Because chloroplasts weigh a lot (compared to other organelles), so therefore if a creature would want to make use of them, they would weigh a lot and because of that not be able to move very fast (I think, might’ve misheard something)
Other creatures don’t have to develop in the same way we did on Earth, perhaps different kinds of cells would have evolved there 
It’s all about beneficial mutations after all.
Still, even if on a distant planet there’d be animal that can do photosynthesis, that either means they have to spend a lot of energy on movement, or the organelles responsible for photosynthesis take up less weight, which means they just wouldn’t be very useful (as they’re just not enough). Alien life probably wouldn’t be that different to ours, since a lot of creatures evolved this way because it’s just the most efficient (I.E. two eyes are just the best choice, since one eye can’t see depth (or it would need to be a very complicated eye, but just a second eye would be the easier to evolve), and more than one eye doesn’t help to see “extra depth” or something, and therefore it just wastes energy (not counting eyes in the backs of heads and stuff, they do help)
Hehe, this reminds me, I wonder what an eye would look like if it evolved to see above water. I mean, it would probably be completely different from the inefficient mutated fish-eyes we now have.
But yes, you are probably right, most things evolved because they were most efficient on Earth. But who says other planets will have the same or even similar environments? What if the sun barely even reaches the surface?
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Maybe @tjwhale can answer more accurately, but I think the issue with moving plants / animals that do photosynthesis is that there is no way to have enough surface area on a creature to collect enough light (and energy from that light) for it to move around any significant amount. There just isn’t enough energy in light for jumping around.
I think there are a few creatures that move and photosynthesize.
I guess most of the problem is that, if you are travelling a long distance, it’s not worth the energy to drag the chloroplasts around.
Imagine someone offered you a 20kg backback that produced 1 sandwich per day, it’s just not worth having because it costs you more energy to move it than it produces.
Either you need to get 10 backpacks and stay in one place all the time or no backbacks and search around for food.
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Thats, actually a really good analogy!
I never thought of it like that…
What if, per say, you could send “scout” organisms to bring food to the main organism? the scout things wouldnt live very long and would possible cost little resources to make, as i imagine them being the size of ants or something
So would these things be a different species? Would they be a different gender? Just, things?
I never really understood how scouts would work in nature…
A plant thing would make a creature or something that would be really small, but strong enough to give more than it would take to produce. And yeah, it MIGHT be able to reproduce to further boost effenciency, but idk
From that sounds like, wouldn’t the ‘scouts’ be effective just on their own?
How much would it even take for them to separate from needing the plant thing.
One way of looking at our planet is that it’s a plant civilisation.
Plants learned how to hack insects and bees to pollinate for them, they put out these nice flowers and insects were attracted and that let plants pollinate each other.
Then plants managed to hack humans, using nice flowers and by producing fruits, so humans now spend vast amounts of effort supporting their plant overlords. They cut down forests to make room for the plant aristocracy and spend years of their life caring for them.
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Deadliest Organisms on Planet Earth:
5 - Tetse Fly
4 - Mosquito
3 - Humans
2 - Bacteria
1 - Flowers
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Fixed it for you
5 - Mosquito
4 - Humans
3 - Bacteria
2 - Flowers
1 - Emus
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What about bacteriophages?
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They are basically viruses, right? So that would be the random death due to viruses, which is realistic, sure, but falls under the category “that’s not a fun gameplay mechanic”.
The next suggestion then is to have them be clouds, but then what difference is there between them and toxic clouds? I don’t really see the point of having any type of viruses in the game.
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I was mainly staying in topic of the most deadly creature things on earth, in the thingy above my post above you. But yeah, a virus mechanic could actually be fun if you added a thing where your cell would use up extra energy to fend them off, and if your cell cant handle it, it would explode? might still ruin the fun though.
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I left bacteriophages out of my list for simplicity’s sake.
Also it doesnt matter because t’was a joke
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ᶦᵗˢ ᵃ ʲᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵏᵉ
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no no, its a jooooooke
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