18,975
edits
Oni2:Slaves of War/Polylectiloquy: Difference between revisions
m
→If it wasn't designed, is the Daodan helpful or harmful?: '?' in link should be HTML-encoded
m (link fix) |
m (→If it wasn't designed, is the Daodan helpful or harmful?: '?' in link should be HTML-encoded) |
||
| Line 155: | Line 155: | ||
:C. Mutual symbiosis. The Daodan and host benefit each other. The benefit of Daodan->human is obvious, but do we benefit the Daodan in any way? Requiring a host to live in does not count as mutualism; that would be obligate symbiosis for the Daodan. We would have to provide some other, less crucial benefit to the Daodan in order for mutual symbiosis to be taking place. | :C. Mutual symbiosis. The Daodan and host benefit each other. The benefit of Daodan->human is obvious, but do we benefit the Daodan in any way? Requiring a host to live in does not count as mutualism; that would be obligate symbiosis for the Daodan. We would have to provide some other, less crucial benefit to the Daodan in order for mutual symbiosis to be taking place. | ||
:D. Commensalism. Neither life form does much good for the other; they pretty much ignore each other. This is clearly not the case with the Daodan-human relationship. | :D. Commensalism. Neither life form does much good for the other; they pretty much ignore each other. This is clearly not the case with the Daodan-human relationship. | ||
:E. Parasitism. One member of the relationship harms the other. This might seem to be the opposite of what the Daodan does, but how do we know that the Daodan is ultimately helping us at all? Hasegawa thought it would, but he may have known too little about the organism. Sure, the Daodan helps us in the short term, but what if it's just burning us up for fuel? Or what if it's taking us over? One of the alarming aspects of parasites is that some of them are capable of altering the behavior of their hosts. See the [[Oni2:Slaves of War/Neo-Biology|Neo-Biology]] page for examples of parasitism. Note that in many cases, the behavioral modifications are not noticeable right away. In some cases, the host is eventually destroyed by the parasite, and in some cases it merely passes out of the host after the host has done its bidding (as geyser would say, "[[wp:Does a Bee Care | :E. Parasitism. One member of the relationship harms the other. This might seem to be the opposite of what the Daodan does, but how do we know that the Daodan is ultimately helping us at all? Hasegawa thought it would, but he may have known too little about the organism. Sure, the Daodan helps us in the short term, but what if it's just burning us up for fuel? Or what if it's taking us over? One of the alarming aspects of parasites is that some of them are capable of altering the behavior of their hosts. See the [[Oni2:Slaves of War/Neo-Biology|Neo-Biology]] page for examples of parasitism. Note that in many cases, the behavioral modifications are not noticeable right away. In some cases, the host is eventually destroyed by the parasite, and in some cases it merely passes out of the host after the host has done its bidding (as geyser would say, "[[wp:Does a Bee Care%3F|Does a bee care?]]"). | ||
To be exact, the word for the Daodan's type of symbiosis, whether harmful or helpful, is endosymbiosis, meaning it lives inside its host. | To be exact, the word for the Daodan's type of symbiosis, whether harmful or helpful, is endosymbiosis, meaning it lives inside its host. | ||