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Asked by to Amelia, Izzy, Sarah on 18 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Isabel Webb answered on 18 Mar 2014:
Without plants there wouldn’t be enough oxygen in the air to allow animals like humans to exist! We think plants evolved long before humans or large animals did, and they played a big role in changing the amounts of gases in the air.
We also need plants for food. Plants convert energy in sunlight into chemical energy as sugars, which we can eat. Without this process (photosynthesis) we would have no bottom on the food chain – so we would have nothing to eat! We definitely wouldn’t survive without food – so if we did manage to exist we would have existed as a very different animal – one who could photosynthesise maybe? (We would have to either be bright green or purple to do this – might be interesting…)
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Amelia Frizell-Armitage answered on 18 Mar 2014:
Before plants evolved there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. Only after plants evolved and started to produce oxygen through photosynthesis could animals evolve. We wouldn’t be here if plants hadn’t evolved first.
We also depend on plants for many other things like food – even the meat you eat was fed on plants!
If another type of organism evolved to photosynthesise then maybe we could survive without plants. However until that happens we need plants!
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Sarah Harvey answered on 18 Mar 2014:
I think this question just about sums up one of the reasons I work on plants – I reckon the answer is definitely no at the moment! We need plants to produce Oxygen, to produce food and also for loads of other plant-derived products!
However in the future it might be possible to survive without plants maybe using the photosynthetic algae that can live in the sea or that people are trying to grow industrially in tanks… although why would we want to, plants are awesome! 😛
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