They should be enemies. But every day, they make a truce. 😳

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Look closely. What it has in its mouth is a tick ripped off a wild pig that weighs over 200 lb. And the mongoose is not alone. There are 20 carnivores climbing on the same animal. And the pig does not run. It settles in. Banded monguses hunt small vertebbrates. In this exact place, wartthogs have killed and eaten monguses. And monguses in a group could kill a wthog piglet. Each one is a real threat to the other.

[00:00:25]Biology says so. But something every single day breaks that rule. The wthog sees the group and walks toward them.

[00:00:33]Not the other way around. It drops onto its side. It lifts a back leg. It is asking for service. And the monguses climb on. They pull ticks off its back.

[00:00:44]Lice from its skin folds. Fleas from its bristles. Every bite a meal. Every parasite gone. One less infection. And among them there are pups. They are watching how it is done. Here is what baffles biologists. This does not happen across all of Africa. It happens in one single peninsula of one single park in Uganda. It is the only known place where two mammals that are not primates set up a cleaning station between species.