Symbiotic

Charlie Rose had Henry Kissinger on last week regarding Hu Jintao's visit to the US, and having my perpetual sticky paw at the ready for compelling words, I adhered to "bilateral".  Despite distinct personal perspectives, this blog is going to refrain from jumping into the dark abyss of politics, but I got to thinking about two sides being simultaneously affected/influenced/involved, and then my sticky paw grabbed onto Borneo's bats.

So, get this, the bat population in Borneo has been reported as roosting in carnivorous pitcher plants.  I don't really even like "Little Shop of Horrors", but if there really were a human sized meat eating plant (like a Venus fly trap or a pitcher plant), no I wouldn't be caught dead (and, therefore previously alive) making my habitat in it.  Thus, the Borneo bats didn't consult with their real estate agent ahead of time, and yet...it seems to be working.  In fact, it's working really well, apparently.  It's working to the point of "mutualism".  Ah yes, another word which means two parties (specifically two species) are benefiting.  To summarize this unusual arrangement, the pitcher plants don't just chow down on the bats because the bats' excrement provides attractive nutrition on a consistent basis, and the bats can bunker down unseen in the folds of the pitchers' leaves.

My stickiness wondered what's the difference between symbiosis and mutualism.  Well, mutualism is actually a category of symbiosis.  So, whether or not the US and China have a symbiotic relationship is not a question I'm explicitly posing, but disparate pairings do happen.  Case in point: it does appear that Borneo's bats and pitcher plants are getting along swimmingly and may even in fact exchange Valentines.

Life sometimes can be symbiotic.
symbiotic: -adjective

  the living together of two dissimilar organisms, as in mutualism, commensalism, amensalism, or parasitism