Animals aren’t the icing on the cake

Animals aren’t the icing on the cake. Were it not for animals, Earth would be like a mixing bowl full of flour, sugar and water, before it’s been stirred. The bowl represents Earth’s physical conditions: the continents, ocean basins, wind and currents, filled with ingredients (the sugars) that plants extract. A bowl can be any colour, shape or size. Earth could have had continents arranged in different ways and we would be having the same conversations, identifying the same processes but in different places.

As for plants, they place the raw ingredients (energyEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More) in the bowl and they settle where they are most likely to, based on the bowl’s physical characteristics.

This is not enough for us to live. Without animals, we have a world of ingredients but nothing to eat. It isn’t until animals mix and cook the ingredients that it starts to resemble something edible: something that has the sugars concentrated in biscuit-sized pieces that we can handle.

We see animals as the icing on an ecosystemHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More cake but they’re not, they are the cake-bakers. We don’t stand a chance of feeding ourselves without them, as the bowl of unmixed ingredients that plants and bacteria create, isn’t a healthy meal for an animal of our type and size.