Ethiopian wolves hold territories in Afroalpine grassland where rodent density is exceptionally high, and the big-headed mole-rat is the single most important prey. Rodents that size are best taken by a solitary stalk, so the wolves separate to feed and reassemble for border patrols and social gatherings at dawn and dusk.
The pack still matters. Territories are defended collectively, a dominant female produces the litter, and other pack members guard the den and regurgitate food for pups. The arrangement decouples two things usually bundled together in canids, cooperative hunting and cooperative breeding, and the species keeps only the second.
The population is small, in the low hundreds of adults across a few isolated mountain blocks, and the leading threat is disease rather than persecution. Rabies and canine distemper carried by domestic dogs have caused repeated crashes in the Bale Mountains, and vaccinating dogs and wolves alike is now the central intervention. It is Africa's only endemic wolf, but not the continent's only wolf: Canis lupaster, the African wolf, was split from the golden jackal in 2015.