[man] Not much fun eating alone. Not much fun spending the day alone.
Where is everybody? What are friends for anyway?
The natural world can be a cold and lonely place.
Filled with predators of all shapes and sizes,
it can be difficult to go it alone.
And so some species have learned that it takes two to
make a thing to right. [male announcer] When it's so
much fun to have a friend and be a friend,
why is it some people are not friends?
Here's Jane. She's a friend.
Kyle is not a friend. Wouldn't it be more fun
to have more friends? You'd rather stay here alone?
Oh, I won't be alone. I've got my friends.
Dick. Good old Dick.
Mutualism. When two unrelated species
team up for the greater good. [male announcer] We all
have fun with our own friends, but what about other people,
might they be fun? After all, we're all strangers
till we make friends. Hi, I'm Danielle Dufault,
and you're watching Animalogic: Second Nature. Mutualism is a type of
symbiotic relationship in which two species bring
something different to the table and they both benefit.
One very common form of mutualism
is a service-resource relationship.
This is when one species gets a service and the other gets food.
Red-billed oxpeckers are probably the most famous
example of this. They eat the ectoparasites off of large ungulates, like rhinos,
and warn their partners of danger by flying away.
They primarily rid their clients of ticks and botfly larvae.
Using their specialized flat bills,
they can comb out and eat up in a single day.
Sometimes, if their host has an open wound,
they will peck at it, drinking their highly nutritious blood.
This doesn't last long as their clients will
quickly get annoyed, and the oxpecker will go back to eating parasites.
Because of this, there is a bit of controversy
over whether they're cleaners or just vampiric parasites.
One study found that if you remove the birds,
the tick load remains almost the same,
but their wounds heal faster. For oxpeckers, the ticks might
just be a happy coincidence in their vampiric
feeding strategy. And even then, they only eat
fully-engorged ticks which does nothing to help
stop the spread of disease in the supposed clients.
Phagophilia, eating parasites off of a host,
is also quite common at sea. [man] Well, Paul,
how would you like a trip down to the bottom
of the sea without even getting
your feet wet? [Danielle] Several genera
of gobies feed off the ectoparasites
of sharks, rays, turtles, and many other
large marine mammals. However, wrasses are the
most common cleaner fish, and they're really good at it.
A single wrasse can inspect and remove about half
of their parasites, usually isopods.
One of the potentially coolest instances of phagophilia
is also one of the least documented.
There's a story from ancient Greek historian Herodotus
of crocodiles who keep their mouths open
for Egyptian plovers to come in and clean their teeth.
But despite thousands of years of observation,
there are no confirmed cases or photographic evidence.
But even better than service-resource mutualism
is service-service mutualism.
These are nature's best team ups.
In service-service mutualistic relationships,
two animals provide services for each other
in exchange for the benefits of those services.
The clown fish and sea anemone relationship
is the poster child of this. [man] An unwary fish has
brushed against the tentacles. Anemones have stingers
on their tentacles which are too painful
for most fish to tolerate, with two main exceptions:
clown fish and butterfly fish. Butterfly fish predate
upon anemones and so the anemones
employ the clown fish as body guards.
The clown fish lives in the anemone,
immune to its poison, protecting it from
butterfly fish, while the sea anemone
protects the clown fish from other predators.
At night, the movements of the clown fish
keep up the water flow rate to get new oxygenated water
to the anemone. Without the clown fish,
the anemone would have to retractat the slightest hint of danger,
costing them feeding opportunities.
Also, the anemone seems to use the ammonia
secreted by the clown fish as a fertilizer,
so there's also a
service-resource component to this relationship.
Of all the team ups in nature, this one is the most surprising.
Some spiders will team up with small frogs
and live in the same burrow. This is particularly unusual
because large spiders usually eat small frogs.
But these spiders and frogs have come to a mutually
beneficial agreement. The spider protects the burrow
from predators like snakes. In exchange, the frog
protects the spider's eggs from egg-eating insects.
As a bonus, the frog gets to eat the insects
attracted by the spider's leftovers.
The frogs are body guards for the spider's kids.
Similarly, gobies and pistol shrimp
have learned to team up to keep a safe home.
Pistol or snapping shrimp, while more known for
the explosive arms, are fantastic burrowers,
but they have fairly poor eyesight.
Gobies on the other hand have much better vision
and pressure detection but aren't particularly good
at making burrows. And so the two team up.
While the shrimp makes and maintains the burrow,
the goby plays sentinel. If the predator approaches,
the fish dives into the burrow and the shrimp follows, always keeping one antenna
touching the goby so it can guide
the shrimp to safety. One thing they
may be running from is another mutualistic
relationship. But these fish don't
team up for defence. They team up to hunt.
[man] Well, schnauze or no schnauze,
no darn fish that ever swum can get the best of me!
Whoopie! [Danielle] Moray eels and
groupers are polar opposites. Groupers are diurnal
and hunt in open water, while morays are nocturnal
and hunt in tight coral reefs and rock crevices.
But as they say, "Opposites team up to kill dumb fish."
Hunting alone, both morays and groupers
have a strong chance of losing their prey,
either to the open water in the case of morays,
or to the reef for the bulky groupers.
And so these fish team up to cover both routes of escape,
drastically increasing their chances of a successful hunt.
To start the hunt, a grouper will find the moray
and signal it by shaking its head.
Usually, the grouper will lead the moray to a reef
where there's prey hiding and the moray will flush it
out of cover. If the prey tries
to escape the reef, the grouper eats it.
If it hesitates and stays in the reef,
the moray eats it. The two partners in
crime don't share the loot, but it does increase the
long-term hunting success for both of them.
Likewise, coyotes and badgers team up
to execute a similar strategy on land.
Individually, they have different strategies.
The badger is a great digger but a poor runner.
While the coyote is a great chaser in open spaces
but isn't a great digger. And so when hunting alone,
their chances of catching fleet-footed burrowers
like ground rodents is small.
But when they hunt together, the rodent doesn't stand
a chance. They either flee underground and get dug out by the badger,
or they try to outrun the badger only to be ambushed or
chased down by the coyote. Like with morays and groupers,
they don't share food once caught,
but both their chances of catching a meal
increase enough in the long run to make it worth it.
So what should I talk about next?
Please let me know in the comments,
and be sure to subscribe for new episodes of
Animalogic: Second Nature
every other week. Thanks for watching.