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Survival of the strongest?
Name: Tina
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
Why in nature do only the strong survive?
Replies:
Tina,
he why questions are always tough. But in this case, I'm not sure
that your assumption (only the strong survive) is correct. Sometimes
it is quickness, for example, rather than strength, that counts for
survival. Sometimes the ability to hide may be important. Clearly there
are only limited amounts of the resources all life forms need to survive,
and thus there is going to be competition for these resources. With the
exception of some bacteria (autotrophs) and the plants, all life depends
on other life for food. Think about it this way. If a mouse, for example,
has a litter of 10 young every six weeks, and all survive and start producing
their own young, which survive and so on, pretty soon we'd all be buried
in mice. It's been said that a single Paramecium dividing every 20
minutes would, in 24 hours, produce enough mass of Paramecia to equal
the mass of the earth itself, if they all survived. This probably
doesn't answer your question, but maybe it helps you to think about it
some more.
Ethan Allen
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Update: June 2012
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