Many animals work together to improve each other’s lives, like the oxpecker birds who ride on rhinos and other large mammals in Sub-Saharan Africa, keeping their ride tick free and staying safely out of harms way at the same time.
These animals know that together they’ll go farther in life, but it seems like some of these critters are using these symbiotic relationships to their own ends.
A camera trap set up by conservationists from Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in South Africa captured these bizarre examples of animal teamwork- a spotted genet riding on the back of a buffalo, using the big galoot like his own personal taxi service.
So what’s the big deal?
Mammals don’t usually hitch rides on the backs of other mammals in the wild, but it seems this innovative genet is trying to rewrite the rules in his favor, even daring to hitch a ride on the back of a rhino.
Here's what the conservationists wrote about this wily genet on their blog Wildlife Act Team:
This series of photographs depicts a large spotted genet on top of two individual buffalo. One of the buffalo seemed to be unimpressed with the genet and can be seen turning around and thus shaking the genet off. The other buffalo was quite content to let the genet "tag along" for an evening stroll. The genet seemed to have spent this particular evening riding buffalo!
What's even more bizarre is that the same particular genet has a habit of hitch-hiking on other larger beasts and this rhino seemed an ideal taxi service one evening! He decided to jump on this rhino on the very same night that he was seen riding on the back of two separate buffalo.
-Via io9
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Great story. Feinberg would know he wrote the book [on it] Altered Egos: How The Brain Creates The Self which is an excellent read btw.
While the thalamus is involved in consciousness it is more accurately the cortico-thalamic complex. That is the meshwork of reentrant mapping between the thalamus and the neo-cortex (particularly the frontal lobes). This may explain that although they share some information they maintain different perspectives and preferences. A complete assimilation into one self has not occurred, although one might suspect an internal struggle of them to maintain their own identities. They are young still and a lot can change to tie them closer together or perhaps separate them (neurologically).