What is the name of the bird that rides on the back of elephants?
The bird is an Egret. Symbiosis is the word that describes a partnership that develops between certain animals, where each animal helps the other. Some birds eat ticks and fleas off the backs of large grazing animals like rhinos and buffaloes and elephants, while other birds clean the gums of crocodiles by removing leeches. (The crocodile actually opens its mouth to allow the bird to go to work!) There is a neat picture of sybiosis here: http://www.flickr.
