Tuesday, March 23, 2021

why can't plants walk?

early in the evolution of life, multicellular organisms climbed out of the oceans and became the first organisms to colonize dry land. early among these pioneers were plants: multicellular eukaryotes that could do photosynthesis (the latter of which evolved first in prokaryotic cyanobacteria).

if plants were among the first to step foot on land, why did they never learn to walk?

well, plants have evolved as largely sessile organisms, whereas animals began right off the bat by mastering the art of "movement". while those first land plants were busy deciding "should we learn to walk?", the oceans were already teeming with macroscopic animal life that was burrowing, digging, swimming - moving. so the kingdom Animalia was ahead of Plantae since basically day 1.

plants never "walked", and therefore they were much less likely to simply evolve that out of the blue once they hit land. animals, conversely, always 'walked' so they hit land up and running, literally. 

to be clear, plants DEFINITELY move and always have - just not perceptibly fast. 



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