Any given morning in the neighborhood called Thevara, where we have some wonderful friends, the fishermen do their thing a few meters from the riverfront walkway. To call that cooperation is like calling the kettle black. But just as we found this explanation of man-animal cooperation fascinating, this morning’s mobile phone snapshots got interesting.
Several earlier posts have touched on the topic–how cooperation (or altruism, defined here) comes about, overcoming the problems associated with the potential for free riders and other collective action barriers. The current issue of Nature contains findings from the research of a team at Harvard Medical School. If you are a subscriber to the journal click the image above to go to the research. If you want a four minute synopsis with excellent visuals, jump the jump.
There may be many cases of co-adaptation between species, but we do not encounter them frequently. This video clip is one sampled from the thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of hours that the BBC has invested in for the sake of it various nature programs. Because it is made available on Youtube, which has an intellectual property rights vetting process, it seems to be an example of the BBC’s generous contribution to the commons.
Organikos 