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https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20240827-how-water-buffalo-can-bring-back-nature-to-abandoned-land>
"Each autumn, as tadpoles outgrow their tails, the Kizilirmak Delta on Turkey's
Black Sea erupts into chaotic commotion with the emergence of marsh frogs.
While the fist-sized frogs are at home in the delta's wetlands, dozens can be
seen hopping out of the muddy waters to exploit one particularly strange and
unusually lively hunting ground.
Climbing up a hillside of thick fur, the frogs encounter terrain that's warm
underfoot and an atmosphere that buzzes with flies. But there are risks to
foraging here. The surface beneath their webbed feet twitches and shakes, and
the entire floor is prone to lurching unpredictably through the air and
collapsing into the mud.
This moving mountain of brawn and bugs is the muscular back of a massive water
buffalo. On each of these giants roaming the delta, as many as 20 frogs or more
can be found hitching a ride to their next meal.
In this – the first observed example of amphibians foraging on the body of a
large mammal – Turkey's marsh frogs have capitalised on one of the peculiar
benefits that these huge animals bring to their wetland environments: their
knack for attracting flies. Yet the frogs are just one of countless species
worldwide, from bats to bog grasses, finding their surroundings transformed and
their fates improved by the presence of buffalo.
Over the course of more than 3,000 years since the water buffalo were first
domesticated in Asia, these half-tonne mammals have spread around the world.
Today they are estimated to number more than 200 million across 77 countries on
five continents. For generations they were prized as powerful plough-pulling
draft animals and providers of nutritious milk. In recent years buffalo have
begun to earn a reputation among conservationists as handy landscape managers
and a crucially important ecosystem engineer."
Via
Positive.News
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
