OT: Bind works?

[david brett]

I have an off topic question on bind.  Three of us have looked at this 
and cannot figure it out how it is working.

The bind server is version 9.3.2

What has us confused is how bind is able to do lookups for domains it is 
not authoritative for.

The reason for our confusion is the named.conf file does not have any 
forwarders configured or '"." zone' configured?  A file named.ca does 
exist in the root data directory for bind.

Anybody have any idea how it is working.

thanks for your patience
david