Ocean floor at night

The Muck At Night from Alex.Be. on Vimeo.

Trees retaliate when fig wasps don't service them

Figs and fig wasps help each other out: Fig wasps lay their eggs inside the fruit where the wasp larvae can safely develop, and in return, the wasps pollinate the figs.
But what happens when a wasp lays its eggs but fails to pollinate the fig?
The trees get even by dropping those figs to the ground, killing the baby wasps inside, reports a Cornell and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (published online Jan. 13).
The findings suggest that when one species in a mutually beneficial relationship fails to hold up its end of the bargain, sanctions may be a necessary part of maintaining the relationship.
A female fig wasp (Tetrapus americanus) is about to enter a flowering fig (Ficus maxima).


Once inside, the fig wasp will pollinate and lay her eggs in the flowers that line the inside of the fig.

The Ultimate Triumph

"There is a preacher of the old school, but he speaks about as boldly as ever today. He's not very popular, even though the world is his parish, and he travels to every part of the globe, and he speaks in every language. He visits the poor. He visits the rich. He preaches to people of every religion, and he preaches to many of no religion. And the subject of his sermon is always the same. It never changes. He is an eloquent preacher, and he is able to stir emotions in hearts that are not emotional. He is able to bring tears to eyes that seldom weep. His arguments are beyond refutation. There is no heart that remains untouched and moved by the force of his appeals. This preacher shatters life. This preacher disturbs the status quo. Most people hate him. Everybody listens to him. His name is death. Every tombstone is his pulpit. Every newspaper prints his text. And one day you will be the subject of his sermon, and he will stand at your graveside and preach to others...

With this in mind, Thomas Gray said, "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, and all that beauty, all that wealth ere gave, await alike the inevitable hour, the paths of glory lead but to the grave." With every living soul that comes into this world, there is a built-in little time fuse, and we all have one. And when we're born, it's lit, and it begins to burn. And some burn fast and some burn slow, but all burn. And every birth signals the beginning of a countdown, and every countdown zeroes on an exit. And some countdowns are long and some are short...

And so life is just the process of dying. And yet men shrug off their indifference, and they yawn in God's face while their fuse burns and their countdown continues. And to many men, life may seem like a dead end street. And at the end of that dead end street is the inevitable pine box, and that's about all they have to look forward to...The day when the fuse burns out, the day when the hearse arrives and somebody has reached zero hour. And then what? What after that? I mean is there a hope? Is there an escape from doom? Is there something that has power over death, or does death grab us and hold us?"