Mzima Springs: Where fish groom hippos

KWS ranger escorting tourists on a tour of Mzima Springs. [Gideon Maundu, Standard]

Hippo's poop also provides nutrients for plants, food for insects and arthropods, mollusks, annelids, echinoderms and cnidarians beneath the waters of Mzima Springs.

Fish in the springs feed on the poop while providing the hippo with 'house help' duties; cleaning hippo's teeth whenever they open the mouth, foraging for scraps stuck between the hippo's teeth in an unusual mutuality of trust.

Rasping mouthparts from fish also cleans the hippo's hide, toenails, the cracked feet and butt. Others cover the bristles of its tail. A whole community of fish functioning as hippo cleaners; skin-cleaning and tick-picking in what biologists call mutualism - a relationship between two species from which both benefit: fish get a full meal of hippo's poop in exchange for a pedicure and polish.