Project Noah is a tool to explore and document wildlife and a platform to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere.
Project Noah is a tool to explore and document wildlife and a platform to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere.
Buphagus erythrorhynchus
The Red-billed Oxpecker eats insects. Both the English and scientific names arise from this species' habit of perching on large wild and domesticated mammals such as cattle and eating ticks. An adult will take nearly 100 engorged female Boophilus decoloratus ticks, or more than 12,000 larvae in a day. However, their favorite food is blood, and while they may take on ticks bloated with blood, they also feed on it directly, pecking at the mammal's wounds to keep them open to more parasites. So, what good the bird does for the mammal is negated by it keeping the wounds open to parasites and disease.
Nairobi National Park; on a giraffe
Lat: -1.28, Long: 36.82
Spotted on Jun 10, 2012
Submitted on Aug 2, 2012
10 Comments
Thanks, autnance123!
Very cool.
Thanks, Alice, nexttogone, Henant and Krista. It is sad, isn't it? I had seen oxpeckers before and always thought they were beneficial to the animals until I read the description in wikepedia.
Beautiful series. Great information as well. It is a sad story, but lovely photos.
nice series
So in a sense, it's a flying tick.... Great series and description.
Quite a nice series, just don't care for the end result!
Thanks, Smith'sZoo and Jeanette; I added it to the mission.
Absolutely great series :)
Do you know this mission?
http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/7987...
truly beautiful