Source: GBIF
An accidental pollinator
Ethiopian wolves lick nectar from red-hot-poker flowers and carry pollen on their muzzles, likely the first large carnivore known to pollinate a plant.
Ethiopian Wolf
~500 mature individuals · the world's rarest canid
Species Details
The world's rarest canid, slender and long-legged, with a russet-red coat, white throat and black-tipped tail. Adults weigh 11 to 20 kg, built for coursing open moorland.
Behaviour
Lives in tight-knit packs of up to 13, yet hunts alone, trotting the plateau by day, stalking rodents in the short Afroalpine grass.
Diet
A specialist hunter: up to 96% of its diet is the giant mole-rat and grass rats of the Bale highlands.
Range
Endemic to Ethiopia's Afroalpine highlands above 3,000 m. Six isolated populations survive, over half in the Bale Mountains.
Threats
Rabies and canine distemper from domestic dogs, farmland climbing uphill, and hybridisation; each outbreak can erase a small population.
Treeless highland of tussock grass, giant lobelia and red-hot-poker, 3,000 to 4,500 m. Found only in Ethiopia's mountains.