Caption
White-backed vultures (Gyps africanus) and spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) squabble over the drying and deflated skin of an elephant carcass (Loxodonta africana), Laikipia Plateau, Kenya. The hyenas are tinted a reddish-brown from days of walking in and out of the elephant's body cavity. In a healthy ecosystem like this, hyenas open large, tough carcasses like this one and feed on it through the night. In the morning, there is a changing of the guard as the vultures arrive and spend the day feeding on the opened carcass. These two scavengers work together to clean large carcasses from the landscape. When hyenas are absent, vultures struggle to do the job alone.
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