Rare footage of boars, silver pheasants foraging together captured in SW China’s Yunnan

Photo shows two boars and one silver pheasant foraging together at the Gaoligong Mountain National Nature Reserve in Baoshan city, southwest China’s Yunnan province. (Photo taken by an infrared camera)

Infrared cameras have recently captured rare footage of boars and silver pheasants foraging together at nine monitoring sites at a nature reserve in southwest China’s Yunnan province, according to the reserve’s management bureau.

Two boars and four silver pheasants were discovered at the Gaoligong Mountain National Nature Reserve in the province’s Baoshan city after the Bawan management and protection station of the Longyang branch under the reserve’s management bureau sorted through pictures and video clips shot on infrared cameras.

The footage shows the boars searching for food on the ground while the silver pheasants forage for insects and earthworms at a close distance away, indicating that the wild animals are living in harmony in the reserve, said Tang Jianyan, head of the station.

The boars are terrestrial wild animals of important ecological, scientific and social value that are under protection in China. The reserve has seen growing populations of the species in recent years. The silver pheasants are under second-class state protection in the country and were added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species in 2012.