#1/15 What is an animal?
How does planet Earth work?
A billion years ago two single bacteria joined forces. One searched for things to eat. The other extracted energy from this food and turned it into the fuel for both organisms to live.
Eventually, the two merged together and became one ‘animal’. The ancestral DNA of the second bacteria species lives on in every cell of your body and every other animal on Earth as ‘mitochondria’. Without these, we could not eat or live.
We are all animals. People, dogs, fish and worms all started off as two bacteria and today, energy still flows through us, powered by that one bacterium’s ancient DNA.
This super-power makes you part of the whole planet’s energy network. You are built into the world’s ecosystems making you and all animals, equally relevant to the future of life on Earth.
This also makes you, an animal, one of the most powerful creatures to ever exist in the known universe.
