Watch: Coyote And Badger 'Buddies' Walk Under Bay Area Highway

SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS, CA — It's a partnership that has to be seen to be believed: a coyote and a badger, filmed walking together through a tunnel under a Bay Area highway.

The remarkable — and adorable — footage is the first time this behavior has been captured in the Bay Area, according to the Peninsula Open Space Trust, a conservation nonprofit whose camera caught the encounter.

POST, along with partner Pathways for Wildlife, has set up more than 50 remote-sensor cameras to study how wild animals interact with the highways that cut through the area around the southern Santa Cruz Mountains, near Gilroy. They station cameras at bridges and culverts — tunnels that run under roads, like the one here.

"We’ve combed through literally thousands of photos and videos from our remote cameras," said Neal Sharma, POST's Wildlife Linkages Program Manager, in a blog post about the footage. "We consistently find that animals are able to locate and use features that provide them with safe passage underneath the road surface."

The footage lit up Twitter after the clip appeared Monday evening, spawning hashtags including #CoyoteBadgerBuddies.

Coyote-badger companionship has been documented in the wild. The two species are known to hunt together, having found that working as a team can be more effective than going solo, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The species have worked out a system suited to each of their strengths: when prey runs, the coyote chases it. If it burrows into the ground, the badger digs down to reach it.

"Each partner in this unlikely duo brings a skill the other one lacks," the Fish and Wildlife Service wrote.

As for POST, the organization hopes this footage, and more like it, can be used to improve conservation efforts in the Bay Area.

"The goal is for our region to be a place where wildlife can move, adapt and thrive in the face of a changing landscape and climate," Sharma said.