National Geographic: The Body Changers Page #4

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what's on their head,

others change what's in it.

This male's appearance

and his personality

will transform with his fortunes.

Meet a member of the cichlid family.

He's something of

a piscine Austin Powers.

"Oh behave, baby!"

He's the proud owner of

a prime bachelor pad,

about one square foot of lake bottom.

He's dressed for success,

or, rather, because of it.

His dark stripes and sharp colors are

the marks of a territory holder.

Nearby lurks a male with

the dull colors of a wannabe.

In fact, he looks just like a female.

If fish experience envy,

this one covets his neighbor's life.

The flashy bachelor invites

a female over to suck gravel.

This counts as fine dining

in these shallows.

After dinner, the couple retires

to the grotto for a little spawning.

There's only so much a guy can take.

The wannabe has switched

on his colors,

a kind of warpaint,

to prepare for battle.

The wannabe wins.

And he is transformed by victory.

He retains his bright colors.

His grievances are redressed

as much as he himself has been

redressed in the wardrobe of a winner.

A more profound transformation will

soon take place inside his body.

In a week his gonads will plump up

thirty-fold in weight

and a brain area dedicated to sex

will increase eight times in volume.

At last the new bachelor is ready to

take his enlarged gonads for a spin.

Guided by his bigger brain area

for sex,

he courts a female with macho motions

and furling fins.

But no male holds a long-term lease

in these gravel beds.

The new owner soon discovers the

high cost of upkeep for his pad.

Neighboring bachelors are

always testing the lot lines.

A neighbor attacks.

The new territory holder is defeated.

He switches off his fancy colors.

His gonads and brain region for sex

will soon shrink.

He rejoins the ranks of the wannabes.

Some body changers

save their most dramatic

transformations for the end of life.

Sockeye salmon are beckoned

from the ocean

back to the Alaskan streams

where many hatched five years ago.

Some must travel hundreds of miles

in an odyssey that can take weeks.

Along the way,

salmon will undergo one of the most

remarkable changes in all of nature.

Head shape starts to change.

Every salmon will die

by the journey's end.

The only question is

whether they will get the chance

to complete their transformation.

Many will be stopped here by

a terrible gauntlet of brown bears.

On this journey of the condemned,

the salmon throw themselves

upriver with abandon.

The salmon that escape,

especially the males,

will now carry on

with their transformation.

The head turns green and body red

as the fish prepare to die,

on their own terms.

Few have made it this far.

Fewer yet will

finish the transformation.

Approaching the spawning grounds,

the males achieve their final shape.

A sleek silvery male,

over a few weeks,

transforms into a gaudy hunchback

with a toothy grimace.

The skin turns smooth and unfishlike

as the body absorbs its scales.

In tatters after their journey,

salmon arrive in the shallows

where they hatched.

They've lost up

to a third of their weight.

Not to mention their looks.

Only one in a thousand has completed

this harrowing roundtrip.

With her own changed body,

a female sweeps out a gravel nest

and releases her eggs.

A male offers his swirl of milt.

This grotesque body change

is still a mystery.

Does the male's hooked face help in

jousting matches with rivals?

Does the female choose a male

for his new colors,

a sexy but reckless display

that draws the fire of predators?

All that's certain is that this change

is the creature's last.

And perhaps in death,

the final transformation,

the parents offer their decaying

bodies to feed the pools

where the next generation will grow.

The life of every creature

is a journey of change.

So too is the path of all life

since the very dawn of living things.

Though we may resist change,

or wish to turn back the clock,

no one can tether time.

We are all transformers,

for the story of life

is the story of change.

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