Plant/Animal?

[Agent Smith]

Are orchid mantises plants?

[iNow]

No

[Agent Smith]

5 minutes ago, iNow said:

No

Why?

[Genady]

4 minutes ago, Agent Smith said:

Why?

They don't synthesize organic matter. They consume it.

[exchemist]

You have just told us they are mantises.

Now, perhaps you can work out, from this Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis

 whether or not  a mantis is a plant. Can you manage that?  

[Peterkin]

Because mantids are insects.

 

[iNow]

8 minutes ago, Agent Smith said:

Why?

You’re clearly trolling. 

Edited March 5, 2022 by iNow

[Peterkin]

Wond'reous insects, to be sure, but neither plant nor animal.

[Genady]

Metals are not chemicals and insects are not animals.

[joigus]

35 minutes ago, Agent Smith said:

Why?

They don't have chloroplasts. Even liverworts and mosses (the most primitive plants that still exist) have chloroplasts.

Do mantises have chloroplasts?

And That's why they're not autotrophs: They don't synthesise sugar from CO₂, consuming water.

Animalia (cellular respiration):

C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂ --> 6CO₂ + 6H₂O

(many intermediate steps omitted)

Plants: Cellular respiration plus,

Photosynthesis:

6CO₂ + 6H₂O --> C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂

which is (overall and oversimplifying) the inverse of cellular respiration.

8 minutes ago, Genady said:

Metals are not chemicals and insects are not animals.

LOL.

x-posted with @Genady

Edited March 5, 2022 by joigus
link added / minor correction

[Agent Smith]

14 hours ago, exchemist said:

You have just told us they are mantises.

Now, perhaps you can work out, from this Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis

 whether or not  a mantis is a plant. Can you manage that?  

Yes, they're mantises, predatory insects, but look at from the perspective of a potential victim (a fly for example). To a fly, these mantises are plants, that's why they fall into the trap.

 

14 hours ago, iNow said:

You’re clearly trolling. 

No, I'm not. First of all, I lack the skill. Secondly, look at my reply to @exchemist (vid supra). 

14 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Wond'reous insects, to be sure, but neither plant nor animal.

Interesting. Care to clarify?

14 hours ago, Genady said:

Metals are not chemicals and insects are not animals.

Sorry, couldn't parse that.

13 hours ago, joigus said:

They don't have chloroplasts. Even liverworts and mosses (the most primitive plants that still exist) have chloroplasts.

Do mantises have chloroplasts?

And That's why they're not autotrophs: They don't synthesise sugar from CO₂, consuming water.

Animalia (cellular respiration):

C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂ --> 6CO₂ + 6H₂O

(many intermediate steps omitted)

Plants: Cellular respiration plus,

Photosynthesis:

6CO₂ + 6H₂O --> C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂

which is (overall and oversimplifying) the inverse of cellular respiration.

LOL.

x-posted with @Genady

Lovely! Thanks for the short & sweet biology refresher course. So plants and animals, togther, constitute a reaction (cellular respiration) and its obverse (photosynthesis). An amazing system life is and we're on the brink of destroying this beautiful equilibrium between plants & animals.

 

 

14 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Because mantids are insects.

 

Could you read my reply to exchemist. How do I use the "@" feature?

[Peterkin]

8 minutes ago, Agent Smith said:

To a fly, these mantises are plants, that's why they fall into the trap.

No. To a fly, most mantids look like plants, which mean nothing to a fly. To a beetle, however, they're predators. There is no trap: the mantis has to actively catch its prey, just like coyotes and humans. A plant just has to sit and wait. That's a big difference, as is the POV.

Do you have a comment or question or something?

13 minutes ago, Agent Smith said:

Interesting. Care to clarify?

No.

[Agent Smith]

6 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

No.

6 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

No. To a fly, most mantids look like plants, which mean nothing to a fly. To a beetle, however, they're predators. There is no trap: the mantis has to actively catch its prey, just like coyotes and humans. A plant just has to sit and wait. That's a big difference, as is the POV.

 No, huh?

Why not?

 

[exchemist]

3 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

Yes, they're mantises, predatory insects, but look at from the perspective of a potential victim (a fly for example). To a fly, these mantises are plants, that's why they fall into the trap.

 

 

In the same way that a tiger is bunch of forest plants, light and shade, you mean?

And in the same way that you are asking these questions in good faith?  😁

 

[Agent Smith]

33 minutes ago, exchemist said:

In the same way that a tiger is bunch of forest plants, light and shade, you mean?

And in the same way that you are asking these questions in good faith?

Yep. I tell you, these orchid mantises blur the boundary between plants & animals. Carnivorous plants like the venus fly trap would consider the orchid mantis the pinnacle, the zenith, the big finish, the grand finale, the ultimate endpoint of their evolution.

"If only I could move," said one venus fly trap to another!

[Bufofrog]

2 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

Yep. I tell you, these orchid mantises blur the boundary between plants & animals.

No, they really don't.

 

2 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

Carnivorous plants like the venus fly trap would consider the orchid mantis the pinnacle, the zenith, the big finish, the grand finale, the ultimate endpoint of their evolution.

The venus fly trap is a plant and the mantis is an insect, so what are you talking about?

[Sensei]

22 hours ago, joigus said:

They don't have chloroplasts. Even liverworts and mosses (the most primitive plants that still exist) have chloroplasts.

"Research published in 2014 revealed that one Philippine Rafflesia species from the island of Luzon, R. lagascae (a synonym of R. manillana), may have lost the genome of its chloroplast and it is speculated that the loss happened due to the parasitic lifestyle of the plant.[10]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafflesia#Loss_of_the_chloroplast_genome

https://www.google.com/search?q=plant+without+chloroplast

Edited March 6, 2022 by Sensei

[Peterkin]

7 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

Why not?

waste effort

[exchemist]

21 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

waste effort

Quite.

[joigus]

56 minutes ago, Sensei said:

"Research published in 2014 revealed that one Philippine Rafflesia species from the island of Luzon, R. lagascae (a synonym of R. manillana), may have lost the genome of its chloroplast and it is speculated that the loss happened due to the parasitic lifestyle of the plant.[10]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafflesia#Loss_of_the_chloroplast_genome

https://www.google.com/search?q=plant+without+chloroplast

There's always a bad apple, isn't there? In this case a bad rafflesia.  

Very interesting.

[Sensei]

49 minutes ago, joigus said:

There's always a bad apple, isn't there? In this case a bad rafflesia.  

Very interesting.

..during an accidental mutation at the wrong time, such as cell division, a whole larger piece of DNA can be thrown away irrevocably.. if that part is essential for cell/organism survival, as in nutrition, the organism will not survive and spread such dramatic mutation to future generations.. but in this case some species of Rafflesia may have been feeding from yet another source, so they survived and spread genes that lacked the necessary part from its ancestors..

Predator can irreversibly lose ability to eat plants. Irreversibly lose legs or parts of body, internal organs which are no longer required to survival, etc.

[joigus]

On 3/6/2022 at 7:01 AM, Agent Smith said:

Lovely! Thanks for the short & sweet biology refresher course. So plants and animals, togther, constitute a reaction (cellular respiration) and its obverse (photosynthesis). An amazing system life is and we're on the brink of destroying this beautiful equilibrium between plants & animals.

You're welcome, and thanks for your appreciation. Both cellular respiration and photosynthesis are very old mechanisms for obtaining energy from the environment. Cellular respiration "sits on top" of fermentation, which is believed to be the oldest game in town.

The take-home lesson being: Don't bury mantises in pots.  

[CharonY]

4 hours ago, joigus said:

You're welcome, and thanks for your appreciation. Both cellular respiration and photosynthesis are very old mechanisms for obtaining energy from the environment. Cellular respiration "sits on top" of fermentation, which is believed to be the oldest game in town.

The take-home lesson being: Don't bury mantises in pots.  

Photosynthesis definitely came later, though I am not sure whether we got a good idea whether fermentation or anaerobic respiration came first. There is a good reason to believe that respiration of inorganic substrates (i.e. chemolithotrophy) such as metals, sulphates, nitrate etc. are an early strategy to obtain energy. 

As to OP, plants and animals split over a billion years ago (and all extant animals are basically . And no, if something resembles something else (especially if it is mimicry) they do not suddenly become related. A hairy person is not closer related to a bear than a non-hairy person, for example.

[Genady]

5 hours ago, joigus said:

Cellular respiration "sits on top" of fermentation, which is believed to be the oldest game in town.

I don't see how fermentation could be "the oldest", because it uses organic compounds, which had to be produced from an inorganic matter first. Chemolithotrophs could've done that, for example.

[joigus]

3 hours ago, Genady said:

I don't see how fermentation could be "the oldest", because it uses organic compounds, which had to be produced from an inorganic matter first. Chemolithotrophs could've done that, for example.

Right. As CharonY has said, chemolithotrophs* came before. I overlooked those because I was thinking in terms of a plant/animal dichotomy. Other things came before and probably exploited a wide variety of red-ox reactions. Some organisms "respirated" H₂S from volcanoes, but they didn't get a sweet deal in energetic terms, I think. Nothing like the 36-39 ATP mol per glucose mol that eukaryotes get. When it came down, it must have been the goose that laid the golden eggs.

* I wonder if chemolithotrophs aren't the real rulers of the universe in terms of sheer abundance in the universe. I bet they are.