But in any case, non-mammals hunting cooperatively are very interesting, because this behaviour is less known than that of dolphins and orcas.
There is this nice article Reef alliances: goatfish hunt in packs, while groupers team up with moray eels - Not Exactly Rocket Science giving some interesting examples:
- Goatfish's packs can hunt in a similar way to lion packs. Goatfish live in the Red Sea, and usually forage alone. They only team up when they hunt among corals. The moment one fish shoots off towards a target, the others join in the hunt. Once the chaser drives its prey into coral crevices, the others act as blockers, swimming around to cut it off.
- groupers and giant moray eels provide compelling evidence for interspecific cooperative hunting. They also live in the Red Sea.
Groupers will visit moray eels at their resting places and provide visual signals (such as a head shake) to engage morays in the hunt. These associations are non-random and appear to be motivated by the hunger level of the groupers. Groupers were able to capture prey five times more quickly with morays present because the eels could sneak through crevices and corner prey items; additionally, morays that hunted alone were never successful because they did not have a grouper present to lead them to the prey. Thus, the hunting success of groupers and giant moray eels is greater for both species than when hunting alone.
I find interesting to remark that those two types of pack hunting have been studied by the same investigator, Reduan Bsary (http://www2.unine.ch/ethol/page-...).
I went on looking for more examples, because I thought that vertebrates don't have the exclusive of all kind of complex behaviors. I found that
- Humboldt squids hunt schools of fish, showing extraordinary cooperation and communication in its hunting techniques. This is the first observation of such behaviour in invertebrates (http://www.outsideonline.com/192...).
But I think that there is many more to be discovered. Some lobster practise pack migration, so could crustaceans give some more surprises?, I don't know.
I'm amazed by the way in which some animals combine very strongly hard-driven fixed behavior with some amazing moments of more complex one.
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