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not focus on just basic survival within the elements but employs very competitive and cooperative strategies of interaction with other life. Ecology is centered around and studies these competitive and cooperative strategies of both predator and prey. Both predators and prey, who can change roles even moment to moment, competing with each other for limited resources. Predators cooperate to attack prey and prey cooperate to defend against predators. Man is no stranger to this process and is both predator and prey in nature. Humanity is also composed of individuals and factions that are involved in human relations as both predator and prey. For this reason social scientists and ecologists really have a lot in common because both explore the nature of the complex relationships in their respective fields of study that are founded on natural and artificial evolutionary processes. Many people have a interest in nature but in really know little about it being brought up in artificial city environments. Quite often city raised environmentalists do more harm that good having good motives, but because they don't understand nature well, their actions are quite destructive toward nature, It is important for the layman as well as the naturalist - ecologist to understand the forest they are walking through is not peaceful but is in fact a raging battle ground of cooperation and competition. This competitive and cooperative struggle for limited resources is not just going on in the animal kingdom but with all life in all environments. That forest you are walking through is a battle ground between plant species employing both competitive and cooperative strategies for water and sunlight. Long-leaf pine even uses natural and man controlled fire as a means to burn out the competition. It has evolved insulating bark and needles that are very flammable so as to use fire against the oaks and other vegetation that are more vulnerable to fire. The oaks on the other hand employ a strategy of snuffing out the fire by having leaves that do not burn easily and are more adaptive to lowlands where fires do not burn so intensely. Taking in to account earth, our sample of one, what can be inferred as to life across the universe? We can speculate that life is a natural result of increasing complex chemical reactions in environments favorable to life. Microbial life can exist in very extreme environments and is likely quite common across the universe. More advanced forms of life are not nearly as common because more advanced forms of life need less extreme environments in order to multiply and flourish. Still, because the universe is so big, more advanced forms of life should also be common. Even highly evolved technical civilizations should likewise be common. We can observe creatures evolving in intelligence on earth in the insect, reptile, mammal, mollusk and other kingdoms. Given more time and the right conditions these creatures can become as intelligent or more so than our selves. Indeed there is much speculation in scientific circles, that if the asteroid that hit the earth millions of years ago wiping out most of the reptiles had not happened, that earth might well be home to a two legged intelligent reptile that could be now traveling the vast reaches of space as we are now about to do. What a ecological perspective has to offer is a clearer more objective picture of life in the universe. We can now infer that intelligent life is abundant and is involved in a very complex web of relationships of both competition and cooperation everywhere just as on earth. We should 181