Ethiopian wolves hold territories in Afroalpine grassland where rodent density is exceptionally high, and the big giant mole-rat is the single most important prey. Rodents of that size are best taken by a solitary stalk, so the wolves separate to feed and reassemble for social gatherings and border patrols 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 handful of isolated mountain blocks, and the leading threat is disease rather than persecution. Rabies and canine distemper transmitted from domestic dogs have caused repeated crashes in the Bale Mountains, and vaccination of both domestic dogs and the wolves themselves has become the central conservation intervention.