If economical ways could be developed for synthesising food from inorganic raw materials - which is likely to happen sooner or later - man may even be able to become independent of plants, on which he now depends as sources of his food..., 'I personally - and, I suspect, a vast majority of mankind - would shudder at the idea (of a habitat without animals and plants). But millions of inhabitants of "city jungles" of New York, Chicago, London or Tokyo have grown up and spent their whole lives in a practically "azoic" habitat (leaving out rats, mice, cockroaches and other such obnoxious species)
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