Humans outside of the Food Chain:

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: Praxius Yes, but we're talking about the food chain, not natural selection..... we have no predators above us at the moment..... we don't control our lives, but we don't have to worry about any animals controlling ours or making ours as a whole dangerous.

Sure they do. There are a number of animals that make our lives dangerous. One of the worse is the mosquito. Not necessarily directly, but, because of other animals, the parasites they carry.

Keith

[ZNFYRH]

I never thought of parasites, like mosquitoes, as being part of the food chain. They can feed on anything, really, and ironically few critters can feed on them. I would also think of them as outside the food chain.

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: ZNFYRH I never thought of parasites, like mosquitoes, as being part of the food chain. They can feed on anything, really, and ironically few critters can feed on them. I would also think of them as outside the food chain.

Bats and birds eat tons of mosquitos. As do numerous other insects.

They're not outside of the food chain.

I think you're trying to go with an overly simplified view of a "food chain". It's not as simple as rabbit eats grass, wolf eats rabbit, the end. It's actually more of a part of the carbon and other nutrients cycles. The wolf craps rabbit bits that helps the grass to grow. Mosquitos eat wolf blood, and the bats eat the mosquitos and the bats poop and help the trees to grow where the birds live and the birds eat mosquitos and all of these things die and their bits go back to the soil to help the grass and the trees to grow.

There is no bit of organic matter that is "outside" of that cycle. Sure, the return to that cycle can be delayed in some manner, but, if you take an even longer term view of the cycles of this planet, ALL of the carbon that exists is eventually recycled. Even if you were to seal your body into an eternal casket on a mountaintop, you will eventually get recycled. The mountains erode and are drawn to the sea. The continental plates take the bits that have eroded to the sea and subduct them under the plates where they heat and the carbon comes back out as gas into the atrmosphere through vents and volcanoes.

You can't stay on this planet and get out of the cycle.

Keith

[ZNFYRH]

Keith,

Well yeah, I know in the grander sense that in the carbon cycle we are all a part of it. I'm definitely using the more simplified concept where one thing eats another thing. I consider mosquitoes "special" because they can feed off of the same things that feed off them, and they also aren't really restricted to any other critters.

[Praxius]

Quote by: ZNFYRH Keith, Well yeah, I know in the grander sense that in the carbon cycle we are all a part of it. I'm definitely using the more simplified concept where one thing eats another thing. I consider mosquitoes "special" because they can feed off of the same things that feed off them, and they also aren't really restricted to any other critters.

Yeah they feed like a parasite, but they don't kill their prey, like a wolf to a deer, so I would still considder them at the bottom.

[ZNFYRH]

Praxius,

Interesting. You just made me think of something else.

Would you consider a creature part of the food chain if it doesn't kill it's prey?

I just realized now (quite the epiphany) that that is precisely the reason why I don't see humans as part of the food chain, either. They can "renew" their prey. Sure we kill a cow, but we intentionally breed more. Humans are unique in that we possess the ability to manipulate every level of the food chain.

[Zhavric]

"For every animal you don't eat, I'm going to eat three."
-Maddox

[Praxius]

Quote by: ZNFYRH Praxius, Interesting. You just made me think of something else. Would you consider a creature part of the food chain if it doesn't kill it's prey?

Only if it was in turn killed by something else. If the animal in question doesn't kill it's prey for food, and has no other creature to worry about eating it, then that does kinda raise an interesting question.

[ZNFYRH]

Praxius,

Then I see what you mean by the mosquito being at the bottom. It doesn't "consume" anything. But humans fall into that exact category you mention. No natural predators (sure other stuff can kill us, but no longer naturally) and we don't really "consume" anything (in the sense that we can replenish it artificially through breeding).

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: ZNFYRH Keith, Well yeah, I know in the grander sense that in the carbon cycle we are all a part of it. I'm definitely using the more simplified concept where one thing eats another thing. I consider mosquitoes "special" because they can feed off of the same things that feed off them, and they also aren't really restricted to any other critters.

Well, ok. I will agree, in a first grade primer version of ecology, humans and mosquitos and such are "outside" of the food chain.

In a more advanced (second grade, third grade?) view of ecology, nothing made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen is outside the food chain as long as it remains on this planet.

Keith

[ZNFYRH]

Other than the grade school comments being unnecessary, the opening post was not referencing the carbon cycle "chain" but the "primer" food chain. It's great that you recognize that it really doesn't matter, but in the interest of the topic, it's superfluous.

[Praxius]

Quote by: ZNFYRH Praxius, Then I see what you mean by the mosquito being at the bottom. It doesn't "consume" anything. But humans fall into that exact category you mention. No natural predators (sure other stuff can kill us, but no longer naturally) and we don't really "consume" anything (in the sense that we can replenish it artificially through breeding).

I dunno.... usually something still has to die for us to live.... even if we do replinish it.... it does die.... and we eat it.... while insects basically go from one creature to the next and have an unlimited supply of food. Similar, but I don't see them the same.

[ZNFYRH]

Praxius,

Yes, humans kill what they eat. But instead of waiting for it to replenish naturally, we artificially recreate it. We breed animals specifically for food, and if those animals were released into the wild, ecosystems would be destroyed. We grow plants in ways that aren't natural, thus allowing us to maintain a supply of food that would other wise upset the equilibrium of the world.

[Praxius]

Quote by: ZNFYRH Praxius, Yes, humans kill what they eat. But instead of waiting for it to replenish naturally, we artificially recreate it. We breed animals specifically for food, and if those animals were released into the wild, ecosystems would be destroyed. We grow plants in ways that aren't natural, thus allowing us to maintain a supply of food that would other wise upset the equilibrium of the world.

So with that reasoning, do you feel we are in the original food chain, or are we in something else?

[Kamehameha34]

How are we defining "manipulating nature"?

Is the monkey who uses a stick to eat bugs out of a log "cheating the system" with technology? What about the wolves that use a small valley to their advantage, to ambush prey that walks through it? What about the rabbit that hides in a cave when chased by a bear?

It both cases, animals are taking naturally occuring formations, and manipulating them to their advantage- or using technology. Because humans are the best at that doesn't mean that we are outside of the system.

[Praxius]

Quote by: Kamehameha34 How are we defining "manipulating nature"? Is the monkey who uses a stick to eat bugs out of a log "cheating the system" with technology? What about the wolves that use a small valley to their advantage, to ambush prey that walks through it? What about the rabbit that hides in a cave when chased by a bear? It both cases, animals are taking naturally occuring formations, and manipulating them to their advantage- or using technology. Because humans are the best at that doesn't mean that we are outside of the system.

I'm more leaning towards the level of which we use, compared to the rest of animals. You bring good points, which do lean towards keeping us into the food chain, but those you described are still toward survival of those species... we're more into a cosmetic, luxury way of life now..... our survival as a collective, to me anyways, is on a different level to the rest of Earth's species.

[Kamehameha34]

Quote by: Praxius I'm more leaning towards the level of which we use, compared to the rest of animals. You bring good points, which do lean towards keeping us into the food chain, but those you described are still toward survival of those species... we're more into a cosmetic, luxury way of life now..... our survival as a collective, to me anyways, is on a different level to the rest of Earth's species.

That means that we just have desire, and the power to act on it. Other animals do, aswell - to a lesser extent.

[ZNFYRH]

Praxius,

Along that line of reasoning, I think we're in something else. I don't think we fit in any food chain. The instant the first humans planted seeds, they were creating food that would not have occurred naturally, so to speak.

That also answers your question, Kamehameha.

There is a difference between planting a garden or breeding cows and what the monkey and wolf does. The monkey and wolf don't intelligently and purposely control the quantity of their food supply.

[Kamehameha34]

The ability to produce another form of life does not exempt us from the chain. We are merely increasing the number of those below us in the chain.

[ZNFYRH]

Is manipulating the chain natural?