by Ashley Smith

Created on: January 30, 2010   Last Updated: January 31, 2010

It is almost impossible to answer the question "are we products of our environment" the same for all people on earth so I will go with the percentage and say no. In fact, if you look back over the centuries in most countries the opposite is in fact true, man has moulded the environment to suit himself. Numerous plants and animals have changed their structure and make up many times over the years in order to survive the environment while man has barely altered. As the plants that animals feed on has got less the animals have altered accordingly. The giraffe grew a longer neck so it could reach the higher leaves on a tree and therefore leave the lower leaves for other animals. The other animals eat from the different levels and so share the food, the elephants from the middle and the smaller animals from lower.

With humans alteration of food supplies and availability would mean finding a new source or altering the existing sources. Chemicals would be used to increase size and growing rates, new foods would be made artificially and other food would be created that would last longer and longer. Where foods may lose content quality, then the humans would artificially add nutrients and back them up with pill based minerals and other needed food constituents. Animals would simply adjust their make up in order to cope with the alterations and therefore wouldn't need the things now lacking in the food. Humans remain thin skinned, easy to kill and susceptable to lack of food or water.

Also as the environment has been damaged more and more by man they have not physically changed in order to cope. Animals have been forced to adapt to poorer air and temperature changes, they have coped with the places they live being destroyed and the world changing around them. Man meanwhile carries on regardless apart from some trivial action once the damage is done. So any effect the environment has on man is only as a result of the effect man had on the environment first. Perhaps all the earthquakes, floods and storms are mother natures revenge for years of neglect and abuse. It's time man sorted things very quickly and stop abusing the world around us before its too late. In the end, if we continue like this, we will destroy the environment and then it will destroy us.

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