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Do Plants and Amimals Need Each Other?

Do plants and animals need each other? As strange as it may sound, yes they do! All animals depend on plants. While some animals eat plants, other animals eat the animals which ate the plants.  Plants also offer animals shelter and nesting material. The more abundant and varied the the plant life, the more space the animals have for shelter and protection.  All animals need oxygen. They use oxygen in cellular respiration. Plants produce oxyen as a waste product! By offering nectar, flowering plants entice insects, bats, birds, and small mammals to move their pollen from one flower to another. Flowering plants also depend on animals to disperse their seeds.  Burrs travel on animal fur, birds scatter seeds as they peck at fruit, and squirrels distribute nuts and acorns. Animal scat and their decaying bodies enrich the soils plants grow in. There are even symbiotic relationships where plants and animals help each other to survive. Nitrogen fixing bacteria often live in plant roots. Termites have bacteria in their stomachs that allow them to digest plant cell walls containing cellulose. The lichen you will see on the rocks and trees are a two plant  symbiotic relationship of algae and fungi.

Evening Stopped on the path to listen to a warbler in the reeds, between myself and these reeds, stones, dry cracks in the earth, there is no distance: I have become seeing. Overhead a plane circles, lights winking, and goes.                                ~ Colin Olvier

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