Animal Interactions Essay

Of course there are numerous stories of animals viciously attacking other animals and news segments showcasing how brutal animals can be to humans, but all animals aren’t competitive (when organisms try to obtain food, water, space, sunlight, and other resources at the same place and time) in nature. If one were to hear that statement, they might think that animals are only agreeable within their own population of species, but this is also not true. Undomesticated animals have a bad reputation of being very competitive, which is a common misconception among many people. Symbiosis, the predator-prey cycle, and mimicry are all three common forms of organism interactions that are not competitive.

No organism lives in complete isolation, which means that there will always be some sort of interaction between organisms. This can be described as symbiosis, a Greek rooted word meaning “living together”. Symbiosis entails the many relationships an organism can have with another organism; the one that is most beneficial to this essay would be mutualism. Mutualism is an interaction between two or more organisms where both/all organisms are benefited. Sea anemones and anemone fish have great mutualistic relationships such as how the sea anemones use their tentacles to protect the anemone fish away from predators while the anemone fish protect the sea anemones from butterflyfish.

Even though animals may consume each other, they still help one another by doing so. Taking centuries to show change, the organisms adapt to better hunt/capture (predator) or to defend or flee (prey). This is due to evolution, the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the Earth. The benefits of evolution are brought to the young of young of the species which will advance the future species as a whole. One example of this would be bats and how they’re lack of use of their eyes contributed to the growth in their ears overtime to better hear ultrasonic sound frequencies.

Mimicry is another non-competitive relationship between organisms. The main two being Mullerian mimicry, a natural phenomenon in which two or more poisonous species, that may or may not be closely related and share one or more common predators, have come to mimic each other's warning signals, and Batesian mimicry, a form of mimicry typified by a situation where a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species directed at a common predator. In both cases, one species of prey mimic other harmful species of prey to void off predators. This is not to be directly linked to the adaptations of evolution because this adaptation can occur within a single lifetime. The Heliconius butterflies in the tropic Western Hemisphere is famous for it’s Mullerian mimicry.

Not all organisms are competitive by nature. As clearly shown above with symbiosis, the predator-prey cycle inducing evolution, and mimicry, organisms can have relationships with other organisms without competition. Competitiveness between different organisms is not false, it just does not happen between all organisms, in all situations. That’s just one of the common misconceptions among people.

Citations: * Kimball, J. (2014, April 25). Symbiosis. Retrieved from http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/S/Symbiosis.html * PBS. (2001). Evolution. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/ * Harland, R. (2013, March 25). 10 weird cases of incredible animal evolution. Retrieved from http://listverse.com/2013/03/25/10-weird-cases-of-incredible-animal-evolution/ * Alleghany. (n.d.). Animal Mimicry. Retrieved from http://www.alleghany.k12.va.us/animal adaptation webpage/animal_mimicry.htm * Britannica. (2014). Batesian Mimicry. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/55858/Batesian-mimicry * Arrington, D. (2014). Mullerian Mimicry. Retrieved from http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/mullerian-mimicry-definition-examples-quiz.html