Oxpeckers- friends or parasites?
Upon completion of this once in a lifetime trip, I had a moment to look through the photos I had taken, and noticed something odd. Virtually every photo I had of the giraffes featured an Oxpecker, typically perched on the back of one or two of the animals. I looked into the strange phenomena, and uncovered an interesting story. The yellow-billed Oxpecker (Buphagus africanus) –the most common Oxpecker I saw, although red-billed Oxpeckers were also common – has a mutualistic relationship with a variety of ungulates, including giraffes, gazelles, zebras, water buffalo, and many others. It eats ticks and a variety of other arthropods from the coat of the animals. From this, the Oxpecker receives a meal while the ungulate is protected from the diseases these arthropods could inflict. I found this mutualistic relationship fascinating, as I had never seen (or even heard) of such a successful mutualism between two large vertebrates.