Survey: Do you believe there is a "food chain", and that human beings have a position in it?

Culture, Media, General Culture, Chains, General Discussions
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Sunshine :slight_smile: , I haven’t read the two studies cited so I don’t know if they actually used the word “chain,” but it’s clear there is one and we’re in the middle of it. I know it’s frequently hard for us to distinguish between what we want to believe and what IS.

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22

As Neil deGrasse Tyson says, the good thing about scientific facts is that they are true, whether or not you believe them. Do I detect an incipient rap rumble over food chains?

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23

I don’t think there’s any scientific fact that proves one way or another the question of whether humans should be considered an apex predator.

24

The passenger pigeons, if there were any left, and they could speak, would surely disagree.

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25

Did you read the citation I linked to above?

26

Humans are at the top of the food chain because we can dominate and eat other species at will.

After watching six seasons of the Walking Dead, I fear that we are just part of the food chain, as we were back in the mists of time when humans were mostly hunter gatherers. The hunter was also hunted by its prey, and sometimes became prey. Societies organized and weaponized and thus we came to dominate the food chain.

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27

didn’t read thread

we’re at the top of the food chain because we cook with fire. I do not accept that a whale, that humans could kill and eat, is above us.

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28

I actually did! Very interesting. For those who didn’t, an apex predator is “an animal that only eats meat and has few or no predators of its own.” Since humans eat both animals and plants, we aren’t apex predators and thus, not at the top of the food chain, since “to be truly at the ‘top of the food chain,’ in scientific terms, you have to strictly consume the meat of animals that are predators themselves.”

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29

I think this totally puts to rest whether there is or is not a “food chain” regardless of what one calls it.

30

I really didn’t want to belabor the point, especially since the OP has dropped out . . . .but I have even googled trying to figure out “who” or “why” these people don’t believe in a food chain. I can’t figure it out at all . . .

31

I had the same thought. Especially the “why.” I DO find, as I mentioned above, that ‘folks’ have a tendency to cling to what they ‘feel’ or ‘think’ rather than what ‘is.’

32

And I now have a song running through my head that goes “Chain chain chaaaaaaaain, chain of foods.” I need someone to blame for this.

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33

I blame YOU for the fact that I now have this same earworm! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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34

Chain of blame!

35

maybe this will help

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36

plus another +1 because Pretenders.

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37

Love me some Chrissie Hynde but you can’t be that made about having some Aretha stuck in your brain either . . . .

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38

My musical taste is, um, eclectic.

At a dinner party back when CD changers were a new thing, my selection for the evening jumped from Mamas and Papas to Talking Heads then on to Lyle Lovett.

I love just about anything that has a tune and rhythm.

39

Hi, sorry to have been absent. I saw that this conversation had continued but didn’t have time to post a response until now.

I read the article and, more importantly, the source material behind it, and it is plain that there are numerous models of food chains.

Nothing wrong with creating a model of food chains, and they can be long or short – as per what catholiver cited. There is scientific merit and utliity to food chain modeling and, as the article shows, the models are constantly subject to revision, like any other scientific model.

But my survey question was really intended to be very narrowly focused on whether or not people who cared to respond think or believe or whatever (insulting) way you want to put it, there is ONE food chain or THE food chain (not “Are there food chains?”). It appears to me a majority do think there is THE food chain, but others have caveats.

Thanks to catholiver for providing the material that shows that constructs of food chains are numerous, and whenever one is talking in scientific terms about a food chain in which humans are given a place within the scientific construct, one is only talking about one of many food chains, some of which humans belong to, some which they don’t, and of the ones to which they belong, there seems to be no way to identify a food chain using present constructs where they (humans) would be at the top.

40

Not really. It’s pretty clear that when people talk about nutrition and cooking, humans are at the top. There are multiple paths into our mouths, but we are effectively the end of whichever chain you care to consider. Perhaps the best way to think of it is that there is one web of human nutrition, and we sit at its center.

Now, for fun, spin the samsara with how we become the land and us again…

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