Wolves Like a Little Nectar Treat and May Pollinate Flowers in the Process

The Ethiopian wolf, Africa’s most endangered predator, has a sweet tooth.

While the wolves are otherwise strict meat eaters, scientists have spotted the canids slurping nectar from torch lilies, tall, cone-shaped flowers also known as red hot pokers with nectar that tastes like watered-down honey. And because the wolves’ muzzles get absolutely covered in sticky yellow pollen, researchers suspect they might even be acting as pollinators — a first for a large carnivore, the authors write in a paper published last week in the journal Ecology.

It’s a scene from a storybook, said Sandra Lai, an Oxford University ecologist and an author of the paper.

“The wolves lick the flowers like ice cream cones,” she said.

The Ethiopian wolf is a lanky, reddish-brown canid that looks more like a coyote or fox than a wolf. It lives in Ethiopia’s mountainous highlands, a tundra-like landscape where the wolves feed on abundant rodents.

In the Bale mountain range, the wolves’ prey of choice is the big-headed African mole rat, a preposterous-looking creature with eyes set directly on top of its head so it can peep out of underground burrows. The mole rats surface for about only an hour a day to forage for vegetation. “They try keep their butt inside the hole so they can retreat if something happens, so they stretch out as long as they can” and grab at plants with their buck teeth, Dr. Lai said.

As juicy as mole rats are, they must make for a monotonous menu. Fortunately, the wolves can spice up their diet for about half of each year: The normally scrubby landscape comes alive with color as the torch lilies bloom with a fiery ombré, fading from orange to bright yellow as they ripen. Patches of the flowers can stretch for miles, Dr. Lai said, creating the illusion of a vast procession of people carrying candles.

The torch lily nectar is a treat for local children, too, and ecologists use it to sweeten coffee on field expeditions. Dr. Lai and her colleagues had seen the wolves sneaking a lick here and there for years. But to learn how pervasive the taste for nectar is, the researchers followed six wolves from three packs to see whether everyone indulged.

All six wolves sampled the nectar, but “just like some people have more of a sweet tooth than others,” certain wolves really went after it, Dr. Lai said. One wolf, a female, spent an hour and a half in a flower patch and licked 30 flowers.

Since the wolves are such large animals, scientists suspect the nectar isn’t a meaningful source of nutrition. Instead, they favor what’s called the “dessert hypothesis” — the sweet nectar is a tasty supplement the animals simply enjoy. Indeed, Dr. Lai said monitors with the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program report that the wolves often “go for the flowers as a little treat after hunting their meat meal.”

The Ethiopian wolves aren’t the only canids known to eat sweets. Researchers have documented gray wolves in North America scarfing down blueberries — but that’s less for flavor and more to slow starvation in lean times, said Tom Gable, a biologist and leader of a University of Minnesota program studying wolf diets in Voyageurs National Park.

Dr. Gable said it was remarkable to have such striking images of the Ethiopian wolves caught red handed, or rather, yellow muzzled. “It leaves no doubt,” he said.

More research will be needed to determine whether the Ethiopian wolf can join butterflies and bees in the ranks of effective pollinators. Dr. Lai and her team say the downsides of a visit from a wolf may outweigh the benefits — occasionally the wolves get carried away, and the lick becomes more of a munch. “They can do a little bit of damage compared to a bird,” Dr. Lai said.

Still, it’s nice to know these highly endangered wolves can enjoy the occasional treat. There are fewer than 500 individuals left in the wild, and habitat loss and rabies transmitted by domestic dogs pose serious threats.

Careful conservation work will be needed to keep the wolves, and the flowers, thriving. “It’s a unique interaction you can’t see anywhere else in the world,” Dr. Lai said. “That’s worth preserving.”