This week, footage of a strange animal purchased atop the back of a black rhino and buffalo mystified researchers, who're unaware why this strange phenomenon is occurring. The haunting clip is shown below.
Black Rhinos are classified as "dangerously endangered" by the World Wildlife Foundation, as poaching for their horns continues to spike. Ongoing conservation efforts have helped double their population since the early '90s, but they still maintain their endangered status. The black rhino population hovers slightly over 5,000 individuals who are primarily native to Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, and Kenya.
In the incredible video below, not only do we get to witness a black rhino on camera, but a small cat-like carnivore rides atop his back. This tiny cat, a nocturnal carnivore called a genet, has baffled researchers with its strange behavior. Specialists at Wildlife ACT, the group behind the video, claim that the small genet may be "hawking" ticks and other insects off of the rhino's back.
"Some believed it was merely trying to gain a height advantage, while others thought it might be doing this as a way of catching prey and some suggested the genet might just be lazy and was catching a ride from these bigger mega-herbivores," writes Wildlife ACT on its website. "We have learnt through the years never to assume that we know exactly what is going on in the bush, so any of these scenarios could have been likely."
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