Analyzing Competition

Analyzing nature of biological competition

According to popular theory of natural selection, there are more offsprings that could be survived. Offspring compete with each other over limited resources and only fittest survive and weaks are perished. Does it really a fact or it is a just an interpretation of the observations. Are there is alternative interpretations that could explain these observations or only survival of fittest is the only explanation best fit parsimony? Let's work it out,

War with weak

It seesms that it really fits the survival of fittest theory that weaks have to be perished. But let revisit this observation. Predators prefer to prey on the younger or new born babies as they are less experienced, less energetic and require less efforts/energy to prey on. On the other hand the organisms use different tactics to protect their young and babies. If this is a merciless competition why a group of organims protect the babies in group? They live in group, graze in group and migrate in a group. Though groups protect you from predators but as a group of organisms rely on the same sources of food so there is a competition among groups for limited resources?

In fact contrary to concept of competition, biological systems tends to be energy efficient. They prey on younger and easy preys to conserve energy. Similary in order to conserve energy they tend to live in group. In a group of organisms both weak and strong live togather because they divide their responbilities and specialize in specific functions in order to be more energy efficient. The strongest tend to defend weaks, the experienced tend to lead and weaks tend to search for food or take care of youngs. It is not necessary that all group of organisms have the same pattern of organizations. Their organizations reflects their needs and environments.
Besides predators are selective when prey is frequent but prey is scarce they try on every prey in the reach.

Making Alliance

If there is a competition among the same species over limited resources so why predators tend to hunt in group? Predators and other organisms tend to make alliance against their prey or enemies and share the prey or resources.

Defensive Display

A lot of organims evolved denfensive and sexual displays like like horns in lot of organisms, feathers in cocks, tails in lizards and salamanders, legs in spiders, bright colors in snakes, and so on are to conserve energy by avoiding competitions with competitors or keeping away the predators.

Food for thought:

These all strategies to conserve energy can be observed from prmitive organims to most evolved one like human and superpowers. Sometimes people tend to look at these strategies as great work of wisdom and high intellect but in fact they are part of our instinct and we tend to act in those way irrespective of our intellect levels.