Seduction can be deceptive. The bee orchid, for example, will play on the lustful attentions of male bees by mimicking a female orchid bee in appearance and scent. Male bees try to mate, and the unsuspecting suitors are loaded with sacks of pollen, which they then carry to other bee orchids in search of satisfaction. The male bees are simply the playthings of the orchids’ congress. If you think that the mobile animals are in charge, you would be wrong. Pollination is an ongoing evolutionary game between animal and plant.

Excerpt From: Calvo, Paco. “Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence.” W. W. Norton & Company, 2023-01-27.

I am enjoying this book a lot. It opens up a different world, a way of being that is very alluring to me. Pollination is an ongoing evolutionary game between animal and plant. 

Imagine this: fungi and plants enabled animals, including humans, to develop on this planet. If humans fail to protect the environment and parish, they, the fungi and plants, will simply wait for the next type of so called intelligent animals to rise. What’s a few million or billion years to them! We better rise to the occasion, I say. :-)