Chapter 35

In the movie The God father, Michael Corleone and Enzo the baker stand on the steps outside the hospital where Michael's father is recovering from gunshot wounds and pretend to be holding guns inside their coats as a means of keeping assassins from entering the hospital and killing Michael's father. Allowing for some differences between the natural world and human society, what form of mimicry were Michael Corleone and Enzo the baker practicing?

The world's first farmers were not human beings but the leaf-cutter ants of the genus Atta. These ants do not eat the leaves they carry off. Instead, they bring them down into their nests, where they process the leaves into a pulp and then spread the pulp onto a fungus that grows only in their nests. The fungus then feeds on the food that has been brought to it and grows, after which the ants harvest the knob-like stalks of the fungus and consume them. What is the mode of interaction between the ants and the fungus in this community?