21 April 2003 - plants and animals

Why do we look down on the gentle tapeworm yet admire the vicious lion? All animals appropriate their resources from other organisms. If there are any living things we should admire, it is those rugged individualists, the plants, which make their own food from raw materials—and plants are exactly the creatures that vegetarians pick on. They’re the lowest of the low. If we had our priorities straight, herbivorism would be outlawed and we’d allow animals to eat only other animals.