Few months back, I
watched a video Where
Do Trees Get Their Mass From? in Veritasium that concludes that
trees get all their mass from carbon dioxide that we animals exhale.
We animals on the other hand get our mass from trees which is
commonly known from our good old textbook topic called food chain.
What it lacks is the fact that we in turn were being eaten by plants
through our process called respiration (Are
You Lightest In The Morning?) that we do continuously and
photosynthesis that plants do mostly during day. So, nature does not
acts like a bitch as it sounds in the food chain. The food indeed
passes backwards in a circular manner. So, there starts a couple of
question that bugged my mind. Are plants totally dependent on us
animals for the carbon dioxide supply for its survival? What other
roles does plant and animals play for the stability of ecosystem and
its resources? Obviously the topic of this blog too. So, plants form
the source of capturing energy from sun that forms as source of
energy to all other living beings in the earth. They basically
convert carbon dioxide into glucose which is petrol for us fuelling
our activities. We animals lack such mechanism so we are totally
dependent on them for getting that source of energy. This energy is
used by us in doing all sort of activities like keeping us alive
(involuntary actions) and those that we choose to do because we like
to (voluntary actions). We have built complex organs in that process
and us humans have gone to the extreme in developing advanced
intelligence. On the other hand tree seem quite vulnerable, do not
have complex systems like we animals have. They have simply skipped
them all and are quite satisfied in staying fixed in one place
forever making them quite vulnerable to all sorts of risks. So, just
like we animals plants also respire. This is basically the process of
extracting energy to allow life processes to support. The byproduct
of respiration (aerobic which is most common form of respiration) is
carbon dioxide. If plants respire then all the oxygen that they
generate will be used by plants themselves nullifying any oxygen to
be used by us. But, why it wont happen? Maybe because they don't
move. I learned this during my Vipassana meditation days where we
were asked to stay fixed like tree without moving virtually stopping
all voluntary activities which automatically slowed involuntary
activities. This helped focus all the energy being generated by
respiration in increased mental activities which was then used in the
stage of killing all bad thoughts in mind. Vipassana topic aside.
Plant dont move or any such rapid activities that consume high amount
of energy like we animals do. That allows them to survive with much
less energy than us animals. The, the process of photosynthesis that
yields oxygen is more then they can consume. This is where we animals
come in. Our job is take that glucose generated by plants as their
byproduct and burn it with oxygen to generate carbon dioxide which
become byproduct for us but source of food for plants. Plants cannot
generated carbon dioxide on large scale(because they don't move,
right?) like we do so they need to get that carbon dioxide from us
animals. All our life activities revolves around this thing. So, next
time if you think that plants are dumb beings just sitting in the
open land think a second. They are actually eating you all throughout
your life.
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