London's Natural History Museum has published a gallery of 100 images selected from the 62nd Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. One is "Mutual Friends" by South African photographer Ernest Porter, taken in the Manyeleti Game Reserve: a red-billed oxpecker perches by a rhino's face and wipes its beak on the rhino's skin. Prothom Alo's lifestyle desk told the story behind the picture.
The red-billed oxpecker feeds not only on rhinos but on giraffes, zebras, antelope and other large grazers. Flies, lice, ticks and other parasites on their bodies are a main source of its food. According to the Natural History Museum, oxpeckers help keep parasite numbers on these animals in check.
Rhinos do not see well. Perched on their backs, oxpeckers can watch the surroundings and grow restless and call out when danger approaches, which is why the bird is called a "guard" or "sentry" of large grazers. One of its names in Swahili, "askari wa kifaru", means "the rhino's guard".
When two different species both gain from such a relationship, biologists call it mutualism, and Porter named his picture accordingly. He saw the oxpecker cleaning its beak as he took it, and the bluish ring around the rhino's eye drew his attention too.
Category winners and the grand title winners will be announced on 13 October, and the 100 selected images go on show at the Natural History Museum from 16 October. Prothom Alo drew on the Natural History Museum and National Geographic.
Photo: Harvey Barrison / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0); red-billed oxpeckers on a white rhinoceros, South Africa
Source: Prothom Alo
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