You know, we’re inclined as humans to see this in one straightforward way, that the frogs are simply helping the buffalo deal with a pest…but all three of these creatures are contributing so much!
The biting flies are not just prey for many creatures, but also pollinators! Like mosquitoes, the males are herbivorous and depend on nectar, though the biting females of many species will also refuel at a flower. They are likely even more important than bees in actually building these wetland habitats in the first place.
By providing both nutrients and a gathering place, the buffalo is therefore also a pollinator factory! It is working together with the flies to make its habitat! It doesn’t even know this! It doesn’t even enjoy how this process happens, but it benefits from it every day!
But together, the flies and the buffalo become a frog factory! The frogs that have climbed onto the buffalo are safe from their usual predators, such as water snakes and fish, with the flies provide a constant incentive for the frogs to remain in this safe space. Now, it’s the frogs that get both nutrients and a social hangout that helps create more frogs!
Even this is the most simplified possible view of everything going on here; the frogs are even strengthening the gene pool of the flies by eating the slowest and sickest first, removing parasites and pathogens from the fly’s population, which the flies would not benefit from nearly as much if the buffalo weren’t concentrating them together like this either, and then the frogs go on to keep regulating the populations of other insects while becoming prey for birds and fish, the protein from frog spawning activity is its own critical part of the food chain, the buffalo’s activity cycle altered by the flies and frogs affects the plants it eats and even where it ends up excreting fertilizer, the frogs and flies would also catch the attention of passing birds, we could just keep on going and going here.
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
andulkaphoto
amandla
