Whales – competing with us for food, or helping to sustain the phytoplankton production on which most life in the oceans depends? The story and video at this link make a good case for the latter.
Then there's the wolves – their return to Yellowstone Park in the US has led to a whole cascade of environmental changes: changes that are very much for the better. Because the wolves keep the elk population moving around & to some degree under control in terms of population size, the vegetation has had a chance to recover from overgrazing. Forest regrowth along the riverbanks has stabilised those banks and contributed to an improvement in water quality. Beaver populations have bounced back & their activity has further altered the landscape in ways that have seen other species return or recover. The wolves have benefited the park's ecosystem in ways that nobody had predicted.
As for the final topic, well… I have occasionally been asked by much younger, smaller persons how hedgehogs "do it" (the answer being, "carefully!"). In fact Nanny Ogg had a hum'rous song on that very topic. Brian Switek discusses the issue as it might relate to stegasaurs in My Beloved Brontosaurus. And then there are porcupines, animals for whom it seems all coitus must be consensual (unlike ducks, bedbugs, & dolphins, to name just three). Because anything else really wouldn't work…
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© says:
I’ve had a draft of a wolf post sitting around for a while.
Seems the gray wolf was delisted from the endangered species list here in the US. And not for good reasons.
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Alison Campbell says:
“not for good reasons” – these would be to do with wanting something else to shoot at?