Hippopotamus Saves Wildebeest From Crocodile

Wildebeest provide several useful animal products. The hide makes good quality leather and the flesh is coarse, dry and rather hard. Wildebeest are killed for food, especially to make biltong in Southern Africa. This dried game meat is a delicacy and an important food item in Africa. The meat of females is more tender than that of males, and is the most tender during the autumn season. Wildebeest are a regular target for illegal meat hunters because their numbers make them easy to find. Cooks preparing the wildebeest carcass usually cut it into 11 pieces. The estimated price for wildebeest meat was about US$ 0.47 per kilogram around 2008. The silky, flowing tail of the black wildebeest is used to make fly-whisks or "chowries".
The wildebeest benefit the ecosystem by increasing soil fertility with their excreta. Nowadays they are economically important for human beings as they are a major tourist attraction as well as providing important products like leather. However, the wildebeest can also have a negative impact on humans. Wild individuals can be competitors of commercial livestock, and can transmit fatal diseases like rinderpest and cause epidemics among animals, particularly domestic cattle. They can also spread ticks, lungworms, tapeworms, flies and paramphistome flukes.
The black wildebeest is depicted on the coat of arms of the Province of Natal in South Africa. Over the years the South African authorities have issued several stamps displaying the animal and the South African Mint has struck a two cent piece with a prancing black wildebeest.