It is interesting and eye-opening how "the truth" can be so deeply in the eyes of the beholder. We see what we believe, and we don't see what we don't believe. We have been thinking along the (somewhat) misinterpreted Darwinian lines of nature's potential ferociousness and cruelty in the name of the survival of the fittest. But scientists are beginning to dismantle this paradigm. Sunday's NY Times article took wildly exaggerated reports about the supposedly blood thirsty piranhas apart and reduced them to nothing much. Growing up I remember hearing stories about entire cows supposedly being stripped to the bones in minutes by a huge swarm of these fish. But I also acknowledge reading later about indigenous people wading and swimming fearlessly in piranha inhabited waters.

A short video on Suzanne Simard's work on the wood-wide-web and the mycorhizzal (mushroom) network recently made the rounds on Facebook. Dr. Simard is involved in research about mother trees (huge old trees in the woods) and their social network, where plant seedlings grow up around the mother tree, and mushroom networks reach far underground, living in symbiotically nourishing relationships with the trees for their mutual benefit.

Nature is becoming friendlier by the minute as our outlook on the environment is shifting and we are becoming more eco-minded.