Brood Parasites
What if you could just drop your kids off at someone else's place and let them have the responsibility? Well, there are some animals that do just that. They're called brood parasites, and...
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Raising kids is a big job, and one that costs a lot of energy. But what if you could just drop your kids off at someone else’s place and let them have the responsibility? Well, there are some animals that do just that. They’re called brood parasites, and they lay their eggs in other animals’ nests and let them do all of the hard work. There’s a kind of evolutionary arms race between these hosts and parasites. Hosts try to remove parasite eggs from their nests, but the parasite species often has ways to trick its hosts into keeping them. The cuckoo catfish, for example, is a brood parasite of cichlids [sick-lids] -- a family of diverse fish found around the world that rear their young in their mouths. The cuckoo catfish is what’s known as an obligat...
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Raising kids is a big job, and one that costs a lot of energy. But what if you could just drop your kids off at someone else’s place and let them have the responsibility? Well, there are some animals that do just that. They’re called brood parasites, and they lay their eggs in other animals’ nests and let them do all of the hard work. There’s a kind of evolutionary arms race between these hosts and parasites. Hosts try to remove parasite eggs from their nests, but the parasite species often has ways to trick its hosts into keeping them. The cuckoo catfish, for example, is a brood parasite of cichlids [sick-lids] -- a family of diverse fish found around the world that rear their young in their mouths. The cuckoo catfish is what’s known as an obligat...
