The fact that we have a gif of a herd animal plowing through a younger one and leaving it the the wolves may not be representative of the species as a whole, but good enough for a comic IMO
Edit: wrong gif and I can't get the right one to upload. If you search buffalo snow wolves gif it should come up
Probably knew it wasn't his kid. People in these comments seem to be about "mammals protect their young, dammit", but if it's someone else's young, and that someone else isn't around (even if that someone else is the same species) ...
Indeed. My favorite part of nature shows as a kid was watching predators for after the young animals and get absolutely wailed on by the older ones. Never saw a documentary where they just left them behind unless it was completely hopeless, and often still not.
I know it's a joke but with the caption "nature in a nutshell" makes it as though this is perfectly legit and plants the wrong idea to people that all animal species do this. Some species would instinctively leave their young but not buffaloes. Buffaloes rarely leave their young to predators unless they know it's totally hopeless to save them. This meme could have picked a more accurate species that does this escape tactic.
It seems like this joke is a recent perpetuation. I've seen in Reddit talk about it as well.
Due to policy changes regarding violent and graphic imagery, the wolves in this comic have been changed to ill tempered capybara and can be seen in the upper left of the image.