What if all species evolved to only eat plants?

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Is this idea good or bad?

I don't think good/bad really come into it. If the life on earth evolved that way, then that is how it would be.

Perhaps you are asking "how would it be different?"

For one thing, plant life would evolve even more defenses since it would be the only prey. There would be an increased ratio of spiky, barbed and toxic plants.

For another thing, there would be somewhat less intelligence. What we call intelligence seems to have evolved to allow the much more mentally difficult work of catching prey. Sneaking up on an animal takes more cognitive skills than standing in a field chewing the grass. Although I have seen some realy ingenious squirrels so it's not an ironclad argument. Are lions smarter than zebras? It looks that way but I could be wrong. Intelligence in this alternate reality might evolve to allow animals to remove spikes from plants and deactivate toxins.

Giving that life is dependent on micrograms to live and metabolize, I wonder what kind of life there would be, we wouldn't exist.

Why do people only assume that animals are alive? Plants are living things too so to eat is to kill. Hence, one cannot run from that fact we are all killers.


Back to the main question. I believe without prey and predator relationship the ecosystem would be pretty unstable since there would be nothing that could control population of the animals.

Let's complain to management (God), and have him get rid of the carnivores (including ourselves)!

ALL animals (humans, non humans, carnivores, and herbivores) are excess baggage.

All ya need are (a)plants (to produce biomass), and (b) fungi (to break down and recycle biomass). Animals arent even needed. Why the creator even bothers with ANY kind of animals is a puzzle.

However things get more boring when you eliminate a strata from the ecosystem ( a link in the food chain).

On land you have plants, which getting eaten by herbivors, which in turn get eaten by predators, which in turn get eaten big bigger predators, and so on, up to about four levels.



If you get rid of -say-herbivores then it (counter to what you might expect) causes a decrease in the variety of plants.

If plants no longer have to defend against animals they only have to compete with other plants. This results is a few plant species crowding out and snuffing out the rest of the plants- resulting in a boring near monoculture of a few species. The added selective force of predators insures a great variety of plants. Ditto for herbivors- taking away the animals that prey on them and few herbivores win out and you (oddly enough in the long run) you have less variety of plant eating animal species surviving in the ecosystem. So each layer you add to the ecosystem causes diversity in the lower levels.

Herbivores cause variety in plants, and carnivores cause variety in other animals.

But the largest group of animal species are niether herbivors, nor "predators" (or not 'predators' in the usual sense), but are another group: parasites. Creatures the live on or inside larger animals. There are more species of parasites than there are species of free living creatures.

If you want the creator to change his crazy set up- petition him to get rid of parasites first-before you worry about the existence of predators.

While we're at it, I want to start a petition for 30 hour days. 24 hours just isn't enough.

Then they'd eat plants.

And I have also considered discomfort in the psyche and how it manifests in our day to day lives. Humans seems to have spent most of their species-time evolving in warm environments, likely closer to the equator, then they began exploring and branching out into colder climates which is uncomfortable on some level, and unnatural to any species that spends generations in a warm, temperate climate.

It seems the further north you go, the more people have these issues with psychological maladies. The closer you are to the equator, the less likely you are to find an interest in psychology and examining our lives. They live closer to their traditions, don't have as many hang ups, have no desire to change. It's like they are comfortable in their environment so their psyches are always at peace and there's no manifestation of discomfort. Get what I'm saying? They are happy with the same life those before them led 500 years back.

It's been noticed humans are one species that's incredibly adaptable but it seems more like we are simply uncomfortable.

Then we'd have plants eating other plants. Wouldn't that be weird?

I would prefer it but there would have to be some natural way to keep the population in check that nature would have to provide; in the Adam and Eve story, everyone is a vegetarian-Adam, Eve, and all the animals. The lion laid down with the lamb. That would be a cool place to live!

Also, that is an excellent point about plants being alive too.