the.com/food cycle
Nature's way of saying nothing you eat is really yours to keep.
means The sequence of who-eats-whom through which energy and nutrients move from one living thing to the next, from sun to plant to animal to decomposer and back again.
from A straightforward compound of 'food' (Old English 'foda,' nourishment) and 'cycle' (from Greek 'kyklos,' a circle or wheel). The phrase itself is a plain 20th-century ecology term, built to describe feeding relationships as a loop rather than a straight line — close cousin to 'food chain,' but insisting, rightly, that the chain bends back on itself and nothing truly exits the circuit.
- not a chain
- loops back, unlike the misleading textbook arrow
- decomposers matter most
- fungi and bacteria do the unglamorous recycling work
- energy leaks out
- only ten percent passes to each next level
- you are included
- you're food too, eventually, no exceptions