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Plant world; A world without animals
Topic Started: Aug 5 2009, 04:07 PM (2,581 Views)
SSJRaptog
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I came with another speculative world.

What if plants became the dominant group of organisms because animals would have somehow never evolved or have gotten extinct in a very early stage of evolution.

Would it in this case be possible for plants to evolve a nervous system and even evolve animal-like forms?
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colddigger
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plants wouldn't need muscles, they can run on hydrolics and valves... also it's possible for flowering plants to have evolved, although we wouldn't get the colorful ones, more likely stuff like grass would arise...

also plants wouldn't have any animal factors in their evolution at all, this would include their early oceany algal time...
considering that plants basically evolved on land and moved to the water, the opposite of what animals did i would imagine that the ocean would belong to the kelps and red algaes rather than plants... but the freshwater would definitely be controlled by them.
A major predator, or at least consumer of plants would be fungi, so an arms race between plants and fungi instead of plants and animals would likely appear.
With the existance of fungi in mind those could act as muscles if we followed the idea of growth and death for movement in plants, fungus cells can grow very quickly, die, and get reabsorbed, and considering they are being fed by a host organism they don't have to worry too much about energy.
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seascorpion
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there would be so much oxygen constantly being pumped into the air that a forest fire would be devastatingly fast and easily started
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colddigger
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which as a result would produce large amounts of CO2 and plants would develop a system to actually use the fires to their advantage if they would occur like you said at all.
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sam999
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colddigger
Sep 12 2009, 01:42 AM
A major predator, or at least consumer of plants would be fungi, so an arms race between plants and fungi instead of plants and animals would likely appear.
With the existance of fungi in mind those could act as muscles if we followed the idea of growth and death for movement in plants, fungus cells can grow very quickly, die, and get reabsorbed, and considering they are being fed by a host organism they don't have to worry too much about energy.
How, all the plants would have to do is get poisones if eaten?
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

The fungi would develop immunity to said poisons.



Oh, and what if a zoomastiginan evolved to be colonial (like algae)? Could those conceivably take animal niches?
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sam999
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Canis Lupis
Sep 13 2009, 11:50 AM
The fungi would develop immunity to said poisons.
So the plants would make new ones. An arms race of poisons not of moveing plants.
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colddigger
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of course that's overly simplistic, you would have an arms race of poison and immunity between fungi and plants, and you would have plants and fungi that are symbiotic, and you would have plants so large that all they would need to do is shed a part of their body to remove the fungus threat, and you would have plants that consume fungi... growing runners to spread might become more popular than it is now (which is already pretty popular) to get away from fungal clumps...
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Iowanic
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The issues with the CO2 build-up might lead to the line we're used to between plants and critters being blurred.
If a thing uses oxigen; is it really a plant any longer?
Basically; how do you define what a plant is? At what point does it become something else?

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Carlos
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If it evolved from a plant then its a plant. Simple as that, and that is why cladistics are superior to taxonomy
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colddigger
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plants already use oxygen, i've said this like three times now...
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Iowanic
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At what point in the 'tree of life' did plants stop being plants and become something of a higher order? What was the feature that made animals animals?

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colddigger
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higher order?

the features that made animals animals was the lack of a cell wall, lack of chloroplasts and several other things.
http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Sciences/Zoology/AnimalPhysiology/Anatomy/AnimalCellStructure/AnimalCellStructure.htm

anyway, parasitic plants strike me as something with the potential of becoming mobile, or they could develop something similar to the tumbleweed, but with some sail inside the ball that can turn or open to catch wind and change course...
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Iowanic
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Aw, ok. That is a definate 'change-over', which I thought was a bit arbitrary.
: I stand corrected.

I still wonder about CO2 build-up, though.

There have been times in our past where the earth was dominated by plants ....

What was the atmosphere like back in those times?


Edited by Iowanic, Sep 13 2009, 05:02 PM.
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colddigger
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high oxygen levels, but then you have to consider that plants were new and nothing had adapted to take advantage of it on land, present time is the result of things taking advantage of them.
actually to my understanding the atmosphere had high CO2 levels in the beginning of the plants reign, but that quickly changed into high oxygen levels.
Edited by colddigger, Sep 13 2009, 05:10 PM.
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Iowanic
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What happened to the climate when the CO2 levels changed to high oxogen levels?

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