Tundra+fiction

=Oliver's Adventures=

Once upon a time on a dark and stormy night a little penguin was born. It was a penguin that was special and would later in it's life achieve great things. Though it did not know of it's amazing fate yet, it was still a special penguin. As the years flew by and that penguin which had been named Oliver grew into a majestic older penguin there was still something that seemed special about it.

Then one day in a time about five years after Oliver was born, tragedy struck. A killer whale, came to inhabit the waters were the penguins lived by and to threaten the many penguins that lived close to those waters, to haunt them in their dreams and to prey off them until there were none left. For they could not leave this place were they had all been born and raised. They could not go into the tundra with no fish or food from the ocean. They knew that eventually there would be none of them left, for the whale would devour them all. The penguins decided that they did not want to be killed one by one and that they should all try to swim to the other shore to escape the killer whale. None survived and made it but Oliver.

He was alone with no one to talk to when he heard a voice behind him."Hello" said the voice. When he turned around though all that he saw was a rock with lichen on it. "My name is Roxane." said the rock.

"And mine is Lisa." said the lichen."We work together, see I need something to be on preferably rocks and Roxane doesn't benefit or lose, that is called commensalism."

"Wow, I didn't know that things could work together and not have one of them hurt the other." "Well, that is called parasitism. Bob is an excellant example. Bob is a harmful bacteria who lives off of other organisms and harms them to gain for himself. Right now he is trying to make you the host so that he can suck the life out of you." Said Lisa.

"That whale was a predator preying off of each of my family since we were prey." stated Oliver.

"Yes" said Roxane "That is called a Predator Prey relationship, unlike Bob who is not huntig in a predator prey relationship the predator actually hunts the prey."

"Are there any relationships where each of them can actually benifit?" Oliver asked.

"Yes in fact there is. Here in the Tundra wolves need to eat, so they prey off of the caribou, then they leave some of the carcass behind for the vultures to eat. The wolves benifit because they get most of the meat and they also get the excercise of chasing the animal and the vultures don't starve to death. That is called mutualism. Those are the four types of relationships in the Tundra."

"Wow, I never knew that there were so many types of relationships, I thought that there was only predator prey where one of the animals ended up better and one worse than how they started." Said Oliver. "Will you two be my friends, I have no others."

"Of course we will!" Said Lisa. And the three new friends became best friends and remained good friends until the end of their days.

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