Make Like Less Difficult

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

George Eliot

An article titled “Mutualism: eight examples of species that work together to get ahead ” from the UK’s Natural History Museum gives some neat examples of different species of animals that exhibit symbiotic relationships. “Symbiotic relationships are the close associations formed between pairs of species.” The animated movie Finding Nemo shows the relationship between clownfish and their protection in anemones which is an example of a symbiotic relationship. Apparently Honeyguides, a species of birds, will “recruit people with a demanding call, indicating that they have found a bee nest. The honey-hunting humans reply with calls passed down through generations and follow the bird.” After the people clear the bees and get the honey, “the honeyguides are left to dine on the beeswax, eggs and larvae left behind.”

About the author

Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–63), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–72) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.