Almost every major partnership in the natural world is like this. Cheats are always a problem. Betrayal lurks perpetually on the horizon. Couples might work well together, but if one partner can get the same benefits without spending as much energy or effort, it will do so unless punished or policed. H. G. Wells wrote about this in 1930: ‘Every symbiosis is, in its degree, underlain with hostility, and only by proper regulation and often elaborate adjustment can the state of mutual benefit be maintained. Even in human affairs, the partnerships for mutual benefit are not so easily kept up, in
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