![[option 1] image for](res/animal-land.svg)
Badger gonna eat you! Bite, bite. Honey Badgers don’t give a hoot. Come join us and give that tree the boot. Bond with the BADGER!
Enter the FOOD CHAIN.
Fruits and vegetables are consumed by animals. They live on the energy they get when they digest the sugars that are rich in carbon. Within the animal, carbon exists in many complex forms such as muscle, blood, bone, and brain matter. You can join hydrogen and oxygen to become fructose in apple, only to get eaten by a worm then picked out by a bird and chased down by a hungry hungry honey badger. Carbon goes through many forms in the food chain.
Living organisms ingest other organisms as sources of energy in the food chain.
Learn much more: wikipedia.org/Eating
![[option 2] image for](res/soil.svg)
Take a break and loosen up with us. Join our brown, dirty and nutrient rich lifestyle. Go out on a limb and leave that tree to break it down in the SOIL.
Go through the process of DECOMPOSITION.
Plants eventually die and decay. Carbon stored in a leaf falls to the forest floor. As the structures and cells of the leaf get broken down bit by bit they take the carbon with them as they mix into the soil—fertile soil that is 57% carbon! Some of the carbon is also released through respiration by the insects and microorganism that help decompose the plant.
C6H12O6 => 2C2H5OH + 2C02
Sugar => Ethanol + Carbon Dioxide
Complex organic molecules are reduced to simpler forms in the process of decomposition.
Learn much more: wikipedia.org/Decomposition#Plant_decomposition
You are Carbon in a Tree
Being so fruitful feels so fine. The view is fine from the top of the vine. Carbon in a tree? Nowhere I’d rather be.
Plants are factories that transform elemental carbon dioxide into the various stuff of life. Carbon is stored as sugar which the plant burns for energy. Sugars also act as the building blocks for more and more complex organic molecules. or can beccome part of more complex molecules. What role doesn't carbon play in a plant? It's in cellulose, the bark, the DNA. Oxygen is released in the process as a waste product.
The carbon essential for life enters the food chain through plants. Black carbon, or soot, is released into the atmosphere when trees burn. Land use changes have reduced the amount of carbon absorbed by plants. But, did you know that 50% of the carbon stored by plants will return to the atmosphere through respiration as the plant lives and grows?
Learn much more: wikipedia.org/Plant
