Top-predator carrion is scary: Fight-and-flight responses of wild boars to wolf carcasses Redondo Gómez, Daniel Moleón Páiz, Marcos Antipredator responses Canis lupus Landscape of fear Predation risk Predator avoidance Prey behavior This study was funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and “ERDF A way of making Europe” through project PID2021- 128952NB-I00. DRG was funded by a predoctoral grant from the Junta de Andalucía (PREDOC_00262). MM was partly sup- ported by a research contract Ramón y Cajal from the MINECO (RYC-2015-19231) Predation risk largely constrains prey behavior. However, whether predators may be scary also after death remains unexplored. Here, we describe the “fight-and-flight” responses of a prey, the wild boar (Sus scrofa), to carcasses of (a) its main predator, the gray wolf (Canis lupus) and (b) a carnivore that very rarely kills wild boars, the red fox (Vulpes vulpes), in the western Alps (Italy). We recorded the behavior of wild boars at 10 wolf and 9 fox carcass sites. We found eight “fight-and-flight” responses toward wolf carcasses, and none toward fox carcasses. Our results suggest that car- nivore carcasses may indeed be scary; fear responses toward them are dependent on the species to which the carcass belongs; and animals approaching the carcasses are feared mainly when the latter are relatively fresh. This emphasizes the multiple and complex roles that carrion plays in the landscape of fear and opens exciting ecological, epidemiological, and evolutionary research avenues. 2023-05-22T08:30:31Z 2023-05-22T08:30:31Z 2023-04 journal article Redondo-Gómez et al. Top-predator carrion is scary: Fight-and-flight responses of wild boars to wolf carcasses. Ecology and Evolution. 2023;13:e9911. [https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9911] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/81697 10.1002/ece3.9911 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional Wiley