Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Commensalism

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

What's commensalism? Sort of nature's way of sponging off something, but that something doesn't mind. If that doesn't make sense, take 12 minutes to listen and find out for yourself. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here.

And this is short stuff, a great one because it has to do with ecology, environment, biology, drama, matchbooks. That's right. I came across this because I was on HouseStuffWorks.com because I was putting something together that we're not doing now, but I hope to do soon on symbiosis. Oh, yeah. And this is not symbiosis. So it was mentioned as kind of, not the opposite of symbiosis, but something that's, you know, runs afoul of symbiosis. It's symbiosis is more confusing cousin, more selfish cousin.

It's very difficult to pin down in some weird ways, but we're talking commensalism. And the base definition of commensalism is that it happens when an animal benefits another animal or organism just by doing its own thing. And it's not affected by it one way or the other. The other animal like benefits from it, but there's no, there's no like tit for tat. There's no harm in it. It's just kind of a thing. Yeah. It's a kind of cooperation. A couple of things that it's not that we should probably mention besides symbiosis is, it doesn't mean you're a parasite. Parasitism is when something is actually causing harm to another thing by sort of sponging off of them.

Like the movie, Parasite. Parasite. That's right. Or, you know, or a parasite that lives on your body and feeds on the host and the host may not be aware of it, but that's damaging the host. Like the movie, Alien. Right. That's right. It's also not mutualism in which that's a little more aligned with symbiosis in which both partners are benefiting from this relationship like bees and flowers. They each get a little something. They're scratching each other's backs and it's all good. Like the movie, Wall Street.

That's right. Oh man. We should just make this the whole episode. Commensalism though is like you said, and they're actually called commensals is, which is the one that is benefiting, not the one that is unawares and just sort of neither benefiting nor being harmed. And benefiting is kind of one way to put it. You could also say that commensal also requires the other animal to go about their daily business for that one to survive sometimes. Yeah. Let's give a great example here that is found in this House of Works article about Eastern screech owls and blind snakes. Chuck.

Yeah. This is interesting, I thought. I thought so too. So Eastern screech owls love to eat blind snakes. It's their favorite delicacy. It's like foie gras, sushi and tikka masala to the average American. Love it, right? Okay. And so the Eastern screech owl brings a bunch of blind snakes back to its nest to feed their chicks, which is usually bad for the blind snakes. But some blind snakes get away and they actually burrow into the nest, deeper into the nest, out of the reach of the owls, and they live there. And while they live there,

they actually feed on little bugs in the nest. That's right. Those little larvae and those larvae would probably be parasites upon the owl. Right. So there's a lot of benefit going on here. Right. But in particular, the blind snake is providing the benefit to the blind owl, because studies have shown that, I guess, hatchlings, Eastern screech owl hatchlings, that are raised in nests where there's blind snakes embedded in them, typically grow bigger, faster, stronger, et cetera. And they have a lower mortality rate than hatchlings that are

raised in nests where there's not blind snakes. So it does seem like the benefit they're providing is getting rid of the parasite load in that nest. But as far as the blind snake's concerned, it's just eating. It's doing its normal thing. What's a blind snake? It's a snake that is blind as far as I know. I looked him up and it is a specific thing. It's not just like any snake that's blind, obviously. But I had never really heard of them before. I had neither. What's an owl? I have no idea. I told you about the owl cafe that you mean I went to in Tokyo, right?

Right. I don't think so. I would have remembered this. It was so neat. Are you in there with owls? Yes. They're right there. You can hold them on your hand. You can pet them. And I realized that it's not their natural habitat and they're capped and all that. But it was very cool. They were very well taken care of as far as captive animals go. But it was a really neat experience. Yeah, it's okay to think that's a neat experience. Are you sure? I'm so nervous right now.

I think so. I mean, we're finally going to Disney World in a couple of weeks and we're staying at Animal Kingdom and I really want to wake up with a giraffe standing outside my window. Yeah, go and work up, chill. Does that make me a bad person? Yeah. For wanting to delight myself, frankly. Are you going to go on the Avatar ride? It's supposedly the greatest ride humans

have ever created. We're actually going to Animal Kingdom. We're just staying there. We have three park days, so we're doing... Okay, and that's not one of them. No, we're doing Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and then Universal. I'll tell you what, your daughter is going to love Hollywood Studios' Toy Story Land. It is nuts how well they did that. Yeah, I don't think we're prepared for the delight that is to follow.

It's great, yeah. And big shout out to our buddy Brandon. Yes. Might as well, who's helping us out. He works down there and he's just very kind and generous with, especially if you don't know how to navigate Disney with all the tips and stuff. Yeah, he's just a wonderful guy. That's good stuff.

Who started out as a fan who reached out and quickly became a true friend. That's right. All right, so, hey, we needed a little padding, so we'll come back right after this and talk a little bit more about Commensalism. Thanks for the padding, Brandon. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second-hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention.

Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck. So this article basically practically admits that ecologists don't really know how to define commensalism. But they're like, but we still have it separated into three categories. That's right.

The first of which is enquilinism, sounds totally made up. That is when a species lives on or inside another, can be in that nest, like the blind snake living in the nest of the owl. Anytime it's within a... There's another example they give of the gopher tortoise. Southeastern US, they have these really long tunnels, like sometimes 30 to 50 feet in length. And that of course becomes a home for lots of different things, mainly insects.

But some of them have evolved over the years to need to live there. And some of them, including this one moth, can only feed on the keratin of the shells of these dead gophers. Yeah. That's all they eat. That's niche right there. That's super niche. And so it's not just that moth.

There's a bunch of others. There's a bunch of other kinds of animals too. But yeah, that moth is about as big a commensal as you'll find in nature. There's another type of commensalism called metabiosis, which sounds kind of similar, but it's where an organism unintentionally creates a habitat for another. This is really where we get to the point where I'm saying like commensalism, they don't know what they're talking about. Somebody figured out something that didn't hold out to be true,

and they ended up creating a whole subdiscipline of ecology out of it. Oh. Is that where you are on this? Yes, because there is no example that we have gone over or will go over, that you can't ascribe to something else symbiosis. Parasiteism. Oh, like yeah, we used to call it this. Yes.

And now it's commensalism. It's a very confusing thing that we're doing right now. Yeah. But isn't that kind of a lot of science is the more you know, the more you can drill down and separate things out with their minor distinctions? Yes. If there are actual distinctions that separate them out, that's what I'm saying.

I don't think there are. Let me give you an example. So, gopher tortoises, right? So, there's commensals that live there that don't just feed on the gopher tortoise. I will give you that one, that moth that feeds exclusively on the keratin from gopher tortoises. Okay, that's probably a true commensalist relationship. But the kind of animals that live in gopher tortoise holes, that eat parasites in the gopher tortoise hole, that's symbiosis, man.

There's no way around it. There, the gopher has provided a place for these animals to live. The animals are eating the parasites that would otherwise be sucking the life force out of the gopher tortoise. That's symbiosis. There's no other definition for it. And that's given as an example of commensalism. But I didn't see that they did eat parasites that would harm the gopher.

Yeah, some of them do. It says that they likely lower parasite loads for tortoises. I see that now. I even highlighted it. Yeah. Yeah, that's mutualism. Well, should we talk about the last category? Or should we just throw this at the trash?

No, let's talk about the last one because this is fun to kick it around. All right, come here, you. Foracy, P-H-O-R-E-S-Y. That's when an animal attaches to another physically to catch a ride, basically. Okay, this one is commensalist. I'll give you that. All right, do you want to talk about an example that you hate? Metabiosis that just annoys me because it's the same thing as inquilinism and a lot of it is symbiosis.

But yeah, foracy is like if you're a mite that catches a ride on a bee, you can go from mightville to might town really quick. Whereas otherwise, you may never go there in your lifetime as a mite because you can't make it that far. But as far as the bee's concerned, it's not as long as you're not feeding on it like a parasite, the bee couldn't care less. It's not getting any benefit from it. It's not being harmed from it. But I'll bet the mite's still feeding on it, which makes it parasitism, not commensalism.

All right, okay. I was going to make a judgment on whether or not I'm with you on this, but then I decided I didn't care. That was very right-minded of you. There is one point that I think is worth making, though, that commensalism can actually put an entire ecosystem under stress, especially if you take the example of that moth that feeds on gopher tortoise keratin, right? If you take that moth and gopher tortoises suddenly die off, you're not just losing the gopher tortoise, you're also going to lose that moth species too.

They're going to die off too because they're fully dependent on gopher tortoise shells. They're going to have a bonanza at first and then eventually they're going to run out of food. And that the more commensalism you have in an ecosystem, the shakier ground that ecosystem is built on, you want species ideally to keep it as biodiverse as possible that can basically stand on their own that aren't so fully interrelated that they can't exist without another species creating a home for them or providing food for them or something, or giving them rides from mightville to mighttown. But we should be good since there are very, very few examples of true commensals, right?

That's my take. All right. I'm glad we're good. Yeah, I'm glad we're good too, Chuck. Do you think we're out? I think we're out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app.

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