Something was amiss with the giraffes. The animals, which looked healthy in daylight, seemed to sprout strange underarm tumors at night. This bizarre scene was captured by nocturnal camera traps as part of the Snapshot Serengeti project in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park.
Concerned, the project’s citizen scientists alerted the experts. “They were like, what’s going on with these giraffes?” recalls Meredith Palmer, a behavioral ecologist with Snapshot Serengeti. Careful examination revealed a surprising culprit: dozens of yellow-billed oxpecker birds, which had taken to cuddling in giraffe armpits at night.
Why didn’t researchers notice these freeloaders sooner? The artificial intelligence algorithm tasked with processing camera data missed them entirely.