Blog
“I decided to create this blog to share experiences, reflections, and ideas. I write with much love for people and the rest of nature. I hope that at least some of these writings are useful in your lives.” – Jessica Sheffield Zamora, Founder and Director of Guardians of Nature.
Survival and Cooperation Lessons from Nature
March 26th 2024
Por Jessica Sheffield Zamora
Floods, ants, cooperation, resilience, and survival: how they are interconnected? Allow me to explain.
Having spent 18 years in the rural town of Nosara, Guanacaste, I’ve personally witnessed the floods and how they have affected my community. The school I helped establish, Del Mar Academy, has been impacted multiple times by the water that inundated not only the green areas, but also some classrooms and pavilions.
It is painful, too, to see the devastation to the affected homes in the district. Fortunately, no lives have been lost, but for many people living near the Nosara River, the murky water has swept away their family belongings along with many of their cherished memories. Some families have been forced to flee to safer grounds in the midst of darkness.
During one of these occasions, while inspecting the damage to our school, something on campus immediately caught my attention as it floated across the receding waters. I leaned in closer to identify what it was.
To my surprise, I discovered that hundreds, perhaps even thousands of fire ants had united to form a raft-like float that allowed them to survive above the flooded ground. I was impressed to observe the extraordinary cooperation of these tiny living beings to ensure their survival.
According to research, building a raft by interlocking their bodies is a strategy to maximize the chances of surviving a natural disaster and ensuring the well-being of the group. At this moment their lives are 100% dependent on each other. This raft is reversible, allowing the insects at the bottom to eventually be on top to avoid drowning. The most recent biological studies have shown the importance of cooperation in the natural world. And how cooperation, not competition, is what underpins innovation.
As humanity, we are drowning in an environmental and social crisis. We shouldn’t be surprised. We treat nature as a commodity from which we extract resources and a place where we deposit our waste, instead of recognizing what it really is: the fundamental pillar that sustains life on this planet. Isn’t this, perhaps, a reflection of how society often treats people as well?
So, what lesson can these tiny and wise beings teach us about facing the environmental and social crises we are experiencing? Their ability to overcome adversity and their resilience shows us the way. But beyond that, the most beautiful and valuable thing is that their innovation and resilience comes from radical collaboration; their unity is precisely what gives them the strength to overcome the challenge.
Stopping the war against nature and transforming this social crisis we are experiencing will require us to compete less and collaborate more. I urge you to reflect: Is there any area of your lives, whether as members of a family, professionals, students, or entrepreneurs, where it is necessary to set aside competition and instead, promote collaboration? What if, in politics, business, and education, we shift our focus to collaboration rather than competition? What positive impact could this change have on our lives, those of others, and the planet as a whole?
Mother Teresa of Calcutta expressed this value and principle eloquently and beautifully: “I do what you cannot do, and you do what I cannot do. Together we can achieve great things.” We have a great opportunity to do things differently in the 21st century. We need a great deal of humility to recognize that what we have been doing is not working for either people or the planet. Fortunately, we have nature as a great teacher to learn from and thus be able to chart a new path.
NOTE: This blog was shared as an op-ed by Delfino.cr on March 5th, 2024: https://delfino.cr/2024/03/lecciones-de-colaboracion-y-supervivencia-en-la-naturaleza
