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Factors affecting hunting success, such as detection of prey, distances from which prey was charged and chased, and escape tactics of prey, were studied. Overall hunting success was 33.4 %. Hares were easier to catch than springhares, but springhares provided a larger meal and were more abundant. There was higher hunting success for steenbok and duiker than for springbok, and springbok hunts were energetically more expensive. However, this was offset by springbok providing a larger amount of food per kill. The amount of meat eaten from gemsbok calves and adult ostrich was similar, but ostrich were more vigilant and difficult to approach and less common than gemsbok. There were no differences in overall hunting success between cheetah demographic groups. The benefit of cooperative hunting to coalition males was that it enabled them to kill larger prey and allowed females with cubs and sibling groups to hone young cheetahs’ hunting skills.

This chapter reviews the study of cooperative behavior between species, with emphasis on examples of cooperative hunting found in a wide range of species. Seen in this context, the idea of cooperative hunting between humans and wolves that evolved into present relationships with dogs does not seem unusual or surprising. The chapter then critiques the proposal that competition between species is more important than cooperation in structuring ecological communities, discussing how this notion leads to a suite of ideas philosophically separating humans from the rest of the natural world. In many ways Western science is unintentionally complicit in such thinking. The chapter concludes by discussing complex cooperation, including long-term relationships between members of different species.

This chapter focuses on archaeological research and its role in explaining the transformation from wolf to dog, addressing why this topic is controversial: the tendency to identify wolf remains found in archaeological sites as evidence of either interlopers or human killing overshadows the alternate possibility of social bonding between humans and wolves. This probably has prevented appreciation of considerable early evidence of relationships between humans and wolves before the latter became sufficiently phenotypically distinct (“doglike”) to be recognized as domestic animals shaped by humans. Some archaeologists do not acknowledge the possibility that humans interacted with and coevolved with wolves for thousands of years without generating significant phenotypic change in either species, and thus early wolves living with or cooperatively hunting with humans probably go unrecognized by scholars looking only at obvious physical changes.