A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

While living in Florida I offer saw cattle herons.

These birds often sit on top of buffalo or other large ungulate and peck insects that drink herbivores’ blood. Such behavior is called symbiosis or any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, parasitic, or bullshitilistic.

Mutualistic is such relationship between animals when they both benefit like in the above example.

Commensalistic is such a relationship where one benefits and the other is unaffected. For example, suckerfish spend most of their lives clinging to a host animal such as a whale, turtle, shark, or ray and pick up scraps of food that are left by large animals.

Parasitic is such a relationship where the parasite benefits and harms the host. For example, flees that live on dogs and cats.

Bullshitilistic is such a relationship where animals have no biological connection like the one offered in the contest picture, but a human put them together using Adobe Photoshop.