someone wrote:
(snipped

large enough forest that the animals
never leave it, they are not a source of fertilizers at all. Not even
slightly. This is because they don't "make" fertilizer nutrients; they simply
recycle them and move them around. For rabbit manure to have N, P, K, or other

I would argue with that notion. Because, the bacteria to breakdown decay of
wood etc requires nitrogen.

Argue in saying that plant food when it passes through the body of an insect
or animal that it is somehow transformed into a fertilizer. Even the body of the
animal itself when decaying releases fertilizer.

So, somehow it is the "passing through the animal body" that transforms the
chemistry of the organic material.

Perhaps I should include bacteria into this picture.

Granted that the atoms of a environment remain the same in that they are
only moved around and transformed. And granted that plants need animals
for the transportation system.

But it appears to me that what passes through animals and insects of their
plant food is somehow altered chemically, for which plants alone cannot
make that alteration, and only animals efficient in this conversion of plant
food back to plant fertilizer.

Somehow, in passing through the bodies of animals and insects, these N, P, K
etc atoms are transformed in a vital way.

You see, I refuse to think that animals are _merely a transportation_ mechanism
for plant kingdom. I believe that in the process of passing through the bodies
of animals and insects that plant food becomes transformed into plant
fertilizer.

I believe animals came in existence not just as a tranportation and scattering
mechanism but for chemical transformation of plant food into plant
fertilizer.


elements in it, the rabbit had to eat a plant that contained those elements.
The plant extracted the elements from the soil. So at best, the rabbit manure
puts the nutrient back onto the soil. Agricultural use of manure works since
it is applied to land where the animal's feed source did NOT grow, so in a
sense, you are importing nutrients from somebody else's field. Nitrogen-fixing
bacteria can be important, especially those associated with legumes, bayberry,
and other plants.

Perhaps the legumes are the plants that are the most self reliant of all plants in
that they harness bacteria to make their own fertilizer. But I suspect that even
these legumes would quickly die if no animals or insects existed.

Archimedes Plutonium,
whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies