A new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution lifts the veil on what happens when octopuses and fish hunt together. As it turns out, this cross-species relationship is more complex than anyone expected.

Animals of the same species often cooperate—work together to reach some kind of goal. But it’s relatively rare to find cooperation between individuals from different species.

A classic example you’ll be familiar with is the close relationship between dogs and humans, whether in the context of herding sheep or hunting. In these situations, the dog and the human work together to achieve a goal.

That’s mammals. But underwater species also sometimes cooperate. A nice example is the joint hunting behavior of moray eels and grouper. The grouper approaches the moray and signals that it wishes to hunt. The eel responds in kind, and off they go.

During these hunting forays, the grouper uses signals to indicate where prey may be hidden in the coral matrix. It’s a synergy made in heaven: the eel can scare the prey fish from hiding places among the coral, while the grouper patrols over the top. There is literally no place for prey to hide.

For the eels and grouper, the chances of catching their dinner are greatly improved when hunting together compared to hunting on their own.

Who’s in charge here?

While researchers have described these behaviors before, one question remains unanswered. Who, exactly, is in charge of these cross-species interactions?

Who decides what they are going to do, where and when? Are the different players “democratic,” in that they come to some form of compromise, or does one species take the lead and the other simply follows (that is, they are “despotic”)?

In an international collaboration, biologist Eduardo Sampaio and colleagues have investigated cross-species interactions between the usually solitary day octopus (Octopus cyanea) and several fish species, such as goatfish and groupers.

The fish and the octopus share a common goal—to increase their hunting efficiency. The traditional view of octopus-fish hunting groups assumed that the octopus is the producer, and the fish simply follow along and opportunistically pick up the scraps.

With its long, flexible arms, the octopus explores all the nooks and crannies of the hunting ground, flushing out prey the fish can then take advantage of. In this scenario, the octopus would be solely in charge of decisions and the fish just follow (that is, it’s an exploitative, despotic relationship).

However, when researchers took a closer look, it appeared perhaps this relationship is not as simplistic as previously believed. But without fine-scale analysis providing hard evidence, it is difficult to work out the precise details of how this cooperation works.

What did the new study find?

Using sophisticated behavioral analyses of 3D videos captured from 120 hours of diving, Sampaio and team found that each partner in the interaction plays a specific role. There was, in fact, no true leader—they are democratic.

The fish were responsible for exploring the environment and deciding where to move, while the octopus would decide if and when to move. Interestingly, controlled experiments showed the octopuses were guided by social information provided by the fishes.

When partnered with blue goatfish, the octopus foraging tactics where more focused and efficient. When partnered with blacktip groupers, they were less so. So, the nature of the hunting relationship varied depending on who’s involved.

The researchers concluded that, overall, success rates for capturing prey were higher for the octopus when foraging with fishy partners.

The details revealed by this study suggest this relationship is far more sophisticated than other cross-species hunting associations examined to date.

Despite the huge evolutionary gap between these animals (the equivalent of about 550 million years), both fish and octopus show clear signs of social competence and advanced cognition.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

By all accounts, Milagra the “miracle” California condor shouldn’t be alive today.

But now at nearly 17 months old, she is one of three of the giant endangered birds who got to stretch their wings in the wild as part of a release this weekend near the Grand Canyon.

Even after the door was opened Saturday, the birds didn’t immediately leave their pen. After 20 minutes, one condor left the pen, followed 20 minutes later by another condor.

Then, after sitting in the pen for an hour and 20 minutes, Milagra exited the enclosure and took flight. When a livestream of the wildlife release ended, a fourth condor remained in the pen, not ready to leave. For Milagra, there is no more appropriate name for a young bird that has managed to survive against all odds. Her mother died from the worst outbreak of avian flu in U.S. history soon after she laid her egg, and her father nearly succumbed to the same fate while struggling to incubate the egg alone.

Milagra, which means miracle in Spanish, was rescued from her nest and hatched in captivity thanks to the care of her foster condor parents.

The emergency operation was part of a program established about 40 years ago to help bring the birds back from the brink of extinction when their numbers had plummeted to fewer than two dozen.

The Peregrine Fund and the Bureau of Land Management streamed the release of Milagra and the others online Saturday from Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the Grand Canyon’s North Rim.

Condors have been released there since 1996. But the annual practice was put on hold last year due to what is known as the “bird flu.” Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza killed 21 condors in the Utah-Arizona flock.

“This year’s condor release will be especially impactful given the losses we experienced in 2023 from HPAI and lead poisoning,” said Tim Hauck, The Peregrine Fund’s California Condor program director.

Today, as many as 360 of the birds are estimated to be living in the wild, with some in the Baja of Mexico and most in California, where similar releases continue. More than 200 others live in captivity.

The largest land bird in North America with a wing-span of 9.5 feet (2.9 meters), condors have been protected in the U.S. as an endangered species since 1967. Many conservationists consider it a miracle any still exist at all.

Robert Bate, manager of the Vermilion Cliffs monument, said the release was being shared online in real time “so that the scope and reach of this incredible and successful collaborative recovery effort can continue to inspire people worldwide.”

California condors mate for life with a lifespan up to 60 years and can travel up to 200 miles (322 kilometers) a day, which they have been known to do as they move back and forth between the Grand Canyon and Zion national parks.

The Peregrine Fund started breeding condors in cooperation with federal wildlife managers in 1993. The first was released into the wild in 1995, and it would be another eight years before the first chick was hatched out of captivity.

The fund’s biologists typically don’t name the birds they help raise in captivity, identifying them instead with numbers to avoid giving them human characteristics out of respect for the species.

They made an exception in the case of #1221, aka Milagra. They saw her journey as emblematic of the captive breeding program coming full circle.

Milagra’s foster father, #27, was hatched in the wild in California in 1983. He was one of the first brought into the program as a nestling when fewer than two dozen were known to still exist worldwide.

Convinced it was the species’ only hope for survival, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made an unprecedented, risky decision back then to capture the remaining 22 known to exist to launch the breeding program. Over time, it has grown with assistance from the Oregon Zoo, Los Angeles Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

“Once they realized California condors were great parents in captivity, they started allowing them to raise their own species,” said Leah Esquivel, propagation manager at the fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho.

Like all California condors in the wild today, Milagra’s biological parents were products of the program.

Milagra’s mother, #316, laid her softball-sized egg in a cave on the edge of an Arizona cliff in April 2023—one of her last acts before she succumbed to avian flu. Sick himself, her biological father, #680, did his best to tend to the egg, but prospects for survival dwindled. So, when he made a rare departure from the nest, biologists who had been monitoring sick condors swooped in and snatched the lone egg.

“(He) was so focused on incubating the egg that he was not leaving to find food and water for himself, risking his own life,” Peregrine Fund spokesperson Jessica Schlarbaum said.

They stashed the fragile egg in a field incubator and raced 300 miles (480 kilometers) back to Phoenix, not unlike a human transplant team carrying a heart in an ice chest.

To the amazement of all, the egg hatched.

Milagra tested negative for the avian flu and spent about a week at the Liberty Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Mesa, Arizona, before she was taken to fund’s breeding facility in Idaho, where the foster parents took her under their wings.

Esquivel, the propagation manager, said Milagra’s foster mother, #59, has raised eight nestlings in her lifetime.

Esquivel described #59 as unique. While the bird never mates, she goes through all the other breeding motions each year and lays an egg.

“Her eggs are obviously infertile, but since she is a great mother, we use her and her mate to raise young,” Esquivel said. “We just swap the infertile egg out with a dummy egg, then place a hatching egg in the nest when we have one available for her.”

Milagra’s foster dad has sired about 30 young and helped raise nestlings in captivity for years.

After spending about seven months with foster parents, the youngsters head off to “condor school” in California to learn the basics: eating communally, strengthening muscles for flight and learning to get along with fellow condors.

For the biologists, recovery partners, volunteers and others who have persevered over the last year, Hauck summed up Saturday’s release of the birds from this year’s graduating class as “a moment of triumph.”

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Owning a home in Southern California isn’t just a dream for humans. Apparently, the bears want in on the market too.

Just ask residents and city officials in Sierra Madre, who in the last few years have seen their furry, four-legged neighbors amble out of the forest and barge into their cars, kitchens and living rooms as though the humans were just keeping the place warm for them.

“This is a new phenomenon,” Sierra Madre City Attorney Aleks Giragosian said. “Something interesting happened in the past two years. And like Jurassic Park, the bears have learned how to open doors. I don’t know how they learned it. I don’t know how they’re teaching each other, but they’re opening car doors, too.”

Bear sightings are nothing new for Sierra Madre and the other communities in the foothills of the Angeles National Forest, but in the last few years the bears have become bolder in their hunt for food.

In 2020, there were about 100 reports of bear sightings in Sierra Madre but no reports of break-ins into homes, authorities said. Last year, those numbers jumped to 380 sightings and 50 break-ins.

“It was in the last five years that they’ve really become a nuisance,” homeowner Sara Alden told CBS2 about one ornery ursine that had recently broken into her family’s home and tore up the place. “They’re getting more brazen, they really are.”

The behavior is a result of humans moving deeper into the wildlands where bears reside, said Erinn Wilson, the South Coast Region regional manager with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

She told the Sierra Madre City Council in May that some bears are “no harm, no foul” bears that simply wander into neighborhoods and can be easily scared away, others are habituated and adjust to human routines such as which days trash cans are put out so they can find food, and others are depredation bears, which are unafraid and can kill livestock, damage property and pose a public safety threat.

Sierra Madre has a mix of no harm, no foul bears and habituated bears, Wilson said.

But there was one bear that had been a particularly bad neighbor of late.

Sometime recently, it found an empty house hidden among the narrow, tree-lined streets on Alta Vista Drive that enjoy scenic views overlooking the San Gabriel Valley and moved in. While a BMW sits in the driveway gathering dust and overgrown shrubs hide the felled trees littering the yard, the bear apparently made itself at home.

Neighbors began to complain about break-ins and a terrible smell emanating from the home. Since 2019, city officials have sent the homeowner multiple violation notices for the property including about the tenant bear, to no avail. Numerous attempts to reach the homeowner by The Times were unsuccessful.

“This morning we had to call the police as the bear broke down our fence” and broke into a neighboring home that had been red-tagged, a resident wrote to the city’s code enforcement staff last month. “We have also observed the bear climbing in and out of the window of the shed on the property and believe it may be living in there.”

The bear required a different type of hazing than the others.

With laws barring government officials from entering homes without a warrant, the city had little recourse beyond papering the home with violations. So last month, they got creative.

The city filed an application for an inspection and abatement warrant and got it signed by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. The application included neighbors’ complaints and several photos of the property in their application, including an image of the bear leaning against a wood railing at the home.

On Aug. 15, staff with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife arrived at the home and found bear tracks, a broken window and scratch marks on the windowsill “consistent with black bear marks,” wrote Lt. Jonathan Garcia with Fish and Wildlife. There were indications the bear had been living there, including feces, rotten food, wrappers and containers.

The smell from the outdoor shed and the home “were emitting odors associated with organic matter that are attracting varmints and black bears,” Garcia wrote.

The home has since been boarded up, Giragosian, the city attorney, said. Sierra Madre will bill the homeowner for the work done on the property including tree trimming and cleanup.

Wildlife officials ask people to not feed wild animals and to remove ripe vegetables and fruits from the ground. Residents can also install motion sensitive lights around their properties and secure crawl spaces to avoid leaving an open invitation for wild animals.

One or fewer people are killed by black bears each year in the United States, with a population of over 900,000 black bears across the country, according to Fish and Wildlife.

But in response to the numerous bear encounters in the surrounding foothill communities, residents have since started their own bear watch groups to respond to the growing problem.

“The residents are kind of torn, because Sierra Madre has a lot of people who love wildlife and they want to protect the bears,” Giragosian said. “There are also residents who are afraid for their lives.”

The bear that was living on Alta Vista Drive has not been seen since.

2024 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.