote and badger together, now or in the past, were invited to share their sightings to help map where the relationship occurs.

The work was supported by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s School of Natural Resources, the American Society of Mammalogists’ Donald W. and Glennis A. Kaufman Research Award, Platte Basin Timelapse, and the Benson Lab of Predator-Prey Ecology.

Sources

Based on "You Go Over, I Go Under: A Study of the Coyote-Badger Hunting Relationship," Valles Caldera National Preserve, National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx’s own words.