The 2004 Olympics have been pretty interesting so far. The very Greek opening ceremony was grand, which is nice. The U.S. basketball team stunk up the court against Puerto Rico, which is funny. And Nike appears to sponsor all athletics, which is creepy. But one theme runs through all Olympic stories: doping. Many observers cynically conclude that un-natural athletic enhancement has ruined the games. But how un-natural is it?

The word "doping" was taken by the British from a native language in eastern South Africa. Ritualistic acts and religious ceremonies used to involve the drinking of "dop," a strong spirit with stimulant properties. According to the World Anti-Doping Agency, "Doping is fundamentally against the ethos of the spirit of Olympic Games: the fair game." (However, the Olympic ethos has no problem with women athletes posing nude in Playboy.)

So, doping makes for unfair competition. Since when has competition been fair? Players always have some advantage over one another, such as better genetics, better funding, or better politics. In nature, when resources are limited, animals and plants compete to get what they need. Winning means survival, and whatever keeps you alive is fair. Competition is the engine of evolution. And in nature's Olympics, many creatures dope to win.

One of the most famous dopers in the animal kingdom is the monarch butterfly. As a caterpillar, the monarch feeds on the milkweed plant to get its dope. Milkweed got its name from the milky-white sap that oozes from the plant when it is damaged. The sticky sap is poisonous to many animals and makes the plant inedible to most herbivores (plant eaters). However, the monarch butterfly evolved with the milkweed and has learned to store the toxins in their skin (exoskeleton), so that the insects taste horrible to their predators. This bad taste also allows the monarch to have such beautiful bright colors, which would typically be a "free lunch" sign to predators. All it takes is one taste and a bird learns that the monarch makes a lousy meal. Bright colors often mean that an animal is bad tasting or poisonous.

This is just one example of a creature pulling a Ben Johnson and scoring a competitive chemical advantage. In nature, these performance-enhancing drugs are known as "secondary compounds," which are chemicals in a plant or animal that are not needed for metabolic function. Scientists used to think they were just waste products from living cells, but now research shows that these compounds represent a biochemical arms race between prey and predators.

Perhaps the best dopers in the animal kingdom are nudibranchs, commonly called sea slugs. Sea slugs are basically snails without shells and resemble slugs that you find in your garden. There are more than 3,000 different species of sea slugs, and many dope for a competitive advantage. In 1960 a scientist by the name of Thompson discovered that side-gilled sea slugs secrete acidic mucus when disturbed. In true mad scientist form, he and his colleagues tasted several different species of sea slugs and noted that many of them tasted bitter or were distasteful in other ways (you've got to love the science of the '60s, when you just licked stuff to test it). It was also discovered that the sea slugs did not make their own foul-tasting chemicals, but took them from the sponges they ate. Once the slugs were not allowed to dope on toxic sponges, the slugs lost their bad taste. Another species of sea slug dopes on sea anemones. The slugs are able to consume the stinging cells of the anemone and move them to the outside of their bodies as a defense. Finally, several species of sea slugs dope on seaweed, coral and sponges to steel their pigments. A sea slug that dopes a red sponge can turn itself red. This camouflage is an advantage when avoiding predators during lunch. One species even dopes on chloroplasts from the plants it eats (chloroplasts are the green-colored parts of a plant where photosynthesis occurs). The slug moves the chloroplasts into its own skin and then is able to photosynthesize on its own.

Competitive advantage is gained through predation by poison arrow frogs, the brightly colored rainforest amphibians of South America. A small dollop of slime from some species of poison arrow frogs can kill a horse. Native peoples in South America tip their hunting darts with frog slime, hence the frogs' name. The frogs dope on small insects on the forest floor that contain alkaloid, a toxin. The frogs transform this chemical into their poison. Interestingly, if the frogs do not feed on these insects, they lose their poisonous defense. Therefore, if you have seen a poison arrow frog in a zoo, you know they have been banned from doping and are harmless.

One of the issues with doping is that all athletes don't have access to performance-enhancing drugs. Poor countries do not have the money or technology to develop high-tech dope. There is a solution to this problem. As in nature, the winners could eat the losers. That way, the medallists could accumulate the secondary compounds of their opponents.

Many people argue that doping is a shortcut for the natural training of athletes. But it seems that doping is a natural part of competition. Humans just can't see the big picture like Mother Nature can. If unrestricted doping were allowed, natural selection would take over and athletes that doped too much would just drop dead and get out of the gene pool. Eventually, even athletes would learn that winning is not worth personal destruction. Evolution is a long race, much longer than a marathon, and in the end all who survive are gold medallists.