Ruminants can digest cellulose from grasses and other forms of leaves. Carnivores obtain their cellulose by eating the ruminant herbivores.
This is all part of the carbon cycle; from sun to tree, from tree to animal, from animal to life.
The Flathead Catfish has evolved a quite extraordinary sense. Having chemical sensors over its whole skin area. Described as a living tongue.
Now we have a sense of touch like the Paramecium, and we have the chemical senses, taste and smell, like the catfish, but for us, the dominant senses are hearing and sight, and to understand them, we first have to understand their evolutionary history.
Carbon is essential for life, but a lot of it is locked away in complex sugar molecules. Termites turn farmer to cultivate a fungus for the carbon harvest.
The job of that fungus is to break down the lignin and cellulose inside the wood and convert it into a form that the termites can eat.
Time is one of the vital ingredients needed to allow the evolution of the fantastic complexity of life we witness today governed by our biological clocks.
And Earth has been an interesting mixture of stability and upheaval. It’s had an environment that’s never completely conspired to wipe out life, but it’s constantly thrown it challenges.
In 2009, a new species of spider was identified, Darwin’s bark spider, Caerostris darwini. It was named exactly 150 years after Darwin’s Origin of Species.
13.5 billion years ago, just the few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the universe was a carbon-free zone. An infinite, sterile gloom of hydrogen and helium clouds.
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.