Tonight me and the girlos went to the library. One of the books we came home with is called Weird Friends: Unlikely Allies in the Animal Kingdom. It is one stone in the building up of biology nerds. I am quite successful thus far, actually.

Anecdote: Just today the girls were playing outside before dinner. They both came dashing to the back door, crying “Daddy! Daddy! Look at this! It’s really neat!” I went to see what they were excited about. It was a Cicada… dying on the sidewalk. Because it was dying, it was just sitting there, moving it’s legs every now and then, but not really doing much else. They loved it. I picked it up and showed them it from all angles. Then put it down again. Then they started poking at it, and jumping and screaming, “I touched it! It tickled!”

As you might guess, it is about various mutualistic symbiotic relationships between animals. Symbiosis is when two different species have some sort of relationship or interaction with one another. Mutualism is a type of symbiosis where both organisms benefit from the relationship. Parasitism is also a symbiotic realationship, only one organism benefits, and the other is harmed. Commensilism, if you’re curious, is where one organism/species benefits, and the other is neither benefitted nor harmed. So, anyhow… this little book, from what I’ve looked at so far, is all mutualistic relationships. Well… the primary organisms in the relationship anyhow. Things are rarely so simple as to only involve two species/organisms, and even this kids’ book typically has three or four species in each relationship web.

But… after I read about one of these relationships (the forest mouse and beetles… which also included,secondarily, mites and other biting insects), I said to Geneva, “That’s called symbiosis. Can you say that word?” She answered, “Symbysis. Like Ashley!”

Get it? By Sis?

This is, perhaps, the best single frame of a comic strip ever…

go here for the full strip.