Imagine an animal that’s over 1,000 pounds and 15 feet long. It has almost 70 incredibly sharp teeth and when it chomps down, its bite is 70 times more powerful than ours.1 Now, imagine a bird, about 8 inches long, weighing almost 1/5 of a pound.2 The enormous predator opens its jaws wide and the bird flies in. What do you think happens next? How sure are you? Well, if you assumed that the bird became lunch, you would be wrong. The predator is the Nile crocodile and the bird is the Egyptian plover. The bird picks out food stuck between the crocodile’s teeth. The bird eats and the croc gets a good tooth cleaning.3
Though we often think of nature as predator/prey, competition for resources, survival of the fittest…that’s not the only approach that animals take in the wild. Symbiotic relationships where both creatures are helped are all over the animal kingdom. Ostriches have pretty bad eyes, but an amazing sense of smell. Zebras have great eyesight, but their sense of smell isn’t too powerful. So, pal-ing around together means one sees for the other and one smells for the other.4
Just one more because these are so much fun! There’s an animal called a decorator crab. To hide from predators, it basically plants a garden of sea sponges or anemones on its shell. The crab gets to be safe when it lies still. When it eats, the sponges and anemones get the leftovers.5
[1] https://safaripartner.com/blog/facts-about-nile-crocodile
[2] https://www.zootierliste.de/en/?klasse=2&ordnung=215&familie=21506&art=2110301
[3] http://causalpatterns.org/resources/ecosystems/pdfs/s5_res_symbiosis.pdf
[4] https://www.bbcearth.com/news/unexpected-animal-pairings
[5] https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/escambiaco/2021/05/12/weekly-what-is-it-decorator-crab/