The Nutcracker and the Pine

Meet the Nutcracker, a pine gentleman! Among the many trees that forge a symbiotic alliance with the Nutcracker is the Chilgoza pine, a rare and commercially important pine variety, now threatened with extinction. Comic from my column with Sunday Midday.

Read Ananda Banerjee's article on this relationship for a more detailed insight, which also sheds light on economist Rinki Sarkar's chance discovery on the Chilgoza-Nutcracker symbiosis, and her efforts to study and conserve this relationship.

Nutcrackers

Meet the nutcrackers, a genus of, well, nutcracking birds closely related to crows and jays. Nutcrackers specialize in feeding on pines, and store pine nuts for later consumption. This habit makes them crucial to the dispersal of pines! Nutcrackers are also known to have exceptional memory, remembering the exact locations of storage!

There are three species of Nutcrackers- Spotted, Kashmir (recently split from the Spotted), and Clark's, who I guess his eponym William Clark wouldn't really like to meet.

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