On Wed, Oct 27, 2004 at 05:56:43AM -0600, Howard Brazee wrote: > Tsarren wrote: > > Viruses are not classified as living organisms - they do not grow, > > they do not consume food, they are not made of one or more cells, > > they don't even have cell parts, and they don't respond to their > > environment. This would indicate they cannot be a part of the food > > chain, and are outside of it in the same way that a forest fire is > > outside of it. > > > > Kat > > Depends upon who's doing the classification. Um, as far as I can tell, any scientist worth their salt? Seriously. Look online, look in biology textbooks - viruses have some of the characteristics of living things and some of non-living things. They are not included in any of the five taxonomic kingdoms. > But let's move to a less > controversial form, the bacteria. Bacteria are most definately prey to other animals: "Bacteria make up a major part of the world's biomass. Bacteria are really tiny, and are very good at absorbing mineral nutrients from the environment, so they are at the bottom of just about every food chain on the planet. Usually, the next step up from bacteria in most food chains are protozoans (such as amoebae and even microscopic crustaceans), and they are the biggest eaters of bacteria. Then there's slightly bigger animals which also feed directly on bacteria. In the sea, filter-feeding animals like fan worms and shellfish can suck bacteria out of the water. There are even species of snail that float around in the water trailing big transparent nets of fine mucus, to trap bacteria and other organisms." - from http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/homework/s94124.htm Kat