You’d think wolves would prey on baboons. You’d be wrong. NewScientist‘s Bob Holmes (13 June 2015, paywall) reports on the interaction of gelada monkeys and the local wolves:
In the alpine grasslands of eastern Africa, Ethiopian wolves and gelada monkeys are giving peace a chance. The geladas – a type of baboon – tolerate wolves wandering right through the middle of their herds, while the wolves ignore potential meals of baby geladas in favour of rodents, which they can catch more easily when the monkeys are present. …
Even though the wolves occasionally prey on young sheep and goats, which are as big as young geladas, they do not normally attack the monkeys – and the geladas seem to know that, because they do not run away from the wolves.
“You can have a wolf and a gelada within a metre or two of each other and virtually ignoring each other for up to 2 hours at a time,” says [Dartmouth primatologist Vivek] Venkataraman. In contrast, the geladas flee immediately to cliffs for safety when they spot feral dogs, which approach aggressively and often prey on them.
When walking through a herd – which comprises many bands of monkeys grazing together in groups of 600 to 700 individuals – the wolves seem to take care to behave in a non-threatening way. They move slowly and calmly as they forage for rodents and avoid the zigzag running they use elsewhere, Venkataraman observed.
It’s not ignorance that the wolves are predators, though:
Whatever the mechanism, the boost to the wolves’ foraging appears to be significant enough that the wolves almost never give in to the temptation to grab a quick gelada snack. Only once has Venkataraman seen a wolf seize a young gelada, and other monkeys quickly attacked it and forced it to drop the infant, then drove the offending wolf away and prevented it from returning later.
And, yes, they recognize this could be similar to the mysterious alliance between dogs and humans. In a sidebar, though, is noted this observation:
… the geladas don’t seem to get anything from the relationship, since the wolves are unlikely to deter other predators such as leopards or feral dogs, he says. Without a reciprocal benefit, [Oxford’s Claudio] Sillero doubts that the relationship could progress further down the road to domestication.
Maybe the observers just haven’t figured out the reciprocal benefit, yet.
