Spider and its pet friend
Dogs are humans' best friends, but they can also be elephants' friends.
Humans are not the only members of the animal kingdom to have animal companions, and some animals have developed deep emotional and friendships with other species, and even treat other animals as pets.
At the Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary, an elephant named Tara adopts a dog named Bella, who spends almost all time together.
In African nature, the friendship between rhinos and rhinoceros birds is also praised by the locals. People often refer to their best friend as "my rhinoceros" and call themselves rhino birds as a metaphor for the best friendship between two people.
Rhinos are huge creatures that can grow up to 4 meters in length, weigh up to 3 tons, and have few natural predators, but despite this, due to increased poaching, these beautiful animals are endangered and have become difficult to find outside wildlife parks and reserves.
How can a rhinoceros, with such a large body, be friends with a winged bird?
Their relationship dates back a long time, when in the African Swahili language the word "rhinoceros" literally means "the guardian of the rhinoceros.". Don't look at the rhino skin rough flesh thick, but many of the folds on the body are tender and thin, easy to attract parasites and blood-sucking insects, at this time the rhinoceros has no other way but to apply mud to the body, and the rhino bird can help the rhino eat these pests.
On top of that, the rhinoceros is the rhino's bodyguard. In reality, rhinos are almost as blind as bats and tend to act alone, which makes it difficult for them to spot the dangers around them, while rhino birds that ride on the back of the rhinoceros to observe will emit a warning hiss as predators venture closer.
To scientifically validate the relationship, scientists spent more than a year tracking rhinos.
They flagged 12 rhinos and tracked their locations, and during the tracking, the scientists found that almost 56 percent of the rhinos, whether tagged or unlabeled, wandered around accompanied by bodyguards.
With the help of the rhinoceros bird, the safety is greatly improved, in general, the safety range of rhinos fighting alone is only 23 meters, while the safety range of rhinos with bodyguards is expanded to 61 meters.
However, the relationship between birds and rhinos is not simply friendship, but a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship.
Scientists have found that the rhinoceros bird is not simply a payoff, compared to the rhinoceros parasite, it prefers to use the rhino's bleeding wounds as food.
The rhinoceros bird feeds on lesions or blood, which is also a parasitic act, and the parasitic object is not only rhinos, but also other African wild animals, such as African buffalo.
The only difference is that when African buffalo are infected and these birds sneak closer, the African buffalo will roll around or wag their horns to drive away the parasitic birds, while the rhinos can tolerate the pain of being eaten.
At last
The interaction between mammals and birds is generally considered to be a mutually beneficial relationship, and it is clear that for rhinos and rhinos, the relationship is more complex.
For rhinos, if they want a good bodyguard, they have to silently endure the birds eating their meat, and after much deliberation, they believe that the benefits of having a bodyguard far outweigh the meat they lose, so they acquiesced to this trade.
In other words, as long as the outcome is good for us, it's sometimes worth it to tolerate a little bad behavior.