What does it mean to say something is alive?

Note: This program first aired January 30, 2016.

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This semester I am teaching the first year biology course at the small college where I work. Our first class met today and I thought it right to address the elephant in the room first thing. Yes, we are studying biology, but what does it actually mean to say something is alive?

When I asked the question out loud, there was silence in the room. When it comes down to it, we can generally discern whether something is alive or not, but most of us have never really thought about what it is that allows us to make that judgment. What are the criteria that determine whether or not something is alive? There is no universally agreed upon set of characteristics that describe what life is, but most definitions contain some version of the following:

First, things that are alive use energy. They have to get energy from some where, energy is required to do what living things do, which is combat entropy. Entropy is the tendency of a closed system to proceed from highly ordered to disorder. Spontaneous chemical reactions move in this direction, everything moves in this direction without the input of additional energy. Life brings that energy into the system and maintains those higher order molecules. Life is higher order. The energy comes either from the sun (for photosynthesizers) or from a food source (for heterotrophs) or from chemical bonds (for the rare chemosynthesizers).

Everything that is alive is made of cells. We didn’t know this until we had microscopes. Cells are small enough that we were unaware of their existence, until the technology existed to be able to see them. Then, they were everywhere we looked. And by the 1800’s it was clear, everything that is alive is made of cells. And just what is a cell? A cell is best defined by it’s plasma membrane. The cell membrane is what separates that which is inside the cell, the part that is alive, from that which is outside the cell, that which is not alive (in the case of a single celled organism). It defines the cell in space. The membrane controls what gets into the cell and what gets out. The cell is the fundamental unit of life, and the membrane is what delineates the shape of that unit.

Things that are alive contain and use information. They contain genes, the genetic information which directs the cell to make the protiens and enzymes that keep it functioning. Thing that are alive can also sense information from the environment and can respond to that information with actions that enable the organism to maintain homeostasis or regulate its internal environment. This occurs at every level of life, from bacteria to large complex multicellular organisms.

Living things can and must reproduce themselves, some would say this is the imperative of life. Without reproduction, after the first organic molecule formed or the first cell was created, life would have ended. Without reproduction, we would have to rely on organic molecules having to chemically evolve again and again, starting from scratch each time. And that would not have gotten us very far.

Lastly things that are living evolve. Evolution is simply a change in gene frequency in a population over time, frequencies that respond to selective pressure. Versions of genes that increase an individual’s fitness tend to be passed on, as fitter individuals get to reproduce more. Versions of genes that don’t support fitness tend to go away, because less fit individuals don’t get to reproduce. The genes in a population at any given time reflect the reproductive capacity of the individuals in the population. And while it is populations that evolve, not individuals, individuals are part of the process, it is individuals that suffer the direct impact of selective pressure, and individuals that do or do not get to pass on their genes. In saying that things that are alive evolve really means then that individuals are part of a larger process inherent to life.

In class we reviewed these criteria, and then evaluated several different examples for whether or not we would consider them alive. The tree was easy, so was the granite rock. The stack of firewood sparked some debate. Yes, it was dead now, but it had been alive, and had some of the attributes we covered. Then I showed them a picture of a foamy yellow pile of material on the forest floor. It was a slime mold, but I didn’t tell them that. No one knew what it was, but they had the tools to assess its “aliveness”, they knew the questions to ask, the observations to make. Our criteria may not be universally accepted, but it provides a framework for thinking systematically and critically about the world we live in. My students are at the beginning of their careers as scientists, and these are exactly the tools they need.

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References:

Biological Science, 5/E

Scott Freeman, Kim Quillin, Lizabeth Allison, 

ISBN-10: 0321743679 • ISBN-13: 9780321743671

©2014 • Benjamin Cummings • Cloth, 1416 pp

Pearson Publishing

New England Cottontail Rabbits

Note: This program first aired on January 16, 2016.


Join me in a thought exercise for a moment. Think of the most beautiful landscape you can imagine, one worthy of protection in perpetuity, one that meets all of our emotional, physical and spiritual needs. You may have conjured up an image of a mountain with a waterfall, a babbling brook, an open forest. Maybe a woodland or grassy savannah with a view from a high point. There are endless possibilities. One image I can almost guarantee you did not picture is a low shrub thicket tangled with thorny brambles and vines, with 20,000 to 50,000 stems per acre, virtually impossible for a human to walk through. But if you were a New England Cottontail Rabbit, this is exactly the landscape you would be imagining.

New England Cottontails are Maine’s only true rabbit, and Maine’s only state listed Endangered terrestrial mammal (the Snowshoe hares who’s tracks we see everywhere in the winter are different). Historically these rabbits lived throughout New England from just west of Penobscot Bay all they way to the Hudson River, down to Long Island. New England Cottontails became an Endangered species in Maine (and qualify for various levels of protection in the rest of New England) for one big reason, habitat loss. Since 1960 habitat for New England Cottontails has declined over 80% across its range. All animals are dependent on the environment to provide for their physical needs, habitat provides shelter from the elements, protection from predators and a supply of food. New England Cottontails are specialists when it comes to habitat requirements, they are adapted to be need very specific attributes in the places they call home. And those attributes include dense vegetative cover composed primarily of woody shrubs and small deciduous trees 3 to 15 feet tall, in patches of 10 to 25 acres. Size and structure.

The problem is that we don’t have very many stable shrublands here in New England, meaning, shrubs generally aren’t a climax vegetative community. These thickets primarily form as a result of landscape disturbance, they are what is called in ecological terms “early successional”. After a forest clearing disturbance the first plants to come in and colonize the disturbed area tend to make a dense thicket of herbaceous material, shrubs and sapling trees. This community only lasts 20 years at most before the tree saplings grow tall enough to shade out the understory, which opens up the thicket and degrades the habitat for the New England Cottontails. Which means, in essence, New England Cottontail rabbits are a disturbance dependent species.

The reason that they are now in decline is that we humans don’t like disturbance very much, nor do we appreciate landscapes that change over time. New England Cottontail rabbits got a temporary boost when agriculture declined in Maine, and thousands of acres of fields transitioned from open hay or cultivation back to forest. Initially the regrowing fields provided perfect thicket habitat, but then ecological succession continued, and the thickets were replaced by young forest. Additionally, we actively suppress fires, cut dead wood and otherwise manage forests to minimize disturbance and maximize the development of multi age climax forest stands. Essentially we do everything we can to prevent the kind of disturbance that will create new habitat for the New England Cottontail; we fanatically mow to keep open land open, and actively encourage the development of forests, dismissing all the messy swampy shrubby stuff that comes inbetween. We are effectively holding the landscape static, when static is exactly what natural landscapes are not. In doing so, we have a significant negative impact on organisms that are dependent on this ephemeral natural community; the New England Cottontail may be the most charismatic of the bunch, but over 100 other species of special concern share the same habitat requirements, suffer the same declines at the loss of habitat, and enjoy the same benefits of active habitat restoration.

Restorative action is taking place in all of the 5 remnant populations remaining in the rabbits’ historic range. Landowners are working with state and federal officials, doing things that seemed unimaginable to the conservation minded citizen years ago, clear cutting small tracts of forest, mimicking the natural small scale disturbance caused by low intensity fires, beaver flooding and wind storms, allowing patches of early successional habitat to flourish. This is truly “next level” conservation, working with natural patterns over both time and space to create a dynamic long range management plan that honors all species, not just the climax community ones. Sometimes it just takes a cute little bunny to get us there.

From US Fish and Wildlife Service

References: 

Federal US Fish and Wildlife http://www.fws.gov/northeast/newenglandcottontail/pdf/NEcottontail2015.pdf  

Learn everything you wanted to know about New England Cottontail Rabbits: http://newenglandcottontail.org/

Maine Dept. of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife: http://www.maine.gov/ifw/wildlife/species/mammals/endangered.html

 


 

Wilderness isn't wild, its bewildering

Note: This program first aired January 9, 2016.
 
If you ask some one on the street to define wilderness, chances are good they will describe a natural setting, a place with no human influence or impact, somewhere very much in place and time.  The dictionary gives us much the same:

“Wilderness:
1. a wild and uncultivated region, as of forest or desert, uninhabited or inhabited only by wild animals; a tract of wasteland.
2. a tract of land officially designated as such and protected by the U.S. government.
3. any desolate tract, as of open sea.
4. a part of a garden set apart for plants growing with unchecked luxuriance.
5. a bewildering mass or collection. “

We could push our person on the street deeper, and perhaps get to a definition of wilderness that includes places like the ocean, the 70% of Earth surface upon which we pursue the last commercial wild prey, and under which we have not yet meaningfully colonized. Push a little further and we might even get to the idea that outer space is the ultimate wilderness. Our definition of wilderness begins with the root word “wild” which the dictionary defines primarily by what it is not: untamed, undomesticated, uncultivated, uninhabited, uncivilized, unrestrained, uncontrolled. These words all apply to the places we think of as wild, be they officially designated wilderness areas, the open ocean, or the blank spots on the map. Twenty seven years ago Bill McKibben first published The End of Nature, a work that posits among other things that as we define nature (or wilderness) as a place beyond the reach of human impact and influence, nature or wilderness can no longer exist, because human impact is now completely global in a geographic sense due to anthropogenic climate change and the pervasive spread of air and water born pollution. In short, our finger prints are everywhere. I made the same point myself back in college, before I’d ever heard of Bill McKibben.

But what if we change our perspective and look at one of the other words used in the definition of wilderness. What if we use bewilderment as the central concept of what makes something wild?

The dictionary defines Bewilder as:
1 :  to cause to lose one's bearings
2 :  to perplex or confuse especially by a complexity, variety, or multitude of objects or considerations

That sort of sounds a lot like nature doesn’t it? Complex beyond our typical understanding, easy to get lost in. Humans are excellent at pattern recognition, our evolutionary survival has depended on it. From this angle, careful study of natural events and patterns meant that we were never in the wilderness, even though from our casual modern viewpoint, humans living a premodern life seem to be the epitome of uncultivated and undomesticated. They may have been uncivilized, but they were not bewildered.

Looking for and identifying patterns allows us to make predictions. Being able to predict how things will be gives us a sense of comfort (though in modern times we sometimes confuse comfort with control). If we take bewildering as the defining character of wilderness, wilderness occurs beyond prediction. Wilderness is found  when things don’t fit the pattern. It is bewildering when it is 70 degrees on Christmas day in southern New England. It is bewildering when a 500 year flood comes in the middle of winter, only 23 years after the last 500 year flood. It is bewildering when there is no ice on the shore to protect your village from winter storms. It is bewildering to see a bird or fish or plant you’ve never seen before suddenly appear in your home terrain. Wilderness isn’t a place, its something that happens when you don’t know what’s going to happen.

We live in the wilderness, now more so than our Neolithic ancestors ever did. Rather than the end of wilderness, we are living a broad bewildering version of it, covered with our dirty fingerprints. 

References: 

Great overview of wild winter weather from Andy Revkin at the Dot Earth NYT blog: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/in-wild-winter-warm-arctic-storm-chills-u-s-forecast-as-flooding-threatens-levees/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Weather&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body

Parthenogenesis a.k.a. Virgin Birth

Note: This show first aired on December 26, 2015.

Late December is the dark time here in the northern hemisphere, and many world religious and spiritual traditions mark the celestial event, the winter solstice with introspection and a celebration of the return of the light. From here the days only get longer again, until June at least.

A central narrative to one of these coopted solistice worshiping holidays though, has nothing to do with darkness and light, and everything to do with an event that theoretically occurred 9 months before what has become a major American commercial holiday. I’m talking of course about virgin conception and birth, a major article of faith in the Christian tradition. But virgin birth also has biological precedents, though not in humans or any other mammals for that matter.

First lets quickly review what we consider “normal” sexual reproduction. Genetic material from one parent and genetic material from a second parent combines to make an individual with a uniquely mixed set of genes. Each parent gives half of the genes, via the gametes, the sperm and the eggs. Sperm and eggs each carry only half of the genetic material required to make up a new individual. In genetic terminology this is called being haploid, sperm and eggs are both haploid cells, they only have one set of genetic material, all of the other cells in the body have two sets of genetic material, called diploid. Yes there are many species that have MORE than two sets of genetic material in their cells, this is called polyploidy and it is very common in plants, and is most well represented in the animal kingdom by fish. We’re going to focus on typical diploid animals for the purposes of this explanation, though.

In virgin birth, more accurately called parthenogenesis, a new individual is created without the benefit of having genetic material from two different parents. There are two basic ways this can happen. One is that the genetic material in the haploid egg replicates itself changing the egg from haploid to diploid, or with two sets of genetic material. That cell then develops like any fertilized embryo, except that it only has genetic material from the mother, and only one set of genetic material from the mother at that, so it is an exact and complete clone of the mother. The other way is that there is some genetic recombination that occurs either as a result of fusion occurring during meiosis (or gamete production) or via the egg being fertilized by what is called a polar body (which is a cell left over from when the egg was produced). These second methods all lead to an individual that is not a full clone of the mother, but what is called a half clone. Half of the genetic material is exactly the mother’s, while the other half has undergone some degree of recombination depending on the exact mechanics of this type of parthenogenesis, there are actually several routes to this end.

Parthenogenesis does occur in nature, in the animal kingdom alone it is common in invertebrates, and of the vertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds and especially fish exhibit this behavior. There are at least 80 species of non mammalian vertebrates that are fully unisexual, meaning there are no males, and reproduction is obligate parthenogenesis. Many more vertebrates demonstrate facultative parthenogenesis, meaning they can reproduce this way, but more typically (we think) reproduce sexually.

So the Christmas story has some biological basis, though parthenogenesis is not documented in mammals, and because mammals have an XX XY sex determination system, and sex is determined by genes carried on the sperm, if mammals could do parthenogenesis, all of the offspring would be female, which certainly adds a twist to the classic Christmas story.

Happy Holidays everyone.

References:

About Komodo dragons (who have exhibited parthenogenesis) http://www.ansci.wisc.edu/jjp1/ansci_repro/misc/project_websites_08/tues/Komodo%20Dragons/science.htm


Vrijenhoek, R.C., R.M. Dawley, C.J. Cole, and J.P. Bogart. 1989. A list of the known unisexual vertebrates, pp. 19-23 in: Evolution and Ecology of Unisexual Vertebrates. R.M. Dawley and J.P. Bogart (eds.) Bulletin 466, New York State Museum, Albany, New York

El Nino

Note this program first aired December 19, 2015.

The last two winters here in Maine have been long, cold and snowy thanks to persistent upper atmosphere air masses and the loopiness of the polar vortex. Many people I know are gearing up for more of the same this winter, but I am not ready to make any bets yet, and that is because of one big difference between last winter and this winter, El Nino.

Surely you have heard by now that this winter, the winter of 2015/16 is shaping up to be one of the strongest El Nino events in recent history, vying for the top spot with the winter of 1982/83 and 1997/98. El Nino is the common name for a oceanographic and atmospheric phenomenon or set of phenomena that occur in the Pacific Ocean but influence weather world wide. Meteorologists and climate scientists refer to the whole package as ENSO, short for El Nino Southern Oscillation, a name that gets us a little closer to what is actually happening in the Pacific Ocean this winter.

We take for granted that the ocean plays a huge role in our weather patterns and long term climate, we take it so much for granted that we never think about it, until something like a strong El Nino comes along. In the equatorial Pacific the typical ocean pattern runs east/west. Warm surface water is found in the western Pacific, held there by the prevailing winds, the trade winds which blow east to west. That net movement of surface water from east to west drives upwelling in the eastern Pacific, which means cool deep water comes to the surface. So, warm in the western ocean off Papua New Guinea, cool in the eastern ocean off South America. That warm water warms the atmosphere above it, creating low pressure and bringing lots of precipitation to the western Pacific region. The cold water in the eastern Pacific keeps the air mass there cool, maintaining high pressure and relatively dry conditions.

When an El Nino happens, this pattern totally reverses. It isn’t clear exactly whether the chicken or the egg comes first but several things happen that culminate in what we call El Nino. The trade winds diminish, so the wind doesn’t blow as strongly from east to west, and in some cases actually reverses and blows from west to east.  Without the wind holding it there, the warm surface water in the western Pacific moves back across the ocean towards the eastern Pacific. Because the wind drives that upwelling of cold water off Peru I mentioned, no wind means no upwelling. With warm water heading east, and no cold water to cool the eastern ocean, the Pacific ocean off south America gets warm, and that is the hallmark sign of El Nino. That warm water has profound effects locally, dramatically diminishing the productivity of the waters off Ecuador and Peru. Oceanic food chains start with phytoplankton, and with no nutrient rich deep water coming to the surface, the phytoplankton don’t survive. And if there are no phytoplankton that ripples all the way up the food chain.

As far as we are concerned, it isn’t the warm water in the eastern Pacific that changes our winters, but the warm air mass above that warm water. Warm moist air leads to low pressure, in an area where there is usually high pressure. This switch in pressure regime can drive changes in the way air masses travel across north America in the winter, strengthening the east/west flow of the jet stream, reducing the chance of the north/south loopiness of the polar vortex we’ve experienced the last couple of winters. Typical effects are increased precipitation in the southeast and west, and warmer winters across the northern tier of the US and southern Canada.

So is El Nino responsible for this extraordinarily warm December we’re having? Its hard to tell. It is staying warm because the air masses that are dominating the continental US are coming from the Pacific Ocean, rather than the Canadian Arctic, that warm Pacific air is blocking the jet stream from coming south, and it may be related to El Nino. We should remember however, that last December was pretty warm too, without an El Nino, it was 54 degrees on Christmas Day at my house last year. El Nino doesn’t mean that it will be an effortless balmy winter. If you think back to January of 1998, you might remember a little event we like to call the Ice Storm. So we will have to wait and see how this all plays out. I’m beginning to think though, it might have been the wrong winter to buy new skis. I hope I’m wrong.
References:

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. "NASA studying 2015 El Nino event as never before." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 October 2015. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151019182823.htm

Accuweather’s White Christmas prediction map http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/white-christmas-2015-forecast-el-nino-odds-low-i95-dc-to-boston/54193099
The straight talk from NOAA http://www.elnino.noaa.gov/

Even straighter talk from the Weather Channel http://www.weather.com/forecast/national/news/winter-2015-2016-what-to-expect

There’s even an El Nino blog (it is really good, check it out) https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/what-expect-winter-noaa%E2%80%99s-outlook-reveals-what-conditions-are-favored

El Faro

Note: This program first aired October 17, 2015.

I work here in Maine, at a maritime college, a school who’s mission is to train young women and men to drive and power the thousands of ships sailing at any given moment on the ocean. Ships that transport consumer goods and bulk commodities, food and cars, oil, gas and coal, ships that carry humans from place to place, ships that ply every available waterway on the planet. It’s been a hard couple of weeks on campus, if you have been following the news, you will understand why. A ship carrying five alumni, including some very recent graduates, drove straight into the path of a major hurricane and sank. The entire crew of 33 was lost at sea.

Humans have had a relationship with the sea from the beginning of our existence. There is evidence that as we evolved in the open woodlands and grass lands of Africa, climatic shifts pushed us to spread out, and as we spread, we made it to the coast line and found the ocean. One hypothesis has it that it was the nutritional content of sea food that enabled our brains to evolve to what they are today. Evolution aside we are sea loving people. In the US over 39% of the population lives in coastal shoreline counties, over 123 million people. The numbers are similar if not higher world wide.

We have used the sea as a source of food, a medium for migration and trade, and even a spiritual well spring. Those most comfortable at sea are truly a breed apart, I see this in my students all the time. They can’t really explain it but they are happiest with the open horizon in front of them, nothing but water around them, the deck in motion under their feet. I once went to the Aran Islands on the west coast of Ireland, and it was the first place I had been where I felt in a visceral way that there was enough room for my head, enough space for my mind to wander. I suspect that is what mariners feel on the sea, that and freedom. On the sea the rules of land don’t apply, until of course, they do. The sea may make you feel free and invincible, but this, like nearly every human story, is an illusion.

I am reading Moby Dick with my students this semester, and Melville captures this essence perfectly, in the chapter called Brit he writes “…by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters, though but a moment’s consideration will teach, that however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; never the less, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.” And a few lines later it continues “Yea, foolish mortals, Noah’s flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.”

We developed bipedal motion to carry these big brains around, and these big brains have gotten us out of some pretty amazing situations (Apollo 13 anyone?). But its in our hearts where humility dwells, and I think we love the ocean for that reason, she is a wilderness and we set sail on her at our peril. Science and skill could not save the well trained mariners of the El Faro. Science and skill could not help the Coast Guard rescuers find the ship or crew, flying at the outer limits of possibility in nearly impossible conditions. We’ve got the equation all wrong, it isn’t our intelligence and ingenuity that is limitless, its the power of the sea.

References:

http://gcaptain.com/collision-course-with-a-hurricane-how-doomed-el-faro-met-its-end/#.VhzeKqJAWOU

http://gcaptain.com/we-wont-learn-anything-what-sank-el-faro-and-what-didnt/#.VhzfQ6JAWOU

On humans and seafood: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/lives-the-brain/201001/was-seafood-brain-food-in-human-evolution

UN on coastal population http://coastalchallenges.com/2010/01/31/un-atlas-60-of-us-live-in-the-coastal-areas/

http://stateofthecoast.noaa.gov/population/welcome.html

Food Transformation or the Magic that is Bacon

Note: This program first aired October 3, 2015.


My friend Wendy and I were talking about food recently, and the topic of bacon came up. In some circles, bacon makes everything better. As we talked I described what amazing animals pigs are, and how they take stuff we can’t eat and turn it into bacon. And that is the essence of the magical transformation that is a food system. Everything has to eat something whether that something is plant or animal or fungus or bacteria. As humans we are omnivores, and have a wide range of foods available to us, and by available I mean food we can access, digest and find palatable. But there are lots of things on this planet we don’t eat or more significantly, can’t eat and that is true for all organisms. The wonderful thing about an interdependent food system is that other organisms can make use of things that you can’t, and if you able to eat the organism in question, you can effectively widen the radius of your available food sphere.

This is a common practice in agriculture. Many small progressive farms practice rotational grazing, where large animals are grazed on a plot of land for a period of time and then moved to a different pasture. They leave behind manure that enriches the soil, but more than that attracts flies which lay their eggs in the manure. Chickens are then rotated into the pasture. Chickens take things most of us don’t want to eat, like maggots, and turn them into things most of us do want to eat, like eggs. Now to be fair, we could eat maggots, and in some cultures, beetle larva are a prized food source. But if I have to eat maggots, I would rather have them processed through a chicken first. For a less gross example, cows take things we can’t eat, like grass, we can’t get any nutrition out of grass, it is indigestible for us, and cows turn it into things many of us can and do eat, like beef and milk. Even pigs, they take food no longer fit for human consumption, and turn it into bacon. If you hunt, wild animals do the same thing, transforming tree bark and leaf bud, hemlock needles and twigs into nutritious edible matter.

It isn’t just animals that perform this magic. You can be a vegan and still find wonder in this process. Mushrooms are heterotrophs like us, in that they don’t make their own food, they find it in the external environment. Mushrooms take stuff that is entirely inedible to us, wood, and turn it into something we can eat. Plants are the ultimate practitioners of this ancient art, they take air and make food. Yes, plants make food out of air. The energy stored in the food comes from the sun, but the material portion of that food comes literally from thin air.

If you think about it, this should feel like magic, and you should feel incredibly lucky that all of these organisms perform this magical transformation. In reality though, it isn’t magic, it is simply biology following the rules of physics. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, it just keeps getting rearranged. Life is the ultimate upcycler.

You’ve heard of recycling, taking trash and using it as raw material for something new. There is no trash in nature. But biology doesn’t just take old plastic bottles and make plastic lawn furniture and decking out of it. Biology is actually an up-cycler. Biology takes maggots and grubs and makes eggs and chicken, takes grass and hay and makes ice cream, takes rotting wood and makes chanterelles, takes air and water and makes broccoli, takes food waste and makes bacon.

Be a link in your own food chain. See yourself as the link in the food chain that you are, and realize there are no six degrees of separation when it comes to food. Your blueberry muffin, bacon breakfast sandwich, bowl of yogurt and granola or tofu veggie scramble are but one degree separated from things inedible. And in that one degree is what separates that which is living from that which is not.