Since poop is the solid waste that the majority of organisms produce, how is it so packed with nutrients that plants like?
In: Biology
“Waste” is a subjective term. In this case, it’s the byproduct of animal metabolism. But the byproducts of animal metabolism are essential nutrients for plants. The reason this works out is down to evolution. A plant isn’t going to survive if it doesn’t have the way to obtain its nutrition. Therefore, the plants that survived are the ones that’s nutritional requirements exist in soil. Since soil is a combination of biodegraded materials including feces, the plants that survive are the ones able to use those ingredients for their metabolism.
Plants are biological machines that get their energy passively from somewhere else (the Sun, through photosynthesis) and use that energy to *build* stuff (sugars). They’re a kid who sees a pile of random Lego bricks and decides to build things with it.
Animals are biological machines that take already-built stuff (food) and break it apart to liberate the energy stored within (eating), and then discard the remains (poop). They’re the bully who sees built Lego creations and gets their jollies smashing them to pieces, taking the parts they think would be cool for their spaceship and leaving the rest behind.
A kid who wants to build with Lego needs a supply of pieces to build with. While it’s certainly not a good thing if a bully come along and smashes *their* stuff, a bully who smashes *someone else’s* stuff and then conveniently carries the pieces to the builder kid and leaves them lying around for the builder kid to play with is certainly welcome. It’s all waste to the bully, they have no intention of making anything with those pieces. But the builder kid sure is stoked to have new things to build with.
A lot of the elements inside the plants that we eat doesnt get fully absorbed by the digestive system, and it passes through us as feces. Plants actually require these elements to grow. Using poop as plant fertilizer completes the cycle. Its actually a huge problem in agriculture that we dont use sewage as fertilizer and just throw those elements away, and use mining or chemical synthesis to make fertilizer. The main reason we dont use sewage fertilizer on an industrial scale is because harmful bacteria could get on the food, and also sewage has small amounts of pharmaceuticals and who knows what else.
I propose an analogy where..
Much like how chicken/fish can get nutrition from worms, we can’t. Its not that it’s not nutritious, but it’s more of the fact that we can’t process it, which is why our body rejects it out as poop.
You know your shape sorting toy, it’s like that. You are that toy, you eat squares triangles circles and stars. But there’s lots of other different shapes, like rectangles, diamonds and moons that pass through us, the plants like to eat those shapes.
Why plants poop oxygen when is so nutritious for us?
>Research by Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a Japanese scientist from the Okayama Laboratory, who developed a process to create a meat substitute from proteins extracted from sewage containing human feces.
Somebody’s waste is somebody else’s treasure.
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