Which is more important to humans, plants or animals?

[nobox]

Clearly plants are a magnitude more important to humans' welfare, compared to animals. Yet because of we are animals so our vantage point gives more weight to animals.

 

[Phi for All]

I just think in some cases we relate better to animals because they do more of the same things we do than plants do. Walking, making vocal sounds, eating with a mouth, that sort of thing. We know plants are essential but we'd rather share pictures of cats.

 

But I think it's a mistake to look at it this way. It's not that one part is more important than another, it's that the whole system works well together, that should be our perspective.

[nobox]

This is exactly what I oppose. We can imagine a world that all the animals are extinct but cannot imagine a world that plants are extinct. We can live without beef, but not without wheat, potatoes and etc. This is just a small argument from food perspective. Plants provide oxygen, fuel, and shapes the biosphere as we know it.

This understanding has implication for the future martial colonization.

[Phi for All]

This is exactly what I oppose. We can imagine a world that all the animals are extinct but cannot imagine a world that plants are extinct. We can live without beef, but not without wheat, potatoes and etc. This is just a small argument from food perspective. Plants provide oxygen, fuel, and shapes the biosphere as we know it.

This understanding has implication for the future martial colonization.

 

So no animals? You have no idea how this would devastate the plant kingdom. And it's faulty reasoning to think that because we can live without beef that we should. We can live without music, learning, and interaction with each other, but would we want to?

 

Are you talking about Martian colonization? Or are you taking over someplace here on Earth?

[nobox]

By and large, animals are parasites to plants and the food chain proves that. There is little feedback loop from animals to plants. The implication is that we need to make sure plants are first colonized on mars. No animal is needed from self-sustaining standpoint.

In my opinion, music is not as essential as air or water.

[Phi for All]

By and large, animals are parasites to plants and the food chain proves that. There is little feedback loop from animals to plants. The implication is that we need to make sure plants are first colonized on mars. No animal is needed from self-sustaining standpoint.

In my opinion, music is not as essential as air or water.

 

One of my greatest hopes for humankind is that we colonize offworld. We're the only species capable of doing this that we know of in the whole universe.

 

We have a lot of traits that lend themselves cumulatively towards civilization building. The type of civilization we build as we move forward needs to be one that's worthy of spreading our influence to the stars. We are animals, one of many species on the only planet we know that has life, but our intelligence has given us compassion and imagination.

 

I completely disagree with your proposition. Music, other animals, plants, we don't need to give up the best parts of us to suit you. I'm sure it was a wonderful thing, the day you became a vegetarian, but that certainly doesn't give you the right to dismiss every other animal except humans from a colonization effort.

[Strange]

We can imagine a world that all the animals are extinct but cannot imagine a world that plants are extinct.

 

In Europe (I don't know about elsewhere) there is concern that the collapse of bee populations could destroy many of our food crops because they are dependant on bees for fertilization.

[Aminoxyl]

By and large, animals are parasites to plants and the food chain proves that. There is little feedback loop from animals to plants. The implication is that we need to make sure plants are first colonized on mars. No animal is needed from self-sustaining standpoint.

 

Actually animals do a lot for plants that we take for granted. There are many plant species that are only present due to the activity of animals, animals can graze upon plants, lets say species A, and yes, this may seem like it's not doing that plant a favour and, to be honest it isn't. However it is doing a great deal for species B that is direct competition with species A, if the animal wasn't around to control species A then species B would be competitively excluded. So animals actually do a great deal for plants. Also consider this, animals eat and digest plants, they then excrete and urinate, this provides plants with "unlocked" nutrients, essentially transferring one set of compounds like cellulose (which is hard to catabolise) into a more catabolic form (allowing bacteria to carry the work on etc), this process would be much slower for a plant breakdown had it just died, which locks away useful nutrients that another plant could have potentially used.

 

I must agree with Phi for Alls statement "it's that the whole system works well together" this is key to what has developed, we have evolved alongside plants and the species that once were present in pre cambrian explosion are pretty much preserved only in fossils with one or two exceptions of ancient plants surviving (see Ginkgo biloba for more details), the rest have pretty much moved on evolutionary speaking. These plants have then formed an array of interactions of the millions of years with animals and other plants alike, some for example become dependent on that interaction look at Acacia plants for example (http://www.ice.mpg.de/ext/1057.html),but there are many more examples. Above Strange gave a good example of pollination, another service animals provide from plants.

 

All in all the short of the story is we have evolved alongside these plants like all other animal species around us, therefore we work as a system to interact with one another, the fact we are taking advantage is a mute point. Animals are equally important to plants as plants are to animals, we provide services for them and they provide us with energy... well at least most of them do C;

[The Tactical Strategist]

I would say it's a great symbiotic relationship, but it all comes down to plants. I suggest reading the book, and I'm sorry if I get the name wrong, as I haven't read it in a while, and don't own a copy, "The Bontany of desire" or something like that. But in this book. It talks about this topic, really. Plants were here before animals, and provided food for animals in the Precambrian and Paleozoic eras. Then in the Mesozoic, flowering plants evolved, which in turn gave rise to fruits, seeds, etc. This gave more food/energy to the natural world to help warm blooded animals. It all comes back to plants.

[Delta1212]

Which is more important: your heart or your lungs?

[The Tactical Strategist]

Very true. We can't really live without each other. I love that analogy. That's why I mentioned it as a symbiotic relationship

[ABCXYZ]

Plants give us oxygen

[Externet]

Plants, as convert non-living minerals to living and edible sources.

[Peterkin]

There are no animals without plants.

[iNow]

I'm sure the OP is happy to have this thread necrobumped 7 years later by a completely new member with zero other posts offering the shocking insight that plants respire O2. 

[Peterkin]

Even better! prokaryotes

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/bacteria-archaea/prokaryote-metabolism-ecology/a/prokaryote-classification-and-diversity