More on inter-species co-operation

["Philip Veerman" <>]

Following on recent comments - I'm sure there would be books and websites about this but I'll do a quick further comment. There are a whole range of levels of this, like already mentioned. In some cases the response of totally unrelated species is strongly synchronised and appear clearly co-operative and are convincing. These include cleaner wrasse and shrimp and the fish they clean (i.e. eat parasites from) and the behaviour of the honeyguide (a bird) and the honey badger in Africa. These are still not exactly altruistic as there is only mutual benefit with little costs.

 

Through to less tight examples such as gulls that opportunistically steal fish from pelicans and lions and hyenas that steal food from each other.  These are not that different from the cormorant and egret, each trying to get its own meal and possibly using the presence of the other to get the fish closer. At the other extreme is frigatebirds that specialise in stealing food from gannets, ospreys etc. Maybe if frigatebirds were moralistic, they would view the gannets as altruistic.

 

There is every evidence that the gannets are not in favour of having their food stolen by the frigatebird. That simple evidence and that it appears typical argues against altruism in all cases, if not the difficulty of explaining how any such altruism could evolve. My comment that the suggestion (of altruism) is rather odd was obviously directed only at the concept, not any possible cases. It is based on the concept of a continuum of a range of these behaviours in many very different fauna and the difficulty of finding a dividing line.

 

Philip