Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships

> There is a famous story along these lines told for the first time by the German biologists Ernst Haeckel and Carl Vogt. As the story goes, the fortunes of England would seem to depend on cats. By nourishing themselves on mice, cats increase the chances of survival of bumblebees, which, in turn, pollinate shamrocks, which then nourish the beef cows that provide the meat to nourish British sailors, thus permitting the British navy—which, as we all know, is the mainstay of the empire—to develop all of its power. T. H. Huxley, expanding on the joke, added that the true force of the empire was not cats but the perseverant love of English spinsters for cats, which kept the cat population so high.

As a point of curiosity, there is a similar observation found in the Buddhist Pali Canon (I think), popularized by Thich Nhat Hanh in his 1987 book "Old Path, White Clouds". It is apparently a very old text, commonly referred to as the "universe in a teacup" in certain circles.

To summarize, one can be said to discern the entire universe in a simple teacup (or bowl) in the same way that one can trace the power of the British Empire to a cat.

> Without water, the potter would not have been able to mix the clay he used to fashion the bowl....Fire was necessary to complete the bowl. Looking deeply, I can see the presence of heat and fire in the bowl...I see the air. Without air, the fire could not have burned and the potter could not have lived. I see the potter and his skillful hands. I see his consciousness. I see the kiln and the wood stacked in the kiln. I see the trees the wood came from. I see the rain, sun, and earth which enabled the trees to grow...I can see thousands of interpenetrating elements which gave rise to this bowl...Contemplating the bowl, it is possible to see the interdependent elements which gave rise to the bowl...these elements are present within and without the bowl. Your own awareness is one of the elements. If you took away heat and returned it to the sun, if you returned the clay to the earth and the water to the river, if you returned the potter to his parents and the wood to the forest trees, could the bowl still exist? [...] Look deeply at this bowl, and you can see the entire universe. This bowl contains the entire universe.

  For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
  For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
  For want of a horse the rider was lost.
  For want of a rider the message was lost.
  For want of a message the battle was lost.
  For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
  And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

    To see a World in a Grain of Sand
    And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 
    Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
    And Eternity in an hour

> For the next 250 years, despite the best efforts of the English to free themselves from this commercial yoke, the secret of that prodigious dye remained unknown to all but a select fortunate few of Spanish producers. But no production secret can stay that way forever, and so in the closing years of the eighteenth century, British spies succeeded in spiriting away the tightly kept formula: in order to obtain the longed-for carmine, you needed cochineals, and to get cochineals you had to have prickly pears.

History makes this point again and again, spying seems to be the best way every superpower kickstarted many of their efforts.

The prosaic reality is that bumblebees don't have any particular feelings about cats. Not more that they would feel about other carnivores. Using the same argument we could easily link being rich in England with the presence of rats in their house (that also eat lots of mice); or other similar nonsense.

(But, yep. I agree that this old histories full of literary licenses feel warm inside and are entertaining as long as we take in mind that literature is not the same as science).

There's also the story of the man who decided the USA needed to have all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays, so he imported and released them, with similarly disastrous results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Schieffelin#Starling_re...

>Mice, argues Darwin, are among the principal enemies of bumblebees. They eat their larvae and destroy their nests. On the other hand, as everyone knows, mice are the favorite prey of cats. One consequence of this is that, in proximity to those villages with the most cats, one finds fewer mice and more bumblebees.

the same with birds - rats are able to eat eggs, so having a bunch of cats on a farm/village naturally results in having a booming bird population.

The example, taken from the Origin of Species, of the OP is interesting, but then it goes on to list multiple inter-dependencies.

It does not address one question: are these inter-dependencies required, strict and essential to the survival of the affected species.

IOW, are not the species flexible enough and adaptable enough that any change would be fixed by a substitute or a change in behaviour?

There are many claims, both around ecology and climate changes, that hinge on the idea that the current state of the world as a whole is desirable, good and fragile.

That is the main thing that always irks me. Life survived the extinction of the dinosaurs, multiple glaciations, etc. But it is always portrayed as a fragile system. That always seemed to me a bit hypocritical.

Today no one would chose an introduced species like cats as an example of symbiosis. Outdoor cats are an invasive species which are destroying the native bird populations, and as a result the larger food chain. They are a huge problem for ecosystems.

If you found this interesting but don't want to dive into reading Darwin's works (as the author seems to imply we should) I highly recommend Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene". I haven't read "On the Origin of Species" but I'd bet "The Selfish Gene" will probably be a more efficacious read for most people

>"The ecological relationships that Darwin brings to our attention tell us of a world of bonds much more complex and ungraspable than had ever previously been supposed.

Relationships so complex as to connect everything to everything in a single network of the living."

>>"I am sure that many of the erudite readers of this little book know On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin inside and out. "

I can't parse that sentence. Does it make sense? (English is not my first language)

> If there is someone who still has this gap in their education, you are urged to fill it without any further delay.

Maybe Origin holds up better than I would guess but honestly, I'm never going to read that thing. You've got time to read a few thousand books in your life. And I would bet there are many modern books which cover the same material with a more accessible bent and more up to date and comprehensive information.

I'm not saying this as some kind of philistine. I studied literature for several years at university. I enjoy it. I've read Dante, Ovid, Thucidydes, Chaucer, Kant, and many more. But most those books are really interesting in historical or pedagogical kind of way. They show you the development of writing as it progressed. And they demonstrate the changing of human philosophy and epistemology. But frankly, most modern people can derive the same concepts and style as they've been handed down and filtered through subsequent authors.

Despite the hullabaloo about people declining to read, we live in an amazing literary time. Really good books are being written right now on just about every subject. The writing world is so competitive that authors really have to hone their skill. Especially in the non-fiction category which for several decades has been under a deluge of well researched, focused and didactic books.