From “Taxing, a Ritual to Save the Species” in the New York Times:

The more closely knit an animal society is, and the more interdependent its members, the higher the rate of taxation. Among bell miner birds of Australia, for example, pairs of breeding adults are assisted at the nest by several youthful helpers, usually male. The helpers provision the couple’s fledglings with a steady supply of lerp, sugary casings secreted by plant-sucking insects.

Let me pause here to appreciate not only lerp itself—a most vivid and terrifying substance, “secreted by plant-sucking insects,” as opposed to, say, plant-tickling or plant-massaging insects—but also the men and women of Noblest Science who venture forth to learn of the lerp, to love the lerp.

Our article continues:

And though some scientists had wondered whether lerp wasn’t basically a junk food, offered up to the young bell miners as much for show as for substance, researchers report in the March issue of Animal Behaviour that lerp is, in fact, as important to the fledglings’ growth as is the meatier arthropod prey supplied by their parents. By all evidence, the helper birds are honestly “paying to stay,” trading a valuable currency for the right to remain within the aggressively guarded precincts of a bell miner breeding colony, with the hope of better times and personal propagation opportunities ahead.

The only response I have upon reading of colonies of lerpers is:

FUCK yeah, cilantro. You know how humans do.

We may or may not pay taxes because our ancestors shared the mammalian equivalent of lerp, but we definitely share salsa now (in part) because of you, cilantro. You and your leafy green cool refreshing mintacular steez.