FLOWER FRIDAY

It's Flower Friday but real blossoms are scarce around here.  This isn't exactly a flower...although it looks like it and has been called the "Flower of the Sea." Of course it's an anemone...a group of colonial animals that make their living eating whatever they can catch with their venomous tentacles, primarily small fish and shrimp.
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The clown fish develops immunity to its specific host anemone and it's in the best interest of both symbiotic partners to have this relationship.
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Their relationship is known, biologically, as mutualism. Both benefit from the relationship; each has a vested interest. The toxic anemone serves the fish in multiple ways, chiefly by giving it a home and supplying bits of food from partially digested prey that the clown fish can eat. The fish is also instrumental in eating dead tentacles from the anemone.
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The clown fish eats primary plankton but it furnishes "protection" to the anemone from predators which might like to consume it.  Both benefit: neither is harmed.
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