Donkeys and Indigenous Pumas Are Trying To Revive the Extinct Food Chain Across Death Valley, Study Finds

A variety of equids, including horses and their relatives, inhabited North and South America around 12,000 years ago.

Large, legendary-sounding, extinct predators like saber-toothed cats and dire wolves used to hunt these creatures.

These species vanished in a geologic flash, perhaps as a result of early humans.

Today, however, North America is home to robust populations of domestic horses and donkeys, two species of imported equid.

One reason why many environmentalists consider these populations to be unwelcome pests, and why the federal government spends millions of dollars annually eliminating them from the wild is because they are believed to lack predators that can hunt them.

Reviving the food chain in the Death Valley

(Photo : Matteo Di Iorio/Unsplash)

According to new research from an international team of scientists published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, mountain lion predation on wild donkeys is widespread, contradicting the popular belief that modern introduced equids lack natural predators, as per ScienceDaily.

This suggested that mountain lions are replacing the ancient predators that once hunted wild equids in North America.

The scientists also showed how this predation alters donkey behavior and has ecological implications on desert wetlands, showing how extinct ecosystems may have functioned and the conservation potential of conserving this predator-prey relationship.

The amazing thing about this is that mountain lions are still able to learn how to hunt these introduced equids, which are bigger than their natural prey, while having smaller bodies than extinct big cats.

According to the study's main author Dr. Erick Lundgren, a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark, this showed that ecosystems might be more dynamic than commonly imagined, as animals adapt to devour novel prey.

According to study co-author Dr. Mairin Balisi, Augustyn Family Curator at the Alf Museum of Paleontology and research associate at the museum at La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California, North America was once a continent of large predators and large prey until it changed about 12,000 years ago.

At that time, megafauna, like the western horse Equus occidentalis and the saber-toothed cat Smilodon, went extinct.

Although there are now no animals that are nearly like the vanished megafauna, life nonetheless manages to survive. This study showed the re-emergence of a long-lost ecological relationship, albeit with new players.

The authors concluded that these findings warrant enhancing safeguards for mountain lions and other predators.

Mountain lions are brutally hunted, even in regions where equids roam freely.

Increasing mountain lion protections will probably slow the rise of the wild horse and burro populations, and lessen their negative effects on environmentally sensitive regions, according to Lundgren.

Protecting mountain lions and their ecological interactions may very well provide similar ecosystem services to the desert southwest, much like the restoration of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s, which had a ripple effect all through the ecosystem as wolves pouncing on large herbivores enabled regions of over browsed vegetative cover to recover, among other benefits.

Also Read: Man Died of Extreme Heat at Death Valley National Park As Temperatures Reach 100 Degrees

Death Valley

Death Valley, the lowest, hottest, and driest region of North America, is renowned for its climatic extremes.

Death Valley's severe climate today draws visitors and scientists, as per Britannica.

The region was a barrier to the migrations of early inhabitants and subsequently served as a center for the mining of borax.

Furthermore, Death Valley is home to several different animal species. They frequently stay up late. There are rabbits, several rodent species, coyotes, kit foxes, and bobcats in the area.

The desert bighorn is the biggest native animal.

The region is known to be home to more than 200 different kinds of birds, with ravens and roadrunners being two of the most well-known locals. There are a lot of scorpions and reptiles, and a few local fish as well.

According to geology, Death Valley is a part of the Great Basin's southwest region. Although it has similarities with other structural basins in the area, its depth makes it distinct.

The lowest land regions in North America are parts of the big salt pan, which is a portion of the valley floor.

A total of 1,425 square kilometers (550 square miles) or so of the valley's floor are below sea level.

The lowest point in North America is a place in the Badwater Basin, which is 282 feet (86 meters) below sea level.

Death Valley was unknown to most people for a brief period of time until it was named in 1849 by a foolish band of emigrants who faced extreme hardship while through it, with the exception of local Native Americans (mainly Shoshone) and prospectors looking for gold in the nearby mountains.

The valley appears to have received its first scientific description in a short statement issued in 1868 by a state geologist of California.