Underestimated 3I8368
One of the most dangerous animals on the Mara is the Cape Buffalo. They are big, powerful, unpredictable, and underestimated. But they aren’t the only creatures underestimated in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Oxpecker is a bird endemic to the savanna that has a habit of perching on and eating insects from the larger mammals. It seems to like the animals that have the largest tick burden. In the past these bird-mammal interactions have been thought to be mutualistic. More recently, however, studies have shown that the birds also feast off the blood of their hosts, sometimes pecking at their partially healed wounds. That would mean that they are, at least at times, parasitic. Watching the hosts, one comes to realize that at times they appear more annoyed by the birds than they are by the insects themselves. The relationships between these birds and their hosts may have been a bit oversimplified and underestimated. #CapeBuffalo #Oxpeckers
Underestimated 3I8368
One of the most dangerous animals on the Mara is the Cape Buffalo. They are big, powerful, unpredictable, and underestimated. But they aren’t the only creatures underestimated in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Oxpecker is a bird endemic to the savanna that has a habit of perching on and eating insects from the larger mammals. It seems to like the animals that have the largest tick burden. In the past these bird-mammal interactions have been thought to be mutualistic. More recently, however, studies have shown that the birds also feast off the blood of their hosts, sometimes pecking at their partially healed wounds. That would mean that they are, at least at times, parasitic. Watching the hosts, one comes to realize that at times they appear more annoyed by the birds than they are by the insects themselves. The relationships between these birds and their hosts may have been a bit oversimplified and underestimated. #CapeBuffalo #Oxpeckers