this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

That's not really how it works. Going from one food chain level to another you lose about 90% of the energy like:

Plants - photosynthesize 100% of solar energy available

Herbivores - eat the plants, losing about 90% of the total energy in the process of breaking it down and making it usable.

Carnivores - eat another animal, losing another 90% aka (1% of total energy)

Plus, consider that photosynthesis is capable of creating all the sugars and that we can convert sugars into fats and proteins and stuff using biological processes (this is essentially why plants need nitrogen and phosphorous to grow, but the generally get that from the soil and really don't need a lot.