Nosy Birds

Why are these oxpeckers sticking their heads into the ears and nostrils of this buffalo in the African nation of Tanzania? They’re looking for things to eat—like earwax, snot, and ticks!

Oxpeckers also perch on other hooved mammals, such as rhinos, giraffes, and zebras, to feed. Although oxpeckers eat a variety of things off their hosts’ bodies, they prefer to consume blood. The birds land on an animal and open an old wound—or create a new one—to feed on blood. Other times, oxpeckers will nibble on ticks attached to animals. Ticks are small arachnids, related to spiders, that drink animals’ blood. The birds pick off these parasites to eat the blood they’ve collected.

“Oxpeckers love eating ticks,” says Judith Bronstein, a biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. But “there are almost no nutrients in blood. It’s almost all water.” So the birds have to eat a lot of these parasites to get enough nourishment. 

Oxpeckers clearly benefit from their relationship with their hosts, as the mammals provide the birds with a food source. But biologists suspect that the mammals may benefit too, since the birds remove blood-sucking parasites from the mammals’ bodies.

There’s also some evidence that oxpeckers produce warning cries that may alert their hosts of nearby predators. If that’s true, the birds and their hosts share a mutualistic relationship—where each species benefits from the other. 

Either way, if an oxpecker decides to peck at a buffalo’s ears or nose, the big mammal may have little choice in the matter. “Imagine you’re a buffalo with a bird in your nose,” says Bronstein. “What are you going to do to get rid of it? You don’t have hands!”