The tropical forest is a keenly competitive environment in every way.  Plants compete to find a place in the sun.  Birds and arboreal mammals eat the fruits of the strangler fig, inadvertently sowing the seeds in their dung.  A fig seedling that sprouts high in another tree quickly sends roots down and leaves up.  As it grows, in completely envelopes and overgrows its host tree.  Eventually the cohune palm in the embrace of this strangler fig will die and rot away.  By then the fig tree will be massive enough to support itself.

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