Like Chimpanzees, Coral Trout Can be Choosy about Picking a Hunting Partner

It's a case of two animals working together. Scientists have found that coral trout not only work with moray eels in order to improve their chances of snagging a meal, but can also be choosy when it comes to picking a collaborator. The findings reveal that sophisticated collaborative abilities aren't just limited to apes and humans.

Coral trout tend to work with other species when it comes to hunting prey. The trout actually can't flush out prey from the tiny crevices in the reef, which means that working with moray eels is mutually beneficial. The two species communicate and manipulate the behavior of a prey species in order to achieve better success.

"The trout's collaboration appears to be relatively special, as it uses gestures to coordinate its hunts with partners of different species, such as morays, napoleon wrasse and octopus," said Alexander Vail, one of the researchers, in a news release.

In order to investigate this behavior a bit more closely, the researchers brought some coral trout back to the lab to test their interactions with moray eel decoys. One decoy was a "good" hunter while the other was a "bad" one. The good moray would come to the coral trout's aid when signaled, but the bad one would swim in the opposite direction.

So what did they find? It turns out that the trout, like chimpanzees, could determine when it was best to collaborate. In addition, the trout seemed to quickly learn which moray was good and which was bad, and preferred the good one.

"Our study shows that these collaborative skills are not confined to apes and raises the possibility that they may be found in a number of other animal species for which they are ecologically relevant," said Vail.

The findings are published in the journal Current Biology.