Are You a Solar-Powered Parasite?

The seemingly outrageous suggestion that you might be a solar-powered parasite is but one of several easy deductions that can be made when we consider the implications of the fact that plants use photosynthesis to produce their own food whereas animals, yourself included, don't.

Virtually all plants make use of photosynthesis to capture energy contained in direct sunlight and use it to synthesize carbohydrates, fats, and proteins from the carbon dioxide available in the air and the water, nitrogen, and other materials available in the soil. But there is a very small class (logically speaking) of parasitic plants that exist by feeding on other plants rather than synthesizing their own food.

Animals do not produce their own food by means of photosynthesis. Herbivores are similar to parasitic plants in that they exist by feeding on plants instead of synthesizing their own food. And carnivores go a step farther by feeding on herbivores (and other carnivores) instead of synthesizing their own food. Finally, omnivores feed on both plants and animals instead of synthesizing their own food.

In other words, all animals feed on plants, either directly or indirectly, instead of synthesizing their own food, which is to say that all animals are parasites in the same way that parasitic plants are parasites. It follows from the foregoing, I regret to say, that you too are a parasite.

But while you are obviously a parasite, you may take some ecological consolation in the knowledge that you are a solar-powered parasite, however indirectly. The chemical energy that you derive by metabolizing the carbohydrates, fats, and proteins present in the tissues of your victims, both plant and animal, came originally from the radiant energy in sunlight, which the plants converted into chemical energy by means of photosynthesis.

Of the several easy deductions that can be made when we consider the implications of the fact that plants use photosynthesis to produce their own food whereas animals don't, the deduction that you are a solar-powered parasite is by far the least humiliating.

Eugene Paul