Deep in the dark misty woods of the malnad mountains along the western ghats, situated on the west coast of India, there resides a plethora of animals. From the smallest to the biggest.
Each has its own way of survival. In this cruel world of green, there exists no rules of engagement & therefore no rooms for error, no points for second place & quite rightly as charles Darwin states 'Survival of the fittest' is absulutely necessary. The inhabitants of the forest are by themselves divided into two basic categories.
1. Predator
2. Prey
From a survival point of view, one has to be either fast in the game or one has to be clever, or the game is up. In this post I am going to have a wee chatter about the clever group. We have a few clever specimen with us right here in this post.
The first contender in this competition is the stick cricket, something what I personally call as the ''branch boy''. This perticular species has a remarkable ability to use the mighty deception called camouflage. An art which was copied by almost all armies & whose colourful costumes are sported by the most ruthless of dictators and the most exotic of dancers. By naturally being so thin & by possessing the colour of a twig, this clever whippersnapper masquerades as a twig for as long as he can hoodwink the potnetial prey into presuming that he is indeed a twig. And as soon as he gets the chance he hunts with top speed.
The second contender shown above is the ''colourless butterly'', I personally nicknamed him 'the swamp thing' by his colourless looks and his ability to copy the background in such a way that he appears invisible to the untrained eye. However he settles down in his new surrounding quite comfortably with the imperative knowledge that neither predator nor prey can spot him. Right until the moment the unsuspecting prey walks onto him, & he grabs them & its within his grasp in a second.
The next contender is the twig grasshopper whom I personally call the ''Green Beret''. By looking like the branch and leaves of a plant, he silently makes his way behind enemy lines without being spotted by predators casting evil eyes. The plant in itself with its twig & leaves is a source of food to many insect species like the butterfly, the beetle & the ant. Little do they know that the twig they are standing or walking on is the predator itself who at the first opportunity blows his cover & ambushes his prey with superatural speed.
However clever these contenders be, there is a special contender who has survived for a squillion years with his ruthless cunning & deceptive looks. He's none other than the Calote. I call him ''Rambo''. Although he looks like a dinasaur, he is far smaller in size. His tiny body is made up of many many colourful scales that imitate the branch of a tree. With strong limbs and a stronger tail, he can virtually traverse in any direction including downright vertical. His earlobes are invisible but some of the sharpest and its got a special feature of vibration recognition which many predators and prey dont possess. The 3 above contenders think they are the boss & are pretty overconfident about their deception, while our Rambo has already seen through their deception in seconds & combined with his own deception, hoodwinks them into thinking they are safe. With a quick microsecond lap of his sticky tongue, he gulps his prey in no time & wins the contest by a mile.
& therefore its upto you folks to decide whos the winner because I already have.
1. Predator
2. Prey
From a survival point of view, one has to be either fast in the game or one has to be clever, or the game is up. In this post I am going to have a wee chatter about the clever group. We have a few clever specimen with us right here in this post.
The first contender in this competition is the stick cricket, something what I personally call as the ''branch boy''. This perticular species has a remarkable ability to use the mighty deception called camouflage. An art which was copied by almost all armies & whose colourful costumes are sported by the most ruthless of dictators and the most exotic of dancers. By naturally being so thin & by possessing the colour of a twig, this clever whippersnapper masquerades as a twig for as long as he can hoodwink the potnetial prey into presuming that he is indeed a twig. And as soon as he gets the chance he hunts with top speed.
The second contender shown above is the ''colourless butterly'', I personally nicknamed him 'the swamp thing' by his colourless looks and his ability to copy the background in such a way that he appears invisible to the untrained eye. However he settles down in his new surrounding quite comfortably with the imperative knowledge that neither predator nor prey can spot him. Right until the moment the unsuspecting prey walks onto him, & he grabs them & its within his grasp in a second.
The next contender is the twig grasshopper whom I personally call the ''Green Beret''. By looking like the branch and leaves of a plant, he silently makes his way behind enemy lines without being spotted by predators casting evil eyes. The plant in itself with its twig & leaves is a source of food to many insect species like the butterfly, the beetle & the ant. Little do they know that the twig they are standing or walking on is the predator itself who at the first opportunity blows his cover & ambushes his prey with superatural speed.
However clever these contenders be, there is a special contender who has survived for a squillion years with his ruthless cunning & deceptive looks. He's none other than the Calote. I call him ''Rambo''. Although he looks like a dinasaur, he is far smaller in size. His tiny body is made up of many many colourful scales that imitate the branch of a tree. With strong limbs and a stronger tail, he can virtually traverse in any direction including downright vertical. His earlobes are invisible but some of the sharpest and its got a special feature of vibration recognition which many predators and prey dont possess. The 3 above contenders think they are the boss & are pretty overconfident about their deception, while our Rambo has already seen through their deception in seconds & combined with his own deception, hoodwinks them into thinking they are safe. With a quick microsecond lap of his sticky tongue, he gulps his prey in no time & wins the contest by a mile.
& therefore its upto you folks to decide whos the winner because I already have.
"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or gazelle - when the sun comes up, you'd better be running."
ReplyDeletethe desert donkey seems to be the smartest of them all. It neither has to run nor has to starve. Just work work work :)
ReplyDelete