Ecologists talk of a food chain, a sort of queue of energy consumers with plants at the front, followed by herbivores (or creatures that consume plants), then by carnivores, which can consume herbivores, then by fungi, which bring up the rear by feasting on the dead. The whole process delights entropy, which exacts a garbage tax at every step. Approximately 90 percent of the energy captured by photosynthesis is lost at each trophic level, so much less energy is available for the later links on the food chain. That’s why you find fewer animals than plants on Earth, and fewer carnivores than
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