Fish and Oxpeckers Remove Thousands of Parasites from a Buffalo | Oxpecker Life

[00:01:46]You know Pa, every American does.

[00:01:52]>> The W A R T Hog from The Lion King.

[00:01:56]Hakuna Matata. No worries, right?

[00:02:10]Wrong.

[00:02:12]The real wartthog has plenty of worries.

[00:02:16]And the biggest one right now is crawling around in its ears.

[00:02:24]Ticks. Not one or two.

[00:02:28]Hundreds.

[00:02:33]feeding on blood, spreading disease.

[00:02:40]Its legs are too short, its tusks too large, its neck too thick.

[00:02:49]The ticks on its face and ears are completely inaccessible to the animal that is carrying them.

[00:02:57]So, it gets help.

[00:02:59]And here is where the story gets extraordinary.

[00:03:04]In about 60 seconds, you will see exactly what a warthog does to get that help. And I promise you have never seen an animal this size act like this.

[00:03:12]First, the warthog.

[00:03:20]Not the cartoon version, the real one.

[00:03:28]It is the size of a large dog.

[00:03:37]Four tusks, two large curved ones at the top, two smaller ones at the bottom.

[00:03:44]Facial warts, two pairs unique to the species.

[00:03:50][snorts] And those warts are not decoration. They are protection.

[00:04:00]When two male wartthogs fight, they fight hard, head slamming together. The warts take the impact. Biological padding built in. [snorts] >> When threatened, it does something no predator expects.

[00:04:24]It does not run away from its burrow. It runs backward into it. Tusks first.

[00:04:32]Whatever follows it down that hole meets four ivory points in the dark.

[00:04:40]No predator has ever figured out how to make this work in its favor.

[00:04:48]Now, the mongoose.

[00:04:51]The banded mongoose, smaller than a house cat, 30 cm of gray fur with dark stripes across its back, lives in groups of 20 to 30, something that no amount of speed or strength could ever teach it.

[00:05:13]It figured out where the food is.

[00:05:16]Not in the grass, not in the trees on the wartthog.

[00:05:23]Here's what happens.

[00:05:28]The wartthog is grazing in the open savana and the mongoose group finds it and does something no other animal on earth does quite like this.

[00:05:42]It stops, lowers its enormous head, and drops to its front knees.

[00:05:52]A warthog that weighs 8 kg, dropping to its knees, and things for something that weighs 1 kilogram, not because it is forced to.

[00:06:12]Because it knows this small thing is going to find every tick its own body cannot reach.

[00:06:24]Around the neck, along the ears, [panting] those quick, precise noses finding every engorged tick on the face, the neck.

[00:06:46]One by one, a single banded mongoose removes up to 30 ticks in one session.

[00:06:56]A group of 20. The math is significant.

[00:07:04]The wartthog holds completely still for minutes at a time.

[00:07:10]>> [snorts] >> letting these tiny animals climb over its face. The most patient the wartthog ever is in its entire life.

[00:07:29]Now, why does this matter so much? The ticks the emone goosees are removing are not just annoying. The corridor disease, tickborn encphylitis.

[00:07:44]A tick burden high enough can kill a warthog. Not quickly, slowly through disease, through blood loss, through infection.

[00:08:00]Just cleaning the warthog. It is keeping it alive.

[00:08:08]And the m goose gets something too. Not just ticks. The ticks it removes are engorged, full of blood. They are a complete meal, protein, fat, everything a small predator needs.

[00:08:25]A relationship that has been running in the savana for millions of years.

[00:08:32]Nobody taught either of them this. It simply found itself.

[00:08:40]Now, the mongoose group.

[00:08:44]Because this is not a solo operation, banded monguses live in one of the most organized family structures in African wildlife. Up to 30 individuals, all cooperating, all breeding together.

[00:09:04]all raising each other's young.

[00:09:12]When the group finds a warthog, it is not one mongoose cleaning. It can be four, five, six, working different parts of the same animal simultaneously while others stand guard.

[00:09:28]for the snake below.

[00:09:36]The cleaning monguses do not watch for predators. The guard monguses do not clean. Division of labor so precise that scientists compare it to insect colonies who are surprised to find it in a mammal.

[00:09:52]And in the middle of all this organized activity, the warthog kneels and waits and trusts something tiny with access to its face.

[00:10:08]Here is the most astonishing part of this story.

[00:10:16]Young wartthogs, 6 to 8 weeks old, too young to have built much of a tick burden. Yet the behavior is learned. They watch the adults. They see the cleaning. They copy it before they even need it.

[00:10:43]before they understand why.

[00:10:56]A warthog learns to submit to something smaller than itself before it understands what submission is for. That is not instinct. That is something much closer to culture.

[00:11:07]And it is happening in the African savana right now.

[00:11:12]The same species that inspired one of the most loved characters in American animation history.

[00:11:20]The real Pa thinks about little else and solved the problem by learning to trust the smallest hunters on the savannah.

[00:11:48]>> [snorts]