Symbiosis may sound like an incurable disease, but our trusty dictionary defines the word as “the consorting together, usually in mutually advantageous partnership, of dissimilar organisms.”  Now, the organisms we are considering here are not congressmen and lobbyists.  It is natural symbiosis that we at FootageBank HD document.

The oxpecker bird perches on large mammals, such as buffalos and giraffes, and eats ticks and other parasites which attach themselves to mammalian skin.  The host gets clean and the bird gets fat.  Of course, like all good things, it can get out of hand.  The oxpecker has gotten so comfortable with this relationship that even courtship displays and copulation occur “on the hoof.”

Cleaner fish perform a vital service to sharks and other large aquatic predators.  Some, like the remora, attach themselves to the host and snarf up the scraps resulting from the host fish’s rather untidy table manners.  And some small species actually go into the mouths of the larger fish and pick their teeth clean.  Others, Gobies and Wrasses, hang out in groups at cleaning stations waiting for “client fish” to stop by.  And we humans are not the only animals who can apologize.  A particular species of cleaner fish, Labroides dimidiatus, will, if it thinks it has bitten the host too hard in feeding, use its back fins to stroke the client fish’s skin.  This must be very pleasant for the usually vigilant predator fish, which has been observed drifting and bumping into coral while in the throes of such pampering.

But for sheer style, the Decorator Crab is unmatched.  This little homemaker selects bits of seaweed and even small animals such as anemones from its habitat and fastens them to its back.  This camouflage protects the crab from predators and the plants and animals settle in and grow.  And lest you are tempted to throw out those old slipcovers, take a lesson from the Decorator Crab.  When it sheds, it carefully removes the “furniture” from the old shell and rearranges it onto its new shell.

FootageBank HD has a “host” of these and other images of symbiotic relationships, and if you still want one of Abramoff and DeLay, we can probably work something out to our mutual advantage.  Do yourself (and us) a favor by visiting our symbiosis clips here.