• Sign in
  • Sign up
Elektrine
EN
Log in Register
Modes
Overview Chat Timeline Communities Gallery Lists Friends Email Vault DNS VPN
Back to Timeline !asklemmy @Mothra
In reply to 1 earlier post
@Karl@literature.cafe on literature.cafe Open parent
Why aren't we evolved to eat grass?
It’s everywhere. Why not just eat it instead of searching for less readily available veggies and meat?
Open parent Original URL
64
0
73
10
Mothra
Mothra in !asklemmy
@Mothra@mander.xyz · 12d
Essentially as others said, because you need to invest heavily in your gut and metabolism to get enough energy out of grass alone. You don’t evolve into what you want, you evolve into what you can while you are pressured to do so. There is currently no pressure to rely solely on grass, that pressure hasn’t been on us for millions of years. Our foods may be trickier to find but on average they yield more energy compared to grass. But don’t get me wrong. It’s a valid strategy. Our ancestors did have the window of opportunity at some point, and they took it… We were something more like rats back then, the grass eaters niche had room. Grass was everywhere. And our cousins back then adapted and spent practically the whole day foraging for grass in order to get by. But you know what also was everywhere? Trees. And our ratlike ancestors that were more inclined to climb, jump, and spot predators from above found it easier to stick to the omnivore diet. Adapting to trees lets you move into places with less grass… Like jungles and swamps. And while you are there for a couple million years you will have other problems to solve, problems that require wits, sharp vision, and social skills. You don’t have time to forage 18hrs every day and grass isn’t as abundant here anyway. If you don’t rely solely on grass you will probably fare better during winter. Especially during those ice ages. By the time you have grass as an option again you are pretty much an ape and pivoting back to it makes no sense.
View on mander.xyz
11
0
0
Sign in to interact

Loading comments...

About Community

asklemmy
Asklemmy
!asklemmy@lemmy.ml

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it’s welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

  • !lemmy_support@lemmy.ml
  • !fediverse@lemmy.ml
  • !selfhosted@lemmy.world

Looking for a community?

  • Lemmyverse: community search
  • sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
  • !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

54000
Members
9198
Posts
Created: April 25, 2019
View All Posts
313k7r1n3

Company

  • About
  • Contact
  • FAQ

Legal

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy
  • VPN Policy

Email Settings

IMAP: mail.elektrine.com:993

POP3: pop3.elektrine.com:995

SMTP: mail.elektrine.com:465

SSL/TLS required

Support

  • support@elektrine.com
  • Report Security Issue

Connect

Tor Hidden Service

khav7sdajxu6om3arvglevskg2vwuy7luyjcwfwg6xnkd7qtskr2vhad.onion
© 2026 Elektrine. All rights reserved. • Server: 22:45:26 UTC