Warthogs Visit Mongooses for Spa Treatments

Did you know there's a newsletter entirely about pigs, peccaries and hippos? It's published twice a year by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The newsletter used to be called the Asian Wild PigNews,until its name was changed to the more poetic Suiform Soundings. Anyway, if you had a subscription, you would have read recently about an unusual group of warthogs. In a national park in Uganda, the warthogs have developed a very friendly relationship with local mongooses. The warthogs treat the mongooses like their own personal spa. In return, the mongooses get to eat their fill of delicious ticks. Andrew Plumptre, a conservation biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, wrote about the phenomenon in the latest issue of Suiform Soundings. Both the mongooses and warthogs in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth National Park are used to having people around, thanks to scientists and tourists. So humans can get close enough ...