Unlikely Friendships - Jennifer S. Holland [38]
One afternoon as I came off the edge of the reef, I saw my friend the puffer—but this time he wasn’t alone. He had found his way to the very middle of a shoal of fish utterly unlike himself. They were sweetlips, a colorful, wide-mouthed type of grunt that schools in large numbers in sunny, shallow waters. The aged puffer, a scruffy blight on their collective loveliness, was hanging out among them as if he belonged, and the sweetlips seemed oblivious to the invader. The fish hung in the water as if attached to the strings of a mobile, rising and falling in sync at the whim of the currents. The puffer looked absurd yet strangely regal in his place at center, a halo of yellow beauties surrounding his bloated, kingly form.
It wasn’t a fluke. The odd cluster was there again later, and the next day as well. The interspecies group was the welcoming party as we arrived on the reef and the well-wishers as we departed. It was a delightful scene.
What interest this giant puffer fish had in the sweetlips, I can only guess. My best “biologically correct” explanation: Both species love a good cleaning, and cleaner wrasses—small fish that pick old skin and parasites off larger fish—are commonly found where sweetlips gather; they’re invited to enter the fishes’ wide-open mouths to nibble at the leftovers there. Perhaps the puffer realized that to get access to the best cleaning station, he would have to join the crowd. And once he’d found his way to center stage and was accepted there, he simply stuck around.
But there’s a more fun explanation, one that would no doubt make any scientist balk. Let’s say that by surrounding himself with all that color and beauty, the old puffer gave his sour mood a boost, buoying his lonesome self to that happy place where the best friendships are made.
References
PUBLICATIONS AND FILMS
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Douglas-Hamilton, D., producer. Heart of a Lioness. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, 2005.
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Kerby, J. The Pink Puppy: A True Story of a Mother’s Love. Wasteland Press, 2008, and personal communication.
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SELECT WEB SOURCES
Animal Liberation Front (animalliberationfront.com)
Best Friends Animal Society (bestfriends.org)
Cute Overload (cuteoverload.com)
Interspecies Friends (interspeciesfriends.blogspot.com)
Mail Online (dailymail.co.uk)
Rat Behavior and Biology (ratbehavior.org)
SELECT ADDITIONAL READING ON ANIMAL EMOTIONS AND BEHAVIOR
Balcombe, J. Second Nature. Palgrave