Has no one ever read about the Food Web?
After such a long break coming back to blogging with a question and a genuine one of course.
"Breathing , eating food and assimilation of the same, needing energy to survive, growth and ultimately reproducing young ones of the same kind is what makes you a living organism", this is what I explained to one of my students so as to explain the essential qualities needed in an organism for us to call it living.
To this, pat came another question, " Can plants also be called living?"
"Yes of course, locomotion doesn't necessarily makes one living or non-living."
"Then should we stop eating plants as well, like everyone takes eating other animals a crime?"
To this he replied with another question, "What is a food web then?"
And this what kept me thinking, about all the furor that was created a few days back on Facebook. I honestly had forgotten about all of it till the time this question came popping on to my way between my class.
Why all the hullabaloo only when animals are eaten, not when plants are eaten, aren't plants as much living as animals? Just because they can't move or make some noise for themselves don't they hold an equal right to peaceful existence?
All the organisms have been placed within an intricate food web where each organism eats a lower one and is eaten by an advanced one, by this one not only meets his demand of nutrition but also keeps the population of another species under check, and that's how the ecology has been working, on land , in the air and in water as well. This includes both plants and animals and of course human beings as well, then where have we gone wrong ( being the only species with such advance intellect that by default the fault resides within us)? The problem lies with the numbers, Homo sapiens have outnumbered other species and that is where this problem comes from. When the rate of input balances the rate of input any specific entity stays constant. It's only when the rate of input is infinitesimally small as compared to the rate of output that the imbalance becomes evident and eventually its consequences are given in one's face. With the advancement in technology and science, the average human life expectancy has increased by twenty to thirty years , thus expanding the demographical pyramid and leading to an all time high demand for food, both in terms of vegetarian as well as 'non vegetarian. We need to work on our numbers and population rather than raising questions like why eating chicken at KFC", because if one judges by the same parameters then plucking a carrot and eating it is an equally heinous crime as eating meat.
PS- This is an attempt to calm down all those who had problem with people talking about animal slaughter festivals and yet being non- vegetarians with their diets. This post does not by any means try to justify or comment anything about any kind of animal slaughter festivals taking place in the world. They would be talked about in some other post.
"Breathing , eating food and assimilation of the same, needing energy to survive, growth and ultimately reproducing young ones of the same kind is what makes you a living organism", this is what I explained to one of my students so as to explain the essential qualities needed in an organism for us to call it living.
To this, pat came another question, " Can plants also be called living?"
"Yes of course, locomotion doesn't necessarily makes one living or non-living."
"Then should we stop eating plants as well, like everyone takes eating other animals a crime?"
To this he replied with another question, "What is a food web then?"
And this what kept me thinking, about all the furor that was created a few days back on Facebook. I honestly had forgotten about all of it till the time this question came popping on to my way between my class.
Why all the hullabaloo only when animals are eaten, not when plants are eaten, aren't plants as much living as animals? Just because they can't move or make some noise for themselves don't they hold an equal right to peaceful existence?
All the organisms have been placed within an intricate food web where each organism eats a lower one and is eaten by an advanced one, by this one not only meets his demand of nutrition but also keeps the population of another species under check, and that's how the ecology has been working, on land , in the air and in water as well. This includes both plants and animals and of course human beings as well, then where have we gone wrong ( being the only species with such advance intellect that by default the fault resides within us)? The problem lies with the numbers, Homo sapiens have outnumbered other species and that is where this problem comes from. When the rate of input balances the rate of input any specific entity stays constant. It's only when the rate of input is infinitesimally small as compared to the rate of output that the imbalance becomes evident and eventually its consequences are given in one's face. With the advancement in technology and science, the average human life expectancy has increased by twenty to thirty years , thus expanding the demographical pyramid and leading to an all time high demand for food, both in terms of vegetarian as well as 'non vegetarian. We need to work on our numbers and population rather than raising questions like why eating chicken at KFC", because if one judges by the same parameters then plucking a carrot and eating it is an equally heinous crime as eating meat.
PS- This is an attempt to calm down all those who had problem with people talking about animal slaughter festivals and yet being non- vegetarians with their diets. This post does not by any means try to justify or comment anything about any kind of animal slaughter festivals taking place in the world. They would be talked about in some other post.
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