White-backed Vulture

White-backed vultures represent the commensal strategy: organisms that benefit from apex predator activity without competing. Vultures don't interfere with lion hunting—they wait until lions finish, then access remains lions leave behind. The relationship is one-directional: vultures benefit from lion kills; lions are indifferent to vultures.

The vulture strategy requires no predatory capability. Vultures don't hunt; they scavenge. Their ecological niche exists only because lions create it. Without apex predators killing large prey, vultures would have nothing to eat. This creates profound dependency—vulture populations track lion populations with a lag.

The business parallel is businesses that depend on ecosystem leaders' activity. Vultures are like consulting firms that implement strategies large corporations develop, agencies that create content for platforms, or suppliers who serve dominant manufacturers' needs. They don't compete with ecosystem leaders; they capture value from activity leaders create. Vulture strategy works when the ecosystem leader tolerates followers and when the secondary market is large enough to sustain participants. The risk is dependency: when lions decline, vultures decline too.