Camera traps capture fantastically bizarre animal behavior in South African park
Cat-like genet spends many evenings riding buffalo, rhinos, by Morgan Erickson-Davis
Cowbirds ride cattle to pick off their parasites; egrets pal around with wildebeest and eat the small creatures disturbed by their grazing. But mammals riding other mammals is something long-thought pretty much isolated to humans and their domestic creatures. Then, earlier this month, a camera trap in a park in South Africa captured something that contradicts this assumption: a genet riding around on giant herbivores.
Conservationists working with the organization Wildlife Act set up camera traps in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park to non-invasively monitor the park’s wildlife. The park is home to a wide variety of species, including Africa’s “Big Five”: rhinos, elephants, buffalo, lions, and leopards.
The photos show the genet (Genetta genetta) entering the scene from the right atop a buffalo. However, the buffalo appears to dislike the arrangement and shakes it off. Undeterred, the genet reappears in another photo on the back of another buffalo, this one more tolerant of a small spotted hitchhiker, allowing it to stay onboard.
Then, in the same night, the genet was captured again at the same photo trap sites – this time aboard a rhino. And on another rhino three nights later. And another the night after that. And again four nights later.
https://news.mongabay.com
= new reply since forum marked as read
I ran across it when I was reading another article about this interesting specimen.
hunters all
