The Amoeba And The Oak Tree

                                                                                                                                    

It's hard to condemn something you don't understand,ⁱ but it's easy to raise the questions that make your understanding difficult. And that's what I intend to do since I'm a little confused by one of the major trends of our society: Veganism.

Yes. It's a major trend. There used to be vegetarians, and the biggest questions when one came over for a meal dealt with whether he would eat dairy products or eggs. And it turned out that a few even had fish. But they all drew the line at meat.

It now appears that vegans consider conventional vegetarianism, no matter how strict, to be inadequate. In fact it causes grief to animals. At least that's the contention of some of them.ⁱⁱ

As far as I can determine, their philosophy is based on the view that it is immoral for humans to use animals for any benefit. Thus the use of leather and wool would be proscribed as would the use of any products tested on animals. Even honey, which is an animal product, should be avoided. Circuses and other animal-based entertainments (eg horse racing and dog shows) would be eliminated. Pets are out.  And, of course, neither meat nor animal products should be part of our diet. In fact, a “life-style” based on veganism will solve the problem of animal abuse and provide better health for its adherents.ⁱⁱⁱ

Whether I subscribe to that philosophy or not, I have two real problems with implementing it. The first is reality, writ large, and the second is that I really don't know what an animal is from an evolutionary standpoint.

Reality first. Most of the power used to run our transportation, to operate our manufacturing plants, to keep the lights on in our houses, and even to fuel the machinery that farmers use to plant and harvest our vegetables, is derived from fossils. And those vegetables – especially the “organic” ones – are fertilized with animal products. (Mothers' milk comes from animals, although I suspect that vegans draw the line on human products.^iv) In third world countries where farmers cannot afford farm machinery, animals are used to help in working the fields. Guide dogs for the blind and other kinds of service animals are critical to some who seek to lead a more normal life. Abjuring all these things would put us in wooden shacks with thatched roofs eating whatever we could forage from nearby plants.

But the second problem – one of evolution and definitions – is even more perplexing. What is an “animal?” According to Dictionary.com it is

any member of the kingdom Animalia, comprising multicellular organisms that have a well-defined shape and usually limited growth, can move voluntarily, actively acquire food and digest it internally, and have sensory and nervous systems that allow them to respond rapidly to stimuli: some classification schemes also include protozoa and certain other single-celled eukaryotes that have motility and animallike (sic) nutritional modes.

That, however, is a human definition and, interestingly, is somewhat circular and problematic. It would be a surprise if animals didn't have “animallike nutritional modes,” but if this simply means that they ingest other species and cannot make their own food by photosynthesis, then the sea slug, Elysia chlorotica, which contains chlorophyll and can survive for up to nine months based on its own production of food,^v is a plant, not an animal. And carnivorous plants,^vi like the sundews, and the pitcher plants, and snap trap plants like the waterwheel plant and the Venus flytrap, are animals not plants.

If the differentiation of animals and plants is based on locomotion, then while it is true that higher plants have a root system that ties them to a particular location, they may climb and send out shoots from that place, and the species may move based on the spreading of its seeds. Many biologists consider bacteria to be plants, even though some of them have flagella and can move from place to place.  And some animals, like sponges, barnacles and coral, are sessile.

Another part of the definition, and one that seems to be the presence of a cell wall. Plants have them, but animals don't. Both have cell membranes, although the usual differentiation is that animals have cell membranes and plants have solid cell walls.

But all of these criteria are based on the fact that we've chosen to define organisms this way. We've drawn a line at an arbitrary point in evolution. If all life arose from molecules in a primordial “soup,” then plants and animals have the same ancestry and the differentiation is based on a human definition. For some reason we have chosen to define animals as superior to plants. I find it difficult to view an amoeba as more advanced than an oak tree, but the former is an animal, and the latter a plant. It may be a clear distinction to vegetarians, and may be a deciding factor in their behavior, but I am less certain – at least based on these criteria.

The distinction, then, relates to where you draw the line. Salt and water were never alive (although they may contain organisms) but steak was. And so was bread. We know that plants react to time, light, and temperature, and to nutrients as well. But does wheat feel pain when cut? It certainly doesn't have a neural system similar to those in animals, and it doesn't scream out. But there is no question that cut plants have characteristics different from those attached to the ground. And there is increasing evidence that some plants can communicate with each other.

So where do we draw that line – if at all? And why? Is it possible to live without what we call animals, and do we want to? What is clear to the vegan is less clear to me. When these questions are answered, I'll be better able to form an opinion on veganism.

Next episode: “Now You Know Everything” – Or at least I do.

i     Actually, it's not that hard. It's foolish and unfair however. That, of course, doesn't stop people from doing it.

ii    For example, see: http://www.ivu.org/news/evu/news95/veg_n.html. While the article favors vegetarianism, it mentions some of the objections of vegans – objections which are often stressed with great venom.

iii    A position with which not everyone agrees. Perhaps you'll find the following op-ed of interest. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21planck.html.

iv    If that's the case, of course, cannibalism would be permissible. Or maybe that's pushing it too hard.

v     http://www.independent.com/news/2010/jan/30/first-known-photosynthetic-animal/ While the building blocks for the photosynthetic process are derived from plants, the organisms we define as plants originally derived their own chloroplasts from incorporated cyanobacteria, and the chloroplasts became par of the organisms.

vi    It's of interest that the first well-known work on the subject, Insectivorous Plants, was written by Charles Darwin.