Is a human being more important than algae?

Question

Are human beings more "important" than say... algae? what is your view.....

Answer 1

Perhaps this is terrible, but for a moment step out of the box, step off the planet, and look at the whole picture of earth and life history.
As people, we tend to view the world from an anthropomorphic perspective. We think everything thinks like us, and is here for our pleasure. For a moment, be willing to set that aside.
First of all there are many hundreds, if not thousands of species of algae (I took a whole course on algae in college.....not quite as boring as it might sound, actually!). There are even algae from different kingdoms, blue-green algae (more commonly known today as cyanobacteria) and regular "green algae".
Phylogenetically, algae are some of the oldest organisms on the planet. Without the blue-green algae in the FIRST place, an oxygen atmosphere never would have developed in the the first place, and we'd still have a reducing atmosphere. That would make life entirely different, septic, and probably still unicellular. Later, "green algae" was the precursor to the bryophytes, which in turn were precursors to vascular plants, and everything you recognize as a plant today.
If humans never existed, and you stepped into that world, you would be stepping into a lush, green world with more biodiversity than you can possibly imagine, even in the location where you now are. Humans haven't made a single significant contribution to the biosphere, but we have removed probably hundreds of thousands of species by habitat destruction. Every one of the species that have existed for the last 3.5 billion years OWES its existence to algae, they created an oxidizing atmosphere and are ancestors of many of today's species.
In that regard.....the world, from an ecological perspective, would have been much better off if humans had gone extinct when our population was down to a few hundred. From that perspective, algae are much, much more important to the world's ecosystems than we are. If all the algae suddenly went extinct, this world would stagnate and its biota would die off. If all the humans went extinct, this world's biota would recover and flourish.

Answer 2

Who's view are you interested in?
In both mine and God's view a human is more important.

I don't like the way other people approach this question. A human can be very important. A human can kiss you. Algae can't. A human can spread a malicious rumour about you. Algae can't. A human can give you a really great Yahoo Answer. Algae can't. And as to saying algae is more important in an ecological sense, I ask you is it not true that humanity has a lot more power over the environment than any individual alga?

Answer 3

Algae are more important. Without algae, there would be no aerobic life on Earth. Sorry.

Answer 4

You should put this to the philosophers- this question being philosophical rather than scientific.

"Important" to whom or what?
Important to oxygen production? Algae of course.
Important to the interpretation of the works of Charles Dickens? Probably humans.
Important to potable water quality? Hmm... difficult that one.

It depends. Doesn't it?

Answer 5

In an ecosystem, people are not more important than algae, but it depends on what you mean by important.

Answer 6

in the cosmic sense - we (and algae) are all worthless. But for society to function, we must think that human life is sacred.

Answer 7

In terms of the rest of the environment: absolutely not. We destroy while algae creates life.

Answer 8

Depends on the person and the algae....