Rock Dassies from Augrabies Falls National Park

Rock Dassies (also known as Rock Hyrax - Procavia capensis) look a bit like marmottes. They are the closest relative to elephants. They climb trees to get to the green leaves and I have to admit that even though they are great climbers to me they seem totally out of place in trees. They are not called rock dassies for no reason. They do leave in rocks in big groups.

They have two weird little front teeth. In fact those teeth are tusk like and are their incisors just like elephants, whereas other tusked animals (like the warthog) have tusks developed from their canines.

See what you think about them in trees.
They like the green leaves and are able to eat them even with the serious thorns of the acacias trees.

Look at the way they are able to balance

Particularly amazing considering their toes

And I even saw one in a quiver tree.

 Here is another weird thing about dassies. They have at least 21 different vocalizations, including trills, yips, grunts, wails, snorts, twitters, shrieks, growls, and whistles. Males also sing complex songs that can last for several minutes and serve a territorial purpose, like bird song. When researchers looked at how males put together different syllables (wails, chucks, snorts, squeaks, and tweets) to compose a song, they found the order of the syllables was significant; that is, dassies songs make use of syntax, the manner in which different elements are combined. They also found dassies from different regions used different local dialects in their songs. (from wired.com)