Sunday, February 13, 2005

Commensalism or Parasitic?

I was just watching Animal Planet just now. It was about how certain animals which in its natural life would actually be the hunter and the hunted, but due some kinda twisted fate, their not enemies. If this is too confusing, an example would be cat and dog, which are normally enemies. So, this show was about weird partners.

The first one was about snake and owl. The snake which is not eaten is taken back to the nest, and according to them the chicks are healthier. Then, it was aphids and ants. Then it was sloths and sloth moths. Since the sloth moves super-slow, algae grows on its fur. So, there's a whole ecosystem on the sloth. The sloth moth feeds on the sloth's dung.

Then, there's the famous medicinal leech and human. This is widely used. Then, there was this particular parasite which originates from the heron's dung. When the heron's dung falls into the water, the parasites are released and it infects the tadpoles in the water. This causes mutation: the frogs has extra limbs and looks horrible. Like frogs aren't gross on its own.... This mutation causes the frogs slow mobility, so it can't escape the heron and it becomes an easy prey for the heron.

The best was probably about dolphin and human. Somewhere in the world (can't remember the location), doplhins help the fishermen to catch fish. What the doplhins do is that it 'chases' fishes towards the fishermen. The fishermen are waiting with their nets. Then, the doplhins does this particular flip which acts as a signal to the fishermen to cast their nets. It was really cool!

Oh yeah, then there was this bird which hepls honey badger to find honey. At the same time, it also helps human to find the bee hives. As a reward, the humans leave a bit of honeycomb for the bird.

The commentator was saying that some of it was a win-win situation, where some have a win-lose situation. Guess that's the way nature is.

*I can't remember most of the animal's name (spesies, whatever). Sorry about that.... For more info, watch Animal Planet. =D

1 comment:

Nurhidayati Abd Aziz said...

hm, one insightful entry. your last sentence about "i guess that's how nature works" really gets into my mind. sometimes we're hoping for a world of fair/justice, when in fact the "real world" is not that fair at all. there are hunters and the hunted, there are people who pay and people who gain. the most we could do as a Muslim, have a complete faith in Allah, for sure we would find hapiness despite all what we've been through, in sya Allah. :)