Tick Birds of Africa always get the free meal and ride

Polly Cracker

Rhino's are one of the grumpiest mammals in the animal kingdom and I suppose if you had bird landing on you all day long licking blood from wounds it would make you grumpy too. The tick birds also eat the thousands of ticks that infest the Rhino and that could be another reason for the Rhino's cantankerous attitudes to other creatures that get too close. The Rhino can't do much about the birds and have to earn to live with the daily airstrip landings on its hide. The tick bird is a remarkable bird that it as enabled this symbolism relationship with bit hairy animals. I know few birds that would want to venture so close to a woolly bully animal like the Rhino. If you ever see this ox pecker or tick bird up close you will see one of the more comical clownish type birds in the feather kingdom. The ox pecker quite literally looks like a clown and it could be a reason while the kings of the jungle tolerate this court jester. Ox peckers have been known to land on lions as well as feast on cat ticks and fleas although I most likely imagine this is during one of the ten hour daylight naps that lions are known to take in the African shade.